In Britain, a high-profile UKIP Westminster hopeful has been forced to apologise over making racist and homophobic remarks.
Kerry Smith, a member of both Essex County Council and Basildon District Council, issued a statement just days after being reinstated as the party's general election candidate in one of its top target seats.
He suggested he had been stressed at the time of the comments and taking strong pain killers.
In recordings of phone calls obtained by the Mail on Sunday, Mr Smith is said to have mocked gay party members as "poofters", and referred to someone as a "Chinky bird".
He also joked about shooting people from Chigwell in a "peasant hunt".
After his words - which he claimed were made two-and-half years ago - became public, Mr Smith said: "I wish to issue a wholehearted and unreserved apology to those I have offended within the party and anyone else."
In a bid to explain his comments he pointed out "at the time of this recording I was considering my resignation due to major management changes which I have since discovered I completely misread and misunderstood".
"For the record I was also on a strong morphine based prescription medication for a back injury," he said.
Mr Kerry also accepted claims he made in the calls about party leader Nigel Farage and other senior figures were "completely wrong" and "fuelled by frustrations at the time".
Mr Smith was deselected as the candidate for South Basildon and East Thurrock in October - with Neil Hamilton, the former Tory minister who is now UKIP's deputy chairman, in the running to win the nomination.
But Mr Hamilton ended up endorsing the Essex county councillor in his hustings speech after Mr Smith was reinstated. It led the ex-Conservative to hit out at party insiders over a "dirty tricks" campaign being run against him.
His broadside against the "cancer at the heart of UKIP" came after a letter from the party's finance committee about his expenses claims was leaked.
Mr Hamilton called for the party's national executive committee (NEC) to take action against those involved in the "black arts of selective briefing, misrepresentation and outright lies".
