UKIP Founcer: "The party has become a Frankenstein's monster."

The founder of Ukip is trying to prove to me that, when he was in charge, the party wasn't racist. He's also trying to demonstrate that his Ukip wouldn't have had its snout in the European parliament's expenses trough, unlike its 2014 incarnation. "I had one here not so long ago," says Alan Sked, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, as he searches for a membership application form as evidence.

It's a tough task: his office, the LSE's Room E503, is a stranger to the declutterer's art – it's not so much overwhelmed with books and papers as booby-trapped by them.