Tuesday 26 February 2013

Farage a poor leader . Andreasen & Bannerman defectives

Farage often boasts about 'professionalising' UKIP. Besides not knowing a noun from an adjective Farage has not delivered on this or indeed on any other promise he has made to UKIP members. Many Farage sycophants like to portray him as a great General. Let us pursue that propaganda a little.

The first modern army in terms of its structure was set up by the Roman Marius. He vastly increased the size of the Roman Army, removed the property qualification to enlist, reorganised the structure into legions and cohorts, paid the squaddies and gave them conquered land at the end of their service and crucially trained his army relentlessly. It was a greatly increased professional army loyal to its General. His nephew Julius Caesar capitalised on this in his Gallic wars but it was his uncle Marius, 7 times elected consul who made the Roman Empire possible.

UKIP badly needs a training programme for its candidates. It was what made the Roman Army in 100 BC and what made Cromwell's New Model Army in 1640. Watching the Eastleigh candidates it is clear the Tory Maria Hutchings has been put through an intensive training course and Ms James has not. Hence she got caught out on her 4 million Bulgarian immigrants claim on C4 News last night by Murphy and his supplementary, what is the population of Bulgaria? Ms James had not a clue how to handle her faux pas. It was also depressing to listen to her trotting out the Farage fag paper metaphor. It rang false. Farage and fag papers are OK but not a nice lady like Ms James.

Ms James has been let down by UKIP. She is easily the best candidate but won't winn because of lack of back up from her party.

UKIP did have the people who could do this training but Farage of course has got rid of them. His army is shrinking not growing. Worse, his choice of subordinates is dreadful. He confuses sycophancy to him with loyalty. The sleazier the sycophant the more likely he will be preferred by Farage. Basic UKIP administration is dreadful. Who was responsible for the London assembly ballot paper fiasco? He is still there.

Andreasen and Bannerman would not have been put on a UKIP MEP slate without Farage actively promoting them. A General needs loyal subordinates. Both have now gone off to join the Tories and both have been in Eastleigh canvassing for Ms Hutchings! Both aspire to Tory MEP slots. I do not think the Tories are that stupid.

Over half the LibDem MPs are reported in Eastleigh today canvassing for their candidate. How many UKIP MEPs are there? The LibDems are well organised. Will the Rennard revelations hurt them? Yes, a bit but because they got their postal votes organised in week one of the campaign most of these votes would have been returmned before the Rennard story broke! Time to explain to UKIP's Crowther what a postal vote is and how to organise it.

The LibDems are still 2/5 on to win with the Tories at 11/4. UKIP are solid at 7/1 so not to far from the Tories. For those of us who want an EU referendum sooner rather than later  this indicates a good result with UKIP a close third to the Tories and with a Tory plus UKIP total ahead of the LibDems. A bad night for Dave, good!






10 comments:

stephen allison said...

I like the comment about postal votes! When they were brought in they were game changers but unfortunately still not everyone appreciates that. In some constituencies over half the votes are effectively cast two weeks in advance of polling day. I repeatedly tried to educate UKIP that distribution of an election address was a logistical problem not a printing job. Any high street printer can run off an election address, but it needs a specialist mailing house to get it through letter boxes. In just over 15 months time there will be 27 million letterboxes receiving Euro 2014 election addresses. The planning for that process should already have started. In 2009 UKIP incurred ADDITIONAL cost of nearly £100,000 because they left it to the last minute and placed the job with a firm who didn't understand what was required. Before I left UKIP I had a system in place that could deliver a three tranche, individually addresed election addresses to a Westminster constituency for under £10,000. The first tranche could be through letter boxes within 72 hours of the election being called, second tranche hit the postal voters and the final tranche was eve of poll. The only thing the campaign team had to provide was the artwork and they could then forget about the election address and concentrate on the rest of the campaign. Of course the whole system was dumped the minute I was gone!

Eric Edmond said...

Stephen,

Thx for this. I always thought you and Alan Wood were far and away UKIP's best I met at running fptp elections but as has happened to many in UKIP those with real skills are eased out. I saw Crick on C4 tonight saying that alreday 10000 postal votes were in. I guess most will be LibDems. Crick also said he thought UKIP were doing very well and if there was another week might win. But there is not so they won't.

Eric

Eric Edmond said...

Crick tweets 9485 postal votes about 12% of the elctorate.

Mike Bridgeman said...

You are right, Steve and Alan know how to run a campaign. A great loss.
I am standing in the Unitaries. I know all the dates, especially when the postal votes are being sent out. The leaflets are ready for printing and my volunteers are lined up.
Just a matter of planning who delivers what to where (maps and lists) and how many doors I can knock at when folk are at home.
It's not rocket science. Hope the Ukip returning officer knows what he is in for at the general.

Mike Bridgeman said...

Sorry, for returning read "Nominating"

ALAN WOOD said...

Great Leader indeed.
Sadly, the sycophants are a hopeless lot as Steve will testify.
At RO's meetings I was appalled at the lack of energy, lack of organisational powers and intellect of this Farage "Praetorian Guard" as Malcolm Wood called them.
I cannot see us getting out of the EU with any political party.
If Italy is anything to go by it is more likely that it will leave us.
Mike Bridgeman recognised the rise of the anti-elite sympathy some time ago. It has emerged in Italy.
I wanted to start the FED UP party but am fast running out of energy to do it. A popular revolt party would have legs and if it incorporated UKIP's aims could attain lift off and kill off FARAGE in one go.

Anonymous said...

UKIP already has a candidate training programme.
As far as the postal vote is concerned when the PTB control the timing of the election and only allow 3 weeks, most postal voters will have voted outside of any election 'surprises' as you rightly say.
Then there is the fraud aspect.
I personally believe it is time postal voting was scrapped.

Eric Edmond said...

I agree with you on postal votes. It was a Labour introduction to facilitate electoral swindles.

I could see no evidence of Ms James having been through a candidate training programmme. Who is in charge of this programme and who teaches on it?

Stephen Allison said...

I understand candidate training is under the wing of Lisa Duffy and Pete Reeve but it's actually an assessment rather than training. "A" Grade Candidates are those that are fully fluent in UKIP policy, pefectly able to handle media appearances, etc. They are cleared to stand in any election as a UKIP Candidate. B Grade Candidates are acceptable but not quite good enough for A Grade. C Grade candidates need more (yes "more" lol) training. The assessment is fairly subjective and I don't think there is any appeal process. However the system only applies to Euro or Westminster Candidates and will of course be dropped completely in 2015 when Farage needs enough candidates for a TV Broadcast. There is no grade system for local elections. The last information I had was that for the 2014 Euro Elections only A Grade Candidates will be allowed to put their names forward for consideration for a place on the members ballot. After the ballot the NEC will then review the candidate assessment repor and the results of the members ballot and may decide to interview any of the potential candidates before publishing the ranked list for each region. In theory you could score 100% on your candidate assessment but not make it onto the regional ballot if there are more high quality candidates than are needed. You might score 100% on the assessment and come top of the regional members ballot and still ot make it onto the final list if the NEC needs to "balance" the list. As with all these things the system will be designed to give Farage what he wants!

Eric Edmond said...

Srephen

Indeed it will give Farage what he wants and two top of the list sycophants to implement it. Why take any chances says NF.

Thanks for this info. Clearly having branches and regions choosing candidates was far too democratic for UKIP.