UKIP Ballot papers arrive and Tim stars on BBC West lunch time Politics Show

At last my ballot paper arrived from the ERS with an enclosure from each of the four candidates plus a prepaid return envelope. It is all very professional and above the board. I take a huge amount of satisfaction from this as it was what I argued strongly for in my brief period on the NEC. Farage and Whittaker insisted I had got it wrong as the ERS would only do STV ballots. Both claimed they had looked into this and I was wrong. Well now we all know I was right and Farage, Whittaker (another Farage assentor)  etc were not for the first time talking without doing their homework.

 The ballot paper list the names of the candidates proposer and 10 assentors. For Farage these were, vote Tory Pearson, Clark the EU freebie specialist (when awake), Agnew who tells journos how it so easy to fiddle the EU financial rules, Bloom the dedicated pot plant fancier, Nuttall the Liverpool scally and Dartmouth our belted Earl currently being taken apart in the pages of the Western Morning News by odious LibDem Watson. Both Nuttall and Dartmouth desperately want a second term and see keeping in with Nigel as the way to do it. Add in the wannabe juvenile Heaver and it says it all about Farage's supporters and why they support him.

Trevor Colman, Mike Nattrass and Gerard Batten support Tim and Farage supports Winston! So including Bannerman we have 10 UKIP MEPs. Now if we exclude Nikki can we assume John Bufton and Andreasen have no strong views on the leadership candidates. Ho hum. I think Andreasen is distancing herself from Mr F. Rats ans ships maybe? John is just hedging his bets. He may need Tim's support in the future but wants to be re-elected.

Tim gave an excellent performance on the Sunday West politics show. He starts about 35 mins into the prog demolishing some bash the bankers trade unionists and a vacuous LibDem MP. He did very well in the general interview on UKIP even getting the interviewer to opine Farage was a useless leader.

If Tim wins I can see a lot of activists and general good guys rejoining UKIP. If its Farage there will be a lot of resignations especially when his Pan European affiliation becomes public.