William Milroy Etheridge (born 18 March 1970) is an English politician who was previously a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands region.

[6] In March 2011, they resigned from the Conservatives after their membership was suspended following complaints from party members that they were photographed posing with knitted golliwogs on their Facebook profile pages as part of a protest against political correctness.

[10] In August 2014, Etheridge highlighted the speaking style of Adolf Hitler during a public-speaking seminar he gave to members of the UKIP youth wing, including the dangers it presented.

According to Etheridge, he was "the most magnetic and forceful public speaker possibly in history"[11] who "achieved a great deal" in relation to convincing people.

[12] A spokesman for UKIP said: "Bill Etheridge gave a seminar on public speaking and highlighted great speakers of the past, like Churchill, Blair, Martin Luther King and Hitler as people whose style, not content could be studied".

[13] Etheridge sat on the EU Regional Development Committee; his belief that power should be handed back to communities has seen him emerge as a critic of combined authorities.

His policy proposals included cheaper beer, better representation for fathers in the family court system and a referendum on bringing back the death penalty.

[16] Also amongst his policy proposals were prison reform and a move to save the British public house by reintroducing smoking via the use of efficient extraction systems as used within the European Parliament itself.

[17] In October 2016, Etheridge launched his bid to become leader of UKIP following Diane James' resignation, after declaring he would refuse to back Steven Woolfe and stand himself during an interview on the BBC's Sunday Politics.

[18] A key divide between candidates was between what The Guardian described as "Farage-ist economic libertarians" like Etheridge and the "more hard-right, Islam-focused" Anne Marie Waters and Peter Whittle.