Nigel Farage's Economy with the Truth

I returned to the UK in time to see last night's Question Time with the great leader in a minor supporting role to the star of the show, Daniel Hanaan. Hanaan has led the fight to publish MEP expenses. Farage has not. Why not? Because he has had his snout in the trough, employed his wife and did not want his expenses published. His statement that he will publish receipts for his expense funded expenditure is not good enough. Dimbelby should have said that the electorate were surely entitled to know these facts before the 4th of June election when Farage was asking for their votes.

Farage again trotted out his imaginary tale of a UKIP meeting being stormed by a BNP member as part of a publicity stunt. He was clearly alluding to the NEC meeting of 3rd November which was attended by UKIP member Buster Mottram. When the BNP membership list was later placed in the public domain I could not find Mr Mottram's name on it. I believe that in the late 70s Mr Mottram was a member of the NF. This was known to Mr Farage whom I believe described it as a 'youthful indiscretion' and approved Mr Mottram's UKIP membership presumably because of Mr Mottram's high media profile as a former British number one tennis player.

I was at the meeting of 3rd Nov and my recollection of the events are as follows. Mr Mottram had written to the Party Chairman in September or earlier requesting an audience with the NEC. Chairman Nuttall phoned me prior to the scheduled October NEC meeting for my views. I replied that the NEC should always briefly see any UKIP member who wished to address us on UKIP matters. Nuttall then cancelled the October meeting at short notice citing that some members were unable to attend. (What he meant was they did not have sufficient votes on 6th October to kick me off the NEC!)

On 3rd Nov at 2:00 Del Young & I entered the first floor room at the Farmer's Club, Whitehall Court where the meeting was due to be held. Buster Mottram was sat on Martin Haslam's left with David Abbott sat on Martin's right. I sat down next to David with Del on my right. Farage & Nuttall arrived shortly afterwards and sat at the head of the table. (Farage and his cabal habitually have a preliminary meeting at the hotel next door prior to the NEC. David, Del and I were of course never invited!) It is quite simply a lie to say Mottram stormed the meeting. He did no such thing.

There was some debate about whether we should listen to Mottram and whom Nuttall had phoned re Mottram's attendance which I found confusing as he was referring to phone calls made 6 weeks previously for the October meeting. Martin said Mottram was there as a witness to his phone call from a jounalist from the Independent newspaper. This was a scandalous entrapment of Martin by Farage who had set up the whole thing with the jounalist so he, Farage, could accuse Martin of disloyalty. Later in the meeting I forced Farage to admit his sordid scheme and when he did I called his actions despicable and left. David, Martin and Mottram also left with me. At the same time the police arrived. Mottram was not ejected. He left of his own free will. Del left about 5 minutes later.

Mottram did testify to the spoof phone call to Martin and then challenged Farage about employing his wife at a large salary in direct contradiction of stated UKIP policy. Mottram then made some proposal of an electoral alliance with the BNP which was unanimously rejected. Denny, Zuckerman, Oxley and Duffy became increasingly agitated and hysterical. Nuttall completely lost control. There was no storming of the meeting as Farage stated.

That Farage fabricates stories on the hoof is seen by his claim on QT that full details of his expenses are available on the Open Europe website. I could find no such records and neither it seems could Anthony Butcher and others of Democracy Forum. Open the link below to read the thread:

Farage expenses

I have suffered from these Farage fictions before. Farage claimed one of the UKIP candidates deselected, i.e. me, had advocated supporting another party in the June elections. I never said this. What I did say in mid Dec 2008, after a meeting between Farages representive Malcolm Wood concerning Libertas and my local committee, a meeting at which I only spoke once to advocate support for Trevor Colman and the SW UKIP campaign, was that if the general feeling was to cooperate with Libertas I would not oppose it. At that time it was common knowledge that Farage was in discussions with Ganley concerning a joint campaign and in January, one month later, one of Farage's assistants registered with the Electoral Commission a party called Libertas UK!

It is a complete lie that I advocated supporting Libertas. My view was that if Farage and his cabal wanted to have some sort of joint campaign with Libertas I would go not oppose it. He had done this in Ireland with Ganley and frequently crowed about his contribution to the successful Ganley campaign against the Lisbon treaty. Farage was the one pushing the Libertas link not me. The proposed link died when Ganley saw through Farage.

I confidently predict Farage's expenses will never be made public in the same detail and over the same period as our MPs recently have been in the Telegraph. If they were Farage would suffer the same fate as these MPs like Hogg etc.