A DIVISIVE anti-Islam UKIP leadership candidate has met with the party's leader in Bolton.

Anne Marie Waters, who is the founder of the Sharia Watch pressure group and has previously called Islam 'evil', came to Little Lever to meet Cllr Sean Hornby last week.

He said that, while he does not agree with her views, he felt it 'important' to meet with Ms Waters if there is a chance she could win the leadership election later this month.

He added: "I am not going to be making any recommendations to our membership about who they should vote for. I will leave it entirely up to them.

"I felt it was important to meet with her and other leadership candidates, as Bolton is UKIP's strongest area in the North West.

"If there is a possibility that she could become leader, then I think it is right that I have had a discussion with her.

"She told me what her priorities were: the NHS was number one, law and order was number two, and immigration was third.

"So despite what some people say about her, immigration may not be as high on her agenda as you might think.

"We are not a party with only one policy and we need to get that across.

"Just because Brexit is happening doesn't mean that our work is done. We still need to hold people to account.

"There are people who say that if she became leader then they would leave the party. But I think you have to wait and actually see what she would do in the job."

Ms Waters suggested this week that 'millions' of Britons agree with her views.

But her candidacy has divided the party and led to reports that 18 out of 20 Ukip MEPs could quit if she wins the leadership.

Prompted to address her previous statement that Islam is evil, Ms Waters told BBC Newsnight: "Yes, and I don't see why that's an enormous or outrageous thing to say.

"We ought to be able in this country to say whatever we like about a religion and the problem we have got is that we pussyfoot around, we spend so much time agonising over not saying the wrong thing, and this is what's putting the public off.

"But this is how millions of people in this country feel and they are waiting for someone to articulate it for them."

Ukip will declare the winner of its leadership election at the party's conference in Torquay on September 29.