When Lois Perry video-thanked UKIP members for somewhat unexpectedly electing her as their new leader, she revealed that her focus would be on “future, family, food”. In fact, a fourth “F” would dominate her immediate plans – fleeing for the hills.

What spooked her into quitting after mere days at the helm remains unclear. It can’t have been the shoddy state of UKIP’s finances, because that is common knowledge from its published accounts. And, in any case, Lois is no stranger to iffy-looking balance sheets.

Perry swam into the ken of UKIP’s movers and shakers because of her business, CAR26, a primarily website-based anti-net zero and anti-ULEZ campaign, periodically pumped up by appearances on any nutter-friendly platform, especially GB News.

But, in pure business terms, what kind of set-up is it? A glance at the company’s micro-accounts raises more questions than answers. CAR26’s first accounts statement, covering the period to 30 September 2022, showed little signs of the business having clocked up any day-to-day earnings. What it did show was that someone had pumped about £100,000 into the company. A listing of £108,500 under “Bank loans and overdrafts” implies “no real mystery here”. Well, beyond the puzzle of why a bank would lend that much money to an enterprise with no obvious earning capacity.

With the whole sum marked as “Falling due within one year”, anyone reading these accounts was merely left on tenterhooks regarding how CAR26 was going to suddenly generate the kind of turnover required to repay these loans.

In the event, watchers were on those tenterhooks for longer than they might have anticipated. The accounts to September 2022 were filed on 4 April 2023. Early April 2024 came and went with no fresh accounts, as did late April, and May. Finally, on 7 June, after a 14-month hiatus, we got the answers. Kind of.

Far from showing the £100K as having been repaid, the accounts made up to 30 September 2023 declare that bank loans and overdrafts had more than doubled, to £219,221. Which bank, you have to wonder, is allowing this apparently almost turnover-free business not only to extend a £100K loan into a second year, but doubling down with another £100K loan on top of it?

Also of interest among the sparse details in the two years’ worth of accounts is that Perry has felt free to lend herself chunks of the company’s money. Well, really chunks of the bank’s money, we suppose, since the company barely seems to have any. During 2022, CAR26 generously allowed Lois an interest-free loan of about £40,000, the majority (but far from all) of which was repaid. In 2023, she borrowed another £47,000, and again most of this was repaid. She is shown as of 30 September 2023 as owing the company just under £15K.

We are not, of course, suggesting that there is anything untoward going on in CAR26’s operations, but we do think that, one way and another, it is a rather odd kind of company.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight