Mail Online, the sister website of the Daily Mail, has parted ways with the columnist Katie Hopkins.
The website said that Hopkins’ contract had not been renewed “by mutual consent” but did not provide further details.
Hopkins rose to fame by appearing in the third series of the Apprentice and wrote for the Mail Online for two years after leaving the Sun. But her columns and tweets have seen her accused of publishing deliberate provocation rather than legitimate commentary.
One of her most controversial pieces involved comparing African migrants crossing the Mediterranean with “cockroaches” and calling for gunboats to stop migrants reaching their destination.
The United Nations said the column – which appeared in the Sun in April 2015 – was hate speech and used language similar to that used by those behind the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
Her weekly show on the radio station LBC was stopped in May after Hopkins posted a tweet about the Manchester Arena attack that called for a “final solution” for Muslims in Britain. It provoked a backlash on social media because of the phrase’s connections to the Holocaust. Hopkins subsequently said the post was a “typo” and replaced “final” with “true”.
Hopkins drew criticism last month for a tweet inaccurately stating that a road accident outside the Natural History Museum was a terrorist attack. She said afterwards: “I stand by the idea that it’s a terror attack. I don’t shy away from that. It’s my personal opinion.”
Her last column for Mail Online was published on 5 October and explained why she wore a wedding dress to the Conservative party conference in Manchester. “I divorced my first husband, who was good enough to marry me despite this dress in which I am told I look like a transsexual body builder, and we did it with some efficiency despite hating each other back then,” Hopkins said. “It should be possible for us to do the same with [Jean-Claude] Juncker [the European commission president], and I hate him even more.”
On Saturday she was forced to cancel a talk at the Lewes Speakers Festival after protesters gathered at the venue in East Sussex and accused her of spouting hate speech. Hopkins was due to promote her new book, Rude, described by its publisher as “part memoir, part handbook for the modern woman”.
Hopkins appears to have deleted most of her Twitter activity.
Her columns have been praised by Donald Trump, the US president. Trump thanked Hopkins on social media in December 2015 for “powerful writing on the UK’s Muslim problems”.
However, Hopkins has also lost legal battles about her comments. This year the food writer Jack Monroe won £24,000 in damages and more than £100,000 in legal fees from a libel action over two Hopkins tweets. Mail Online also had to pay out £150,000 to a British Muslim family whom Hopkins falsely accused of extremism after they were denied entry to the US for a trip to Disneyland.
Hopkins’ management has been approached for comment.
A Mail Online spokesperson said Hopkins’ contract “was not renewed by mutual consent”.
