Wednesday 3 July 2013

Why Farage's EUKIP is not a proper party: Candidate Selection rules

Re the current Falkirk fight of wannabee Labour MPs for a very safe seat I reproduce below part of the Labour party rule book on selection of candidates:

4. The NEC shall issue procedural guidelines on issues 
relating to membership from time to time, including 
a code of conduct on membership recruitment. In 
particular, the NEC wishes to highlight the following 
areas of potential abuse of membership rules:
A. It is an abuse of party rules for one individual or 
faction to ‘buy’ party membership for other 
individuals or groups of individuals who would 
otherwise be unwilling to pay their own 
subscriptions.
B. It is an abuse of party rules for an individual or 
faction to offer reduced-rate membership to 
people they know to be ineligible for that 
category of membership.
C. It is an abuse of party rules for individuals or 
factions to recruit members who do not live at 
the claimed addresses in an attempt to 
manipulate local party meetings or the outcome 
of party ballots.
D. It is a requirement of party rules for members, 
where eligible, to register to vote at the address 
for which they claim membership. It is an abuse 
of this rule to allow those who are not willing to 
register to vote for the party to become 
members of it.
E. It shall be regarded as an act grossly detrimental 
to the party to withhold membership payments 
collected locally. 
F. Party officers and members should be aware 
that involvementin such abuses shall be 
considered as behaviour likely to bring the party
into disrepute and prima facie evidence of such 
behaviour may lead to disciplinary action leading 
to expulsion under the constitutional rules of the 
party.

Labour is a proper political party with properly framed and enforced rules. That is what the current Falkirk affair is showing and Milliband clearly intends to stick to the rulebook. Look at what happened in EUKIP where Farage and Gill waived  such rules to allow Andreasen's UKIP candidacy. She is now of course a Tory. I doubt the Tories will be so quick to waive their rules in her favour.

Clause A: Andreasen was not a member of UKIP when selected. Gill claimed she was an 'associate' member. There was no such membership category in the UKIP constitution

Clause C: Andreasen was living in Barcelona. A UK accommodation address was found for her. She still I believe lives in Barcelona

Clause F: Clearly Farage and Gill would have had to face disciplinary action under Red Ed's Labour rules which are no different from LibDem or Tory candidate selection rules.

But Farage and Gill faced no sanction from UKIP's suppine NEC. Why not?

Well you see UKIP is not a proper political party with enforceable rules. It is a Nigel Farage cult in which rules are waived or applied at the cult leader's whim. The UKIP NEC are  enslaved held by the leader's power of patronage for getting on MEP slates. Getting elected an MEP is worth a million pounds over the 5 year term. That's a lot of patronage way beyond anything the wannabee MEPs could earn in any other area. So the word on the NEC is Yes Nigel, No Nigel, Three bags full Nigel! I know. I have been there I watched it happen and I have got the tee shirt.

Farage also blatantly interfered with the election in 2009 of his short term successor as leader on national TV, the Andrew Neil show something no leader of LibLabCon would ever do. He described Pearson as 'head and shoulders above all the other candidates'. He was such an outstanding candidate that on a later episode of the AN show Pearson admitted he did not know what was in the UKIP General Election manifesto. Scarcely surprising then UKIP bombed in the General Election and NF came a poor third to Speaker Bercow and an Independent in his personally chosen target seat, Buckingham. Pearson then stood down. He had merely been keeping the seat warm for Nigel. Following Pearson's abject performance anyone, even Nigel would be an improvement!

UKIP can therefore never succeed as a political force in the UK capable of delivering its members out of the clutches of the EU. It needs to recruit serious intelligent people, ditch Farage and his supporting Cabal and learn that you have to stick to your party rules otherwise you just act as fertile ground for the Tory moles as Anderson and Bannerman both Farage protegies are now so eloquently proving. The media are now having a field day at UKIP's expense and its going to get a whole lot worse for UKIP.



1 comment:

DavidinRome said...

Eric

What an interesting and careful analysis.

ukpollingreport is also speaking of UKIP "coming off the boil". I wonder and think it is more.

Perhaps the key result of Hitler's short stay in Landsberg (other than Mein Kampf)was a recognition that to get power the Nazis needed to be a proper party that being "shouty" was not enough.

As a result they started to develop a "proper" set of policies and positions and a shadow government type organisation.

In Italy we can perhaps see the same effect today where Grillo's M5S organisation (another "shouty" party) is losing support and the very public infighting is beginning.

This seems to be happening as, no matter what they don't want (and many do agree with them), it is not at all clear what they want or what they are going to do about things...

Sounds familiar?