UKIP leadership candidate John Rees-Evans has slammed the “faction” of  “UKIP elite” who wants to run the party “behind closed doors” and pull it in a “politically correct” direction to please the “mainstream media.”

If he wins the race to succeed Nigel Farage, Mr. Rees-Evans promised to democratise the party and use social media to broadcast UKIP’s message, without the need to go via a hostile media.

Yesterday, Mr. Rees-Evans hit out at leadership favourite and ‘centrist’ candidate Paul Nuttall, and former Tory councillor Suzanne Evans for repeatedly refusing to debate him.

“We’ve got a divide in UKIP. We’ve got a group of people who desperately yearn for more acceptability, who want the media to respect them, the political class to accept them, and to receive decent treatment from the media,” he told Breitbart London Editor in Chief Raheem Kassam on Breitbart News Daily on Thursday.

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He said the “small contingent” were pitched against “the vast majority of our membership who don’t want to become politically correct” or “compromise our values” to please the media.

“I want to remain completely independent of the media operation,” he explained. “I’m going to create our own internal media team within UKIP to disseminate our message, without the filter of mainstream media, through social media.”

“UKIP used to be the anti-establishment party. We used to hate the idea of being told what to do by people who think they know better. But, unfortunately, what’s happened is that we’ve got our own mini establishment within UKIP,” he continued.

John Rees EvansOther UKIP pages seem to only want to back whoever is the most likely contender, We at UKIP TV Channel are made of sterner stuff. I dare you to watch this and disagree with anything he has to say.

Posted by UKIP TV Channel-2 on Friday, 4 November 2016

In contrast, he claimed to be “the only candidate who wants to transfer decision-making powers from the elite meetings behind closed doors in London to the members.”

However, his “absolute priority” if he won the leadership race would be “getting a genuine Brexit.”

“If UKIP is not strong I don’t trust the prime minister, Theresa May, to secure us a genuine Brexit. What we’ll get is some sort of unacceptable compromise that is not what the British people voted for on the 23rd of June,” he said.

He also said he would start campaigning in anticipation of a possible snap general election in 2017.