During his tenure, he received attention for making remarks considered objectionable by his party leader, for his opinions concerning climate change and for making other controversial comments. On 20 September 2013, UKIP withdrew the party whip from Bloom after he hit journalist Michael Crick in the street with a conference brochure, threatened a second reporter, and at the party's conference jokingly referred to his female audience as sluts. Bloom resigned his party whip from UKIP on 24 September 2013 and thereafter sat as an Independent MEP until the end of his term in office on 2 July 2014. Nigel Farage, the UKIP party leader, has been cited by "Channel 4 News" to say that "the trouble with Godfrey is that, he is not a racist, he's not an extremist or any of those things and he's not even anti-women, but he has a sort-of-rather old fashioned territorial army sense of humour which does not translate very well in modern Britain".