Tuesday 06 January 2015 6:31 am

Ukip website down: Indie Oxford record label claims to have bought domain name

Ukip's disappeared earlier today with the official address linking to a domain hosting page. In what is becoming an increasingly bizarre story, an Indie record label based in Oxford has claimed to have bought the party's domain on Twitter.

The political blogger Guido Fawkes originally speculated that the problem could be down to the party not paying its bills to renew the domain name. However, it was later revealed that the expiry date on the domain name, which is still registered to Ukip, is 22 March 2016.

Ukip denied it had forgotten to renew the domain name and said the problem was a technical issue and would be investigated. The website was updated on both Monday and Tuesday.

A Ukip spokesman said earlier:

We have had a technical problem with the website overnight, it is being worked on currently and will get it back up as soon as possible.

Things may now be looking up for Ukip with staff at party headquarters reporting the website is working for some users and will soon be back to normal.

Alcopop Records gleefully tweeted their claim to own Ukip's domain name.