"There isn't any UKIP in Scotland. It's been wiped out."

Nigel Farage has sacked the leader of UKIP in Scotland, Christopher Monckton, by email and the Scottish party's chairman and chief fundraiser have quit in protest. UKIP's national executive has also wound up the party's ruling "Scottish committee" and an extraordinary general meeting scheduled for today has been scrapped.

This is the latest stage in a faction fight in UKIP in Scotland that has already seen six of the party's nine shortlisted candidates for the European parliament elections resign.

A Sunday Herald report says:

Speaking to the Sunday Herald, Monckton said Ukip had been "slow" to deal with "a very tiresome faction" that was destabilising the party in Scotland, saying: "They prevented Ukip from functioning for nearly a year." 

On Farage sacking him, Monckton said: "I'm not happy he didn't telephone me before he sacked me. I thought Nigel would have had the common sense to ring me." 

He added: "In Ukip, there is an absence of professionalism." 

Monckton said the recent changes left the party without any structure or purpose, adding: "There isn't any Ukip in Scotland. It's gone. It's been wiped out." 

And he said: "London now realises it has made the most ghastly mistake." 

A senior source said: "This sacking is an example of Farage's control freakery."

Back in February I suggested that UKIP might evolve into an English nationalist party. These events may have brought that development closer.