UKIP Uncovered

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

Thursday, October 21, 2004

DAMIAN HOCKNEY CONDEMNS LEADERSHIP'S MUGABE-STYLE POLL

Damian Hockney, UKIP's Leader on the London Assembly, has condemned the party's leadership for spreading the results of a "poll" which claims to show that the membership want Roger Knapman to remain leader. "The poll is false and fraudulent, and smacks of desperation. It has the ring of a Zimbabwe election. Paid employees of the leadership, in particular Nigel Farage, have been used to call branch chairmen, using strong-arm tactics. The only thing that surprises me is that they have not claimed 99 per cent support. I note with interest that none of the chairmen known to support a leadership election have been contacted, and that a number of others have called me and said they were embarrassed and angered at being called by Nigel Farage's paid staff and pressured into declaring for Roger Knapman."

"While I and others have called for a proper poll - by secret ballot - of all 30,000 members, they now give us a Mugabe-style plebiscite rather than a sounding of the considered view of a party with serious matters to decide. This is the leadership that tried to stop"internal communication" by e-mail a year or so back, plunging us into a bizarre stone-age of communications.

This matter is nothing to do with personalities but everything to do with policy. The leadership is clearly furious that the party membership - in open forum two weeks ago - voted against them by 20 to 1 on the core of our election policy. By a landslide, the membership voted not to allow allegedly eurosceptic Tories a clear run. The membership want to stand everywhere. The leadership have since run a campaign against Robert Kilroy-Silk, and indeed against the party membership's decision at the conference, and this Mugabe-style poll is the latest shot in the campaign by the declining 'Tories in Mourning' strand in the party.

It is now imperative that they put their Mugabe-style poll to the test and ask the members in a secret ballot who they want for leader, and who they believe will be more likely to deliver results. Nigel Farage has backed up his poll - run by his paid staff - with letters talking about UKIP's enemies. I challenge Nigel to suggest that I am one of UKIP's enemies, as I have indeed openly commented on the Kilroy letter and support the need for a leadership election. To suggest that open debate on the way forward is only the function of UKIP's enemies is a mistake.

Late last year, an emergency meeting of branch chairmen acknowledged that there was a need for urgent reform. However, it was decided to postpone this until after the European Elections. Now, the leadership wants to postpone reform yet again, until after the General Election. If you are a political party, there is always an election on the horizon. A grown-up party needs to accept that internal debate cannot endlessly be postponed.

To suggest that Roger Knapman was elected as leader is also wrong - when the subject of the leadership election came up two years ago, the existing leader Jeffrey Titford, and Nigel Farage annointed Roger Knapman as someone who could be controlled, and other candidates were persuaded to stand down.

Above all, we must now develop a full range of policies for the General Election. Not a thing appears to have been done about this, and four months after the elections, the only policy documents circulated within the party have been those from UKIP at the London Assembly about London issues.

posted by Martin |8:32 AM