Paul Sykes: Opposed to UKIP approach

A UK Independence Party decision to fight against eurosceptic Conservative MPs has cost it the support of its largest financial backer.

The news will be welcomed by Tories gathered in Bournemouth for their annual conference.

Party members had been concerned that UKIP could split the anti-EU vote in key constituencies, potentially handing victory to Labour or the Liberal Democrats.

The decision to reverse the previous UKIP policy of not fighting eurosceptic Tory MPs was taken at the party's conference on Saturday.

High-profile UKIP MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk has urged the party's grassroots members to fight every Westminster constituency, saying it would be "tainted by any association" with other politicians.

"The Conservative Party is dying, why would you want to give it the kiss of life? What we want to do is kill and replace it. That is our destiny," he added.

But those comments and the change in policy prompted Paul Sykes, the Yorkshire businessman who has contributed £1.4 million to the party, it switch his support back to Michael Howard's Conservatives.

Sykes said he would not be contributing any further funding to UKIP, and was backing the Tories as the only major "anti-Brussels" party.

"There is only one major party now that is anti-Brussels, that is for repatriating powers," the he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"I am at least warming to what I am hearing from the Conservative Party and I have no intention whatsoever of upsetting their applecart."

He added that the Tories were "waking up to the fact that it is not a bad idea to make our own laws in our own parliament by our own people, rather than importing them from unelected Brussels".

But former Conservative leader William Hague warned against adopting further anti-EU policies in a bid to attract UKIP supporters at the next general election.

"I think the thing to do is not to buy off people who are thinking of voting for UKIP by a change in policy," he told the BBC.

"It is to explain that if you would normally vote Conservative but you vote UKIP you are more likely to end up with a Labour government that represents the exact opposite of what you wish to see."

Responding to the latest developments Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP's team in the European parliament, said the party's policy reversal on Saturday had been a mistake.

"In my opinion we should not be fighting against sitting Tory and Labour MPs who are prepared to say the right things," he told Today.

But party leader Roger Knapman said the decision had been taken "in accordance with what the vast majority of our representatives thought".

"I'm very sorry Paul Sykes thinks as he does but we're speaking to a lot of extra new backers and the party is growing very, very fast," he told Radio 5 Live's breakfast show.