UKIP's Lost Leaders

Well the hustings are over and soon we will know the result. Meanwhile Farage on Newsnight bumbles on answering hypothetical questions he asked himself and implying his support for Tony Blair as EU president! Every politician I have ever heard knows the danger of answering hypothetical questions but Farage seems now to believe he transcends the safety first rules that apply only to lesser politicians. Farage again shot himself and UKIP in the foot. We cannot get a new leader quickly enough.

I ponder on who we might have had. Many people ask me why Del Young did not stand. He is a fine speaker, politically very astute and he has real integrity and dedication to our cause. The reason Del did not stand was that Nuttall kicked him out on the allegation of being a member of UK First. The allegation was completely untrue and no evidence was ever produced to support it but in UKIP any allegation made by the Cabal needs no factual basis or hearing. It's pure Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, verdict first trial later except UKIP dispenses with the trial bit.

The other leader UKIP might have had was Richard Suchorzewski. He stood against Farage in the 2006 leadership election and was subject to a vitriolic character assasination by the Cabal by the vilest allegations, many personal that were totally untrue. His manifesto then can be seen by clicking the link below:

Suchorzewski

Both Del and Richard are around 40 years old, would not have gone to Brussels but would have campaigned in Britain, built up the party structure in the UK and encouraged youth in the party. Both have the management background needed to build up a real effective UK based party strucure.

None of the present candidates recognise the importance of this.Ex UKIP election candidate Rob McWhirter said: "If we don't serve our existing membership adequately, and reduce the churn of new members, no amount of swanning around TV studios or call centre recruitment will save us.

As the result of the personal villification Richard resigned from UKIP. A big mistake as he could not get back in despite the support of Roger Knapman. The truth was Farage did not want a potential leadership rival back in the party.That is the reason Farage now supports Pearson. He is no threat to Nigel and will simply keep Nigel's seat warm. The other candidates all have their strengths and weaknesses but none will make as good a leader of UKIP as Del or Richard would have made. All are however preferable to Pearson but I still mourn UKIP's loss of Del and Richard.

No Pearson, No Nigel say cult faithful

The latest piece of puerile propaganda and arm twisting from the Faragista cult faithful is along the lines, if Pearson is not elected leader Nigel may leave us, followed by much wailing and gnashing of teeth. How gullible can you get! If the membership believe this then the moon is made of green cheese. Farage needs UKIP to get him his high profile media spots, to secure him his joint leadership of the EFD along with his far right racist Liga Norda friends. UKIP can survive and will indeed thrive without Farage and his dubious EU friends. Farage is nothing without UKIP.

It reminds me a bit of when Charles I had a spot of bother with the Scots, a notoriously troublesome nation, who refused to have bishops in their church and said in St Giles, Edinburgh the fatal line, "No bishops, no King". This was a bad mistake! Charles I ended up beheaded and the divine right of kings that he espoused could not save him. Farage is now taking the same line and although we do not behead people now he risks political decapitation if he persists in trying to force Pearson on UKIP as a proxy for himself.

I am becoming increasingly certain there is a long running plan behind all this. In 2004, Paul Sykes donated almost £1,500,000 to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) for advertising during the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, making him the primary source of funding for the party. Robert Kilroy Silk was then UKIP's major media star, a much better performer than Farage then and now, and wanted to become UKIP leader replacing ex-Tory MP Roger Knapman. Sykes immediately withdrew further funding for UKIP. Why? Petrina takes up the story on todays Forum;

"Sykes had his arm twisted re Kilroy by people outside UKIP when RKS made it clear that Kilroy wanted to take on the Tories and try to destroy them. Sykes liked Kilroy,at least to begin with but later found him too hot to handle."

Kilroy was absolutely right. For UKIP to succeed it must first destroy the Tories and replace them as the UK centre-right party. Farage, Pearson, Bannerman, Dartmouth and many others in the UKIP hierarchy are closet Tories who are happy to play at being Eurosceptics as long as it does not damage their first love, the Conservatives, where it really counts, in the ballot box. They have all except Pearson tried and failed to secure 'safe' Tory seats. The Tories obviously felt they had better candidates! Pearson was kept at Tory fund raising which given his recent inept political utterances was clearly the right decision.

As long as UKIP is in safe Tory sympathiser hands Cameron is secure on his right flank. He knows that the Tory line of, we must get Labour out at all costs, will keep all but the most committed Eurosceptics voting Tory. This was the line used in Norwich to see off the Conservative Turnip Taleban rebellion. It was very successful and brought the Tories to heel. Farage will huff and puff and I and David Cameron both hope he will unseat the odious Bercow in Buckingham. But in 18 months time or so there will be another election. The Conservatives will ditch Bercow for a true blue Tory and UKIP's MP will disappear.

But Nigel will pop up in the House of Lords as Lord F of Brussels for political services and worst of all this will eventually happen whether or not he wins Buckingham. Noel Coward had it right in his war film, In Which We Serve' after the UK warship sinks and the captain, also Noel Coward pops up alongside the dirty British sailor who remarks, "Scum Floats".

UKIP is now a Farage Cult, not a Political Party

I previously noted my unease at all 5 leadership candidates saying, if elected, they would keep Nigel Farage as UKIP's main spokesperson. After Farage's blatant rubbishing and denigration of four of these candidates on last Wednesday's Daily Politics I was horrified to watch the performance of two of these candidates, Nattrass and Sinclaire, on the BBC West Midlands lunchtime Politics Show yesterday. See for yourself by clicking the on link below and skipping to 44 mins into the programme,

Politics Show

Both candidates sought to defend Farage's improper and arrogant behaviour on this national TV Andrew Neil show despite being both trashed by Farage on that show and described by him as not credible leadership candidates! What can be the reason for this supine and craven behaviour by Nattrass and Sinclaire? The answer is that UKIP is no longer a political party but a Nigel Farage cult where the leader's word is law and the leader can do no wrong. Opposing the cult leader leads to villification and expulsion at the hands of the 'true believers' in the cult. A fate worse than death for our lickspittle MEPs

It was toe cringing to see them both describing Nigel as a 'very strong personality' a 'strong' campaigner. Nikki wrote to Farage that, ' we need you to spearhead our campaign in the UK as only you can'. Talk about sycophancy!

Nikki described the illegal Bown donation as 'an administrative error' , the Farage line ignoring the 67 warnings they got from Elco! Nattrass took the other Farage victim line, why us why not the LibDems. Not an answer to the charge, made worse by Nattrass's idiotic claim that Bown did not really break the rules. The court said otherwise and no serious politician would ever say a court judgement is wrong.

The interviewer then turned to the EFD grouping membership particularly allying with the Liga Norda whose leader describes the illegal African immigrants as Bingo Bongos who should be shot on arrival in the EU. Nigel has some friends that make Nick Griffin look like St Francis! How on earth can UKIP cope with the BNP highlighting, as they will, these remarks from Nigel's allies. Clearly Nattrass and Sinclaire are not happy about this but the justification Nikki came out with gave the game away, 'if we were not in a group Nigel would not be able to make these statements' in the EU parliament to nobody i.e. its all about giving Nigel an opportunity to grandstand!

Nattrass and Sinclaire are clearly quite happy to let Farage walk all over them to retain their places as UKIP MEPs. They saw what happened to me, David Abbott and Del Young at the hands of the faithful for opposing Farage's worst transgressions of UKIP rules and political idiocies.

The bottom line is that neither dared criticise the cult leader who has led them into an unholy alliance with racists, fascists and other weirdos. Farage is right about one thing, they are neither fit to be leader but then neither is Pearson.

Can UKIP afford more Farage media disasters?

I was appalled at the arrogant incompetent performance Farage gave on yesterday's Daily Politics. The unbelieving look on the other participants faces, Ben Bradshaw, Labour and Michael Howard, Conservative as Farage waded deeper into the mire with his idiotic fixed grin. Farage obviously thought he was giving a virtuoso performance!

As Robert Burns put it,

Oh would some power the gift to gie us
To see ourselves as others see us

You can see this painful ten minutes by clicking on the link below,

Farage Interview

I can do no better than quote from Anthony Butcher on the forum,

Absolutely unbelievable. He has actually declared all other candidates as lacking credibility. They must be absolutely furious, and rightly so. Is this Nigel Farage's lack of professionalism sinking to an all time low? Has he lost all political judgement? The damage done if anyone else wins would be immense, not just in PR terms, but internally - how could any of them work with him in future?


NF: "Only one of them is a serious credible candidate, and that's Lord Pearson"


AN: "So if it's not Lord Pearson, you'll end up with an incredible leader?"


NF: "If it's not Lord Pearson, things will be tricky, yes."



So none of the three UKIP MEPs standing, Natrass, Batten and Nikki are credible leaders and nor is former District Councillor Alan Wood. They have all been elected to public office but acoording to Farage, Pearson who has never been elected to public office in his life, is overwhelmingly the best candidate to lead UKIP in a General Election. Farage is living in cloud cuckoo land. Pearson is and will be an electoral disaster. Look at his recent US interview, click on link below.

Pearson US interview

I would use the title the Cabal applied to John West's test video, "How not to do politics"

The News of the World picked this up. Click below to read their take on it and be sure to read the comments.

News of the World Story

I quote from some of these comments,

Womb shattering nonsense.

I can't take UKIP seriously with characters like this leading it.

The BNP now want Pearson as a member and many of the other comments on the above NoW piece have a BNP flavour.

And this man is a racing certainty to be UKIP's next leader. Poor old UKIP!

As Anthony Butcher puts it,

I think that Lord Pearson's first act as leader, if he wins, should be to remove Nigel Farage as leader of the MEPs in Brussels and send him on some management training courses. How can they possibly work effectively as a team when he has declared three of his supposed colleagues as lacking credibility and seriousness while they are in the middle of an election?

Put yourself in the shoes of Nattrass, Batten, Wood & Sinclaire and imagine how they are feeling right now.

Farage has to go and go soon.

UKIP Leadership Electoral System

The decision to use the first past the post, FPTP, system for the current UKIP leadership contest is puzzling for a party that complains so bitterly in public about the electoral unfairness of such a system. Surely it would have been a shining example of UKIP integrity if the had chosen the Single Transferrable Vote, beloved of the electoral reform society, or even UKIP's very own ranking system used in ordering UKIP MEP candidates for last June's Europeans.

It is important that a leader has the widest possible support and the fewest possible enemies within the party he wishes to lead. Labour has its tri-partite collegiate system. The Tories have their multiple round system amongst only their MPs straight out of Bertie Wooster's Drone Club elections. The Lib Dems use an alternative vote system (AVS) sometimes known as instant run-off voting, that again asks voters to rank their preference for all the candidates. The Wilkepedia description is:

Instant-runoff voting
(IRV) is the American English term for a voting system used for single-winner elections, in
which voters rank candidates in an order
of preference. If no candidate is the first preference of a
majority of voters, the candidate with
the fewest number of first preference rankings is eliminated and
that candidate's ballots are redistributed at full value to the
remaining candidates according to the next ranking on each ballot.
This process is repeated until one candidate obtains a majority of
votes among candidates not eliminated. The term "instant
runoff" is used because the method is said to simulate a
series of runoff elections tallied in rounds, as in an exhaustive ballot election

So why does UKIP use FPTP. Easy! It means the winner need not get over 50% of the votes just like in the good old British General Election. The Tories love it because it keeps small parties out, Labour loves it because they can win a parliamentary majority with 35% of the popular vote. UKIP aka Farage love it for leadership elections for the same reason. Last time Farage won with around 40% of the vote and I expect Pearson to do the same this time with around the same figure. Its not surprising that Farage had so many enemies in UKIP, most of the party wanted somebody else as leader! STV and AVS ensure the leader is a combination of the most liked and least disliked which is what a party leader should be.

So UKIP's Cabal like the EU Commission choose the system that ensures they get the result they want. Les extremes se touche as the actress said to the MEP in the Brussels bordello.

UKIP Leadership Vote

Having thought about the candidates I think the most important single criteria is who can one trust to keep faith with our, the ordinary members, aspirations and hopes for our country or to put it another way who is least likely to be seduced by EU Euros or bulldozed by Farage in pursuit of his personal, egocentric, agenda. Only Nikki and Alan pass that test.

Alan is a fine campaigner and a good friend of mine but I think since 4th June Nikki has really made an impact. She has built up a good team of around 6 people and clearly knows her Onions as she has got Clive Page on board as media adviser. Her web site is good, she gives a large chunk of her salary to UKIP, and she has said she will go to Afghanistan to see our troops there something that will endear her to the British public. Remember the picture of Mrs Thatcher in the tank at Bovington! Conjures up images of Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, who led us against an EU invasion 2000 years ago. Nikki had to fight very hard to stay in UKIP when the forces of darkness in UKIP tried to expel her. She has the Boudicca spirit!

Nikki's downside is obvious, no one is perfect but she will keep faith with the grass roots and put herself about in the UK for all our sakes.

I would therefore like to see Nikki as leader with Alan Wood as NEC chairman.

The more one reads the more certain I am that Pearson would be a complete disaster. He gives th impression of a man who does not really want the job. He would make an excellent chairman of the fund raising committee Gerard's views are sound but he has wobbled much to often for my liking. Natrass obviously cannot be bothered.

The Tom Wise case got a big write up in today's Sunday Times, click below to read the story:

Tom Wise

The clear implication is that other pre June 09 UKIP MEPs may be investigated and who knows what will be the result. UKIP will come under intense scrutiny by the Tory press in the run up to next years election. The Tories are really desperate and are going on the line we must get Brown out so do not split the anti Brown vote. UKIP must of course combat this but must also be prepared for further revelations true or fictitious about pre 09 MEPs. The best defence is to have a leader and chairman who are 'clean skins' with no possible taint of corruption. Nikki and Alan both fit this bill. We have had Ashley Mote, now Tom Wise. As Warren Buffet says, "There is never just one cockroach in the kitchen" so in UKIP's case it would be prudent to find some fresh cooks.

Pearson and to a lesser extent Gerard's anti-Islamic views will be a god send to the media especially when they get picked up, as has already happened, by the BNP. This will naturally lead on to intense scrutiny of Nigel's new far right friends in the EU. Farage got a free ride from the media especially the BBC in June. It will be viciously reversed next May. UKIP must distance itself right now from this and that means ditching Farage as spokesman asap. Nikki is far more likely to do this than Alan. She has already shown she can act decisively with Jill Seymour.

As a student I was taught by the same lady, Dorothy Hodgkin, who taught Mrs Thatcher, then Maragaret Hilda Roberts. Unlike most men I therefore have no problems about working with and respecting able women in positions of power. Some of the things said about Mrs Thatcher were medieval.

Cometh the hour, cometh the woman, Nikki Sinclaire!

Kilroy on Question Time & Nuttall

I have always had a certain affinity with RKS. Like me he lectured at Liverpool University leaving just before I started there. His performance on QT was a tour de force from the Farage seat on the far right of Dimblebore. He was head and shoulders above the other pygmies particularly Hain & PC Blair.

He started on the evils of the EU with a 5 minute monologue of dense argument that Dimblebore abetted by the odious Hain could not halt. On Afghanistan he was supremely well informed and silenced Hain by asking him to name one UK Islamic terrorist born in Afghanistan. On immigration he was lucid, rational and very convincing.

What a pity he no longer represents UKIP. He ubdoubtedly has a huge ego but then so does Farage. The difference is Farage does not have 10% of Kilroy's debating ability.

I cannot understand why Nuttall did not announce his resignation at the Exeter hustings to make it clear to the members there would be a new chairman as well as leader? It would have been good manners to do so. I have no idea what lies behind it. We will have to wait some time for the real reasons to emerge. It clarifies things for me. In an election year Alan Wood or Nikki would make excellent NEC chairman of what would be effectively be a campaign committee. Both are good organisers and campaigners. Pearson's role is to get the money.