UKIP Uncovered

UKIP Uncovered
What motivates the leaders of the United Kingdom Independence Party?

Saturday, August 02, 2003

UKIP's NEC in thrall to Farage

The decision to call off the disciplinary hearing against the Yorkshire Regional Committee's Chairwoman and its Secretary, seems to be the first time since the middle of 1999 that the NEC has attempted to curb the activities of Nigel Farage.

Since that last attempt the whole UK Independence Party appears to have been under the sway of its most renowned MEP. That it occurred can be illustrated by this statement in the The Times of London dated 5th June 1999:-

'THE United Kingdom Independence Party, which is expected to win at least one seat in the European elections next week, was dangerously split......Michael Holmes, the wealthy leader of UKIP, has rebuked Nigel Farage, the party's best hope of winning a seat'

(NB The article from which this quotation is taken was subject to exchanges between Farage's solicitors and the newspaper, which resulted in the newspaper printing a correction on 21st July 1999. The facts in the section quoted above, were no part of the matter in dispute dispute).

The point made here is that even before the June 1999 elections, the press and presumably, therefore, UKIP members saw Nigel Farage as their best electoral hope. It is clear from The Times article that the attempts to restrain his activities had been made before the European Parliamentary elections and shortly thereafter, but effectively ceased after the ensuing ructions which resulted in the wholesale overthrow and split of the NEC, the ousting of Michael Holmes and the ensuing accusations of ballot rigging and party membership data base theft in which, interestingly enough Farage's name first became linked with non-UKIP member Greg Lance Watkins who once again this week has been verbose in defence of the leadership methods employed by UKIP's mishap prone MEP.

Since those early days of adverse publicity nothing seems to have been done to rein back Farage and therefore stem the continuing adverse publicity caused to UKIP and the anti-EU cause. The spark was Farage's meeting for lunch with the BNP member and already expelled Mark Deavin as detailed from this link to the ObserverFarage, Deavin and Lecomber, the non-defection of Teresa Gorman from a link with the BBC Gorman denies defection, the saga of the copyright infringement of the video tapes as detailed on this blog Video Copyright infringement, the attempt to extort a million ponds from the Tories Tories outraged at fringe party's .."blackmail", the mysterious break-in and theft of the computer from Farage's remote offices close-by the Sussex coast Prince Charles confidences, June 2002 and of course all the events covered in this blog, mostly resulting from his Chairmanship of the European Elections Committee and the suspension of the Yorkshire and NE Committees

All will have their own opinions as to which of the above events have been most damaging to UKIP and their electoral chances and the anti-EU cause in the UK. My choice, and the reasons why I belive this is the worst, were well set out in a Norfolk paper by a columnist Colin Chinery on ethics from which the following is a quote:-

Free traders want to be bought off

Back to ethics, and here the United Kingdom Independence Party has been stepping on the lever, demanding up to £1 million from the Conservatives as the price for withdrawing from 30 seats at the coming General Election.

“They want us to call the dogs off,” says Nigel Farage, MEP and party spokesman. “For the UKIP to convince its constituency associations and candidates to stand down will only be possible if there is something in it for us. £1 million would be a good start.”

Well it might be a good start to understanding the UKIP, a single-issue group whose only policy apart from taking Britain out of the EU is to embrace globalism and free trade. Winning seats in the Euro election was a notable achievement, but its performance in Parliamentary and local elections, including last year’s contest for London’s mayor, has usually been derisory. If it puts up 150-400 candidates at the next election, the Treasury will be rubbing its hands with lost deposits.

All the above makes it plain as a pikestaff to this writer that from those heady days in June 1999 whan Farage was said in the press to be the party's best hope of winning a seat he has now become its greatest electoral liability.

Is it not now time for the UKIP NEC to come to terms with the fact that the wrong group seems to have won in the splits of 1999/2000 and that if the party is to survive NOW is the time they need to do something to put matters right.

posted by Martin |11:38 AM