The only black executive within the UK Independence Party (Ukip) has received a telephone death threat in which several men threatened to kill him, allegedly on the orders of a senior executive of the party.

Leicestershire detectives are now investigating the threat against Delroy Young, which was left on his answerphone on Boxing Day night.

The revelation has shaken the party's hierachy and comes nearly two years after David Cameron sparked a furious row by accusing Ukip of being full of “closet racists”, a charge Ukip denies.

Young, 40, who lives in Hinckley, is the only member of Ukip’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) who is not white.

He fell out with the party in November when he was removed from directing its youth wing, although he remains on the 12-strong NEC. He said he had been sacked, while Ukip insists he resigned.

In the message the voices of three men and a woman can be heard issuing death threats to Young, a financial advisor. The voices said they were acting on the orders of a senior white Ukip official, who they named twice.

Young has reported the threat to the police who inquired as to whether he felt it to be racially motivated. It is believed, however, that the police are not currently treating it as a race crime.

It is understood they may have traced the mobile phone used to issue the threats to Australia.

A Ukip insider said: “This is causing the party hierachy a huge amount of embarrassment.”

Young, who was voted on to the Ukip NEC in 2006, had been put in charge of its section known as Youth Independence.

But after Young dismissed various members on the Youth Independence committee that he had organised, he found himself facing a series of accusations at a meeting of the NEC in November. Ukip later announced that Young had resigned from directing Independence Youth at the meeting.

However, he said in a letter to friends that the meeting was “more akin to a Soviet-style Politburo purge” and denied that he had resigned.

He wrote: “What followed I can only describe as an orchestrated denunciation which, among other things, included claims that I had criticised the Party leader.”

He denied the claims, but said that he was then sacked from running Independence Youth.

He wrote: “I said ‘If you are all going to sit here and believe these lies I might as well step down from this thing.’

“This was a comment which has obviously been cynically manipulated as a resignation in order to get rid of me.”

When contacted by the Sunday Times Young declined to comment on the telephone threat.

A Ukip spokesman said: “We are glad this has been reported to the police and hopefully they can track it to the people responsible.

“If they are members of the party or connected to it they won’t be for very long. But it is too far-fetched for words that someone senior in the party ordered anyone to do this.”

A spokesman for Leicestershire police said: “I can confirm we are investigating one report of harrassment at an address in Hinckley.”

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