“The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war,” he said.

“I wrote to David Cameron in April 2012 to warn him that disasters would accompany the passage of his same-sex marriage Bill.

“But he went ahead despite a 600,000-signature petition by concerned Christians and more than half of his own parliamentary party saying that he should not do so.

It makes it a hell of a lot harder to be a Christian in Britain when you have to share a faith with idiots like him. This is the sort of nonsense you expect from the Talibanesque backwoods of the American bible belt, but I’d like to think that we Britons had moved beyond this sort of nonsense.

My faith tells me that solidarity with LGBT friends, some of whom are Christians themselves trumps the “feelings” of stupid bigots like David Silvester. I am a mere layman, not given the power of Excommunication, but for me, David Silvester and others like hims are not Christians and should not be described as such. He’s still living the Bronze Age for starters.

If he ever read his Bible he would know there are many more passages telling us how to treat the poor than there are about sexuality.

It is telling that UKIP have refused to condemn his statement, instead issuing a weasel-worded statement drawing a bogus distinction between personal religious beliefs and political policies. Which is of course, complete bullshit, but that’s UKIP for you.

If you’re still tempted to vote for this bunch of swivel-eyed loons at the next election, remind yourself that David Sylvester represents their core values.

Update: After the national media ran with this, UKIP have done an abrupt U-turn and suspended David Silvester from the party.

An earlier version of this post spelled Mr Silvester’s name wrong. Now corrected.

I have to remind myself that Godfrey Bloom is not a character in a 1970s David Nobbs sitcom, but is someone real people have actually voted for.

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin seems to have anticipated the rise of UKIP way back in the 1970s.

Barely a day goes by without a UKIP candidate somewhere in the country spouting extremist bollocks that makes nonsense of any pretence of their being a grown-up party that isn’t part of the far right. In the past few days we’ve had a sexist troglodyte from Yorkshire claiming that no self-respecting businessman would employ a woman of child-bearing age. Then we had another who appears to be deeply into anti-Semitic tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories. Now we have a 19th century time-traveller claiming that physical exercise prevents you from becoming gay. Who will be the next, and what nonsense will they come up with?

Yes, it’s true that the party keeps sacking these candidates. But as soon as they do, another one pops up, and another, and another. It’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole. It does leave you with the impression that the party is awash with Uncle Jimmy characters, and they’re not even remotely good at screening out these wingnuts as election candidates.

It does leave you with the impression that these racist, sexist numpties represent the party’s base.