Thursday 23 January 2014

Lib Dems get Tory sex scandal disease. What will UKIP develop?

The accepted wisdom for many years is that Tories have sex scandals like Profumo and  the Duke of Welllington and Labour has money scandals like the Bernie Ecclestone donation. The Lib Dems are a comparitively new party but seem to have contracted a bad case of sex scandal virus with Lord Rennard and Mike Hancock MP for Portsmouth. As both arose before the coalition they obviously could not have contracted it from their Tory bedfellows.

The old Liberal party has a rich history of scandals, in the 1890s there was the Liberator Building Socoiety scandal that forced one of their MPs. Jabez Balfour forced to flee the country to Argentina. Sometimes it was cross party as in the 1970s  with corrupt architect John Poulson and links to Conservative Home Secretary Reginald Maudling, Labour council leader T. Dan Smith and others (1972-4): Maudling resigned, Smith sentenced to imprisonment.

In the 90s David Mellor resigned after press disclosure of his affair with Antonia de Sancha and gratis holiday from a daughter of a PLO official (1992). It did boost the sales of Chelsea strips however.

Then of course was the Daddy of them all Llyod George who managed to combine both sex and financial scandals together.

UKIP possibly helped by its geriatric age profile of its members is unlikely to figure high in the sex scandal league tables although as Farage brings in his YI youth this may change. Allegations of financial impropriety have been for over 10 years so UKIP may be more like the abour party.



UKIP have chosen one John Bickley, a local middle aged businessman as their parliamentary candidate for Wythenshawe and Sale. http://www.ukip.org/johnbickley

He seems to me to be prima facie a very good candidate similar to Diane James in Eastleigh. I hope he enjoys as god a result as Mrs James. He looks to me as a local party choice much better than Nuttall or his associates. If this continues and Nuttall stays out of it there is hope. It is to much to hope Farage will keep a low profile although in my opinion it would be better for Mr Bickley's electoral channces.

4 comments:

ALAN WOOD said...

A sensible choice of candidate to fight a lost cause.

With a bit of luck he could even pip the Tories and Lib-Dems.

Mike Bridgeman said...

From this link
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100256060/how-ukip-and-the-conservatives-can-both-win-the-wythenshawe-and-sale-east-by-election/
you will see that Toby Young is promoting a country before party movement where Conservatives vote Ukip to keep Labour out and Ukip votes Conservative to keep Conservative in.
The fact that is a supposedly local arrangement and against party rules seems immaterial.
The interesting thing is, should UKIP win, and get an MP, where does this leave Mr. Farage?
In the party leadership stakes an MP would trump an MEP.
While I don't think Mr. Young's initiative will make the slightest difference outside a by-election (are there any remaining Conservatives north of Watford?) it would be fun if it did.

ALAN WOOD said...

After Farage's performance on The Andrew Neil "show" he appears to have caught Lord Pearson's "I don't know what is in my manifesto foot-in-mouth" disease.

It was once the case that UKIP went into battle with a half-page manifesto that everyone could remember.

Then they had the Campbell-Bannerman monstrosity in 2010 that included everyone's favourite policy.

Farage decided to "professionalise" the party, but forgot that the internet never forgets what you once said.

Neil skewered him on his sloppy forgetfulness in not revoking all previous manifestos before he thought up a new one.

Thankfully for UKIP the (wo)man-in-the-street who occasionally votes does not watch political programmes.

Immigration, "austerity" and lack of jobs may cause them to vote against the present coalition and possibly the useless opposition over the next few months. A mid-term kicking is always good fun !

When it comes to the 2015 election General Farage will find that his lack of competent Officers and his miniscule army of untrained combatants will be no match for the big boys, their PR teams and their friendly pro-EU faces in business, unions and the media.

How the pro-EU brigade must be chortling that the anti-EU movement has been hijacked by such a plonker.

The pro-EU crowd remind me of Cassius Clay taunting his opponent knowing that he could not be defeated by their flailing blows. UKIP's greatest achievement was the Henry Cooper moment when the Euro was floored in UK.

The EU will be like Cassius Clay - Muhammad Ali - peaking then being reduced to a bumbling financial wreck because there are too many hangers-on taking the money. The problem is that they may well bring down UK with them.

ALAN WOOD said...

There is a well-known "disease" in life called the Principle of Momentum. It occurs in cricket (especially in Australia it would seem-how did England manage to lose yesterday?) where a team can win against the odds or conversely lose from seemingly an impregnable position.

Who has the momentum going into the coming 18 months of elections ?

What happens in the Wythenshawe and Sale by-election could show who has "Momentum".