New Ukip leader says he’s ‘fed up’ of people calling him ‘d*ckbraine’
New Ukip leader Richard Braine is ‘getting a bit fed up’ with the ongoing ridicule of his name.
Gerard Batten’s successor, who was elected to lead the right-wing party last week, referred to jokes naming him ‘d*ckbraine’ as ‘bullying’.
He has been nicknamed Dick as it’s a popular contraction of the name Richard.
After Mr Braine was elected on Saturday, former Chancellor George Osborn quipped: ‘The new leader of Ukip is called Mr Dick Braine – really.’
But Mr Braine isn’t a fan, and took to Twitter on Monday to send a message to his antagonists – referencing the Evening Standard editor’s decision to change his name from Gideon at the age of 13.
He wrote: ‘I’m getting a bit fed up with all this d*ckbraine stuff. It’s time to change my name to stop the bullying. Are my prospects better if I change my christian name to Gideon or George?’
‘What do you think @George_Osborne? ;-)’.
Many others have mocked his name, including several Labour MPs.
Shadow Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Liz McInnes said: ‘I see that Ukip, in their perpetual leadership contest that is rivalled only by the DFS sale in its longevity, have now elected a triumph of nominative determinism, a Mr Dick Braine.’
Her colleague, MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, also tweeted: ‘I wish I could laugh at the fact that this man is literally called Dick Braine.
‘But I can’t, because I know it will only mask the seriousness of his dangerous and vile Islamophobia. His predecessors would be proud.’
Today, Mr Braine, who is UKIP’s sixth new leader in the space of three years, made it clear that he was joking when he referred to his ‘bullies’.
He said: ‘The newspapers reported this as if I genuinely regret the “bullying”. Sadly I’m going to have to give up irony as well as changing my name to Gideon!’
The new Ukip leader, who is the former chair of Ukip’s west London branch, won more than half the vote on Saturday, a party spokesman said.
Following his victory, Mr Braine said he wanted to establish Ukip as the ‘far-moderate voice of common sense’ in Britain.
He was condemned for ‘virulent Islamophobia’ after a video emerged of him saying it should be illegal to publicly distribute the Qur’an in the UK and that there are some areas of the UK where ‘you’re simply not welcome’ as a non-Islamic person.
In the past, Mr Braine also claimed he ‘often’ confused London mayor Sadiq Khan with the leader of the 7/7 terror attackers.
His words, posted to Twitter, were condemned by Labour as ‘unacceptable racism’.