Tuesday 13 January 2015

UKIP Yorkshire MEP to be sued for slander by 3 Labour MPs

As I have frequently opined its the low quality of Farage's chosen candidates that will be UKIP's undoing on 7th May. Hence the story in the Scunthorpe Telegraph, "Jane Collins is being sued by three Labour MPs over remarks made about the child abuse scandal in Rotherham. " The three Labour MPs suing are Healey, Barron & Champion who said in a joint statement, : "It is sickening that UKIP could use such an important issue for party political point scoring, and we will challenge these defamatory accusations through every means available to prove they are untrue and to stop UKIP exploiting the terrible abuse for their own political gain."

The Yorkshire Post, also running the story report, "
Ms Collins, who is standing as Ukip’s candidate in Rotherham in the General Election, declined to comment.

http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/UKIP-MEP-Jane-Collins-sued-slander/story-25846424-detail/story.html

Ukip MEP Jane Collins

The BBC report, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-30784167

The BBC also report that , "The 3 MPs are also suing Rotherham UKIP group leader Caven Vines for libel."


If you are in politics you must know the laws of libel and slander in the UK are very strict. It is extremely worrying that La Coillins seemed unaware of the dangers to herself and UKIP of inaccurate statements about public figures..

On the other side of the Pennines the Cumberland News & Star report the mysterious withdrawal of the UKIP candidate for Carlisle,

"The man who wanted to be Carlisle’s first UKIP MP is standing down.
John Stanyer photo
John Stanyer
John Stanyer has resigned from the role of prospective parliamentary candidate after being elected the new chairman of the party in the north west.
Mr Stanyer said: “It is with great sadness that I have decided for the good of the constituency to resign as prospective parliamentary candidate for Carlisle."
“Following my exciting promotion to party chairman for the north west I will now be working full time for the campaign between now and May.









Strange indeed!

http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/ukip-s-new-north-west-chairman-quits-as-carlisle-mp-candidate-1.1184410

I presume Mr Stanyer was made NW party chairman by Farage's representative in the North West, P Nuttall. In 2009 Mr Nuttall became UKIPs lead NW MEP candidate despite initially finishing second to Greg Beaman in a members ballot. Mr Nuttall was of course elected as an MEP in May 2009 and re-elected last year.

Its difficult to keep up with the doings of the UKIP folk these days!

2 comments:

The Double Event said...

The John Stanyer case is, as you say, strange indeed - in fact, the more you look into it, the stranger and more self-contradictory it gets.

Having stepped down as UKIP candidate for Carlisle on the grounds that he couldn't devote the time needed to campaign as a parliamentary candidate whilst carrying out his duties as NW Chairman at the same time, only five days later Mr Stanyer was announced as.... the UKIP parliamentary candidate for the neighbouring seat of Penrith & The Border!

It's all here in the same local newspaper you linked to report his Carlisle resignation:

http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/ukip-announces-carlisle-and-penrith-election-candidates-1.1185365

So UKIP will now be represented in Penrith by a candidate who is on record as admitting he cannot devote himself to a constituency campaign. Who could blame any potential UKIP voter in Penrith & Border who cannot now be bothered to turn out and vote for their part-time candidate?

Perhaps the logic will be put forward that Penrith is not a priority target seat for UKIP to the extent that Mr Stanyer is quoted as saying Carlisle is, in the report that you linked. But if this is the local party's thinking then it is not supported by the facts.

First of all, UKIP currently has no elected councillors in the Carlisle constituency, but has two within the Penrith & The Border constituency. To be precise, they represent Wigton ward on Allerdale Council. As Mr Stanyer is reported in the linked articles as living near Wigton, one presumes he even helped to get them elected, so he shouldn't need reminding.

Second, in the last general election, UKIP performed slightly better in Penrith (1259 votes, 2.8%, 4th place, up 0.3% on 2005) than it did in Carlisle (969 votes, 2.3%, 5th place, no percentage change on 2005). John Stanyer should be well aware of this too - he was the candidate in Penrith.

But that leads us to some more intriguing stuff about Mr Stanyer. A Google trawl also reveals that his 2010 electoral exploits came hot on the heels of an old Faragista tradition - a fall-out with the Tories leading to defection to UKIP and quick promotion up its candidate ranks.

Only six months before the last election, here's the local Cumbria News again, reporting Mr Stanyer as a "dicontented Conservative" unhappy with the selection of the Tories' new candidate for Penrith:

http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk/news/unhappy-tories-want-newly-selected-penrith-candidate-dumped-1.633146?referrerPath=afc

Mr Stanyer clearly believes that if you're going to gaffe, then gaffe hard. This time we have him standing as the candidate who hasn't got time to campaign. Last time we had him standing as the candidate who had complained about the new Tory coming in as an outsider because "“we need somebody born and bred in Cumbria", causing the local paper to chuckle "ironically Mr Stanyer is a newcomer to Cumbria".

The paper continues "He is a former chairman of Hazel Grove Conservative Association in Cheshire." And here's another discrepancy. The report announcing that Mr Stanyer had been re-selected for Penrith states "he has lived in Cumbria for around 25 years." That clearly doesn't tally with the 2009 article claiming he was then a newcomer to the area. I googled some more and found this -

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/goldlist/2007/12/annesley-aberco.html

- which clearly shows he was still living in Hazel Grove as the Tory chairman there, as recently as 2007.

Either the Cumbria News & Star has got its facts wrong (perfectly possible, of course) or else someone has been economical with the actualite.

Eric Edmond said...

Thank you DE for this helpful post.

I agree with your logic and conclusions

So Stanyer is yet another former Tory fast tracked as you note into a powerful UKIP position and put on the candidate list. His former constituency, Hazelgrove, makes the Nuttall conerction clearer although of course Nuttall despite elocution lessons is still a scouser.

Its a typical piece of UKIP chicanrty with dodgy ex-Tories of littlr talent.