UKIP "SPOILER" PARTIES?
UKIP are currently grumbling furiously about “An Independence from Europe - UK Independence Now” Party (“AIP”), which was formed and set up by Mike Nattrass MEP, the former Deputy Leader of UKIP, who it was reported in The Times on the 27th May spent over £300,000 of his own money on the creation of the Party and standing it across England.
UKIP has claimed that all the votes for AIP were really meant for UKIP and that this confusion is all the Electoral Commission’s fault. (See here for the report on this claim >>>
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/26/EXCLUSIVE-Electoral-Commission-Claimed-UKIP-Spoiler-Party-Name-Was-Sufficiently-Different ).
In fact Mike Nattrass has simply and intelligently used the rules in creating a Party, that is “An Independence from Europe” Party “UK Independence Now” slogan, to put the name at the top of the ballot paper and a slogan that would attract the maximum number of potential UKIP voters. There is nothing that a registration body like the Electoral Commission could be legally expected to do about that.
We are therefore thrown back on why such a party would be created. The answer is at least in part as a result of Nigel Farage’s own behaviour.
Nigel Farage is a man with great personal charm, who is highly entertaining company and who is very sociable, but he is also not somebody who is willing to allow himself to work within systems and, as is often the case with charismatic people, “he doesn’t suffer fools gladly”. He works on the basis of favourites, rather in the same manner as a medieval style royal court, where you are either in favour or you out.
The consequence of this pattern of behaviour is that there have now been to my knowledge at least five splinter parties since Nigel Farage became the effective leader of UKIP.
Back in the days when Nigel Farage took over effective control, although not then with the formal title of Leader, there was the Reform UK Party set up by those who opposed Nigel Farage’s coup against Roger Holmes.
In the last EU elections there was the UK First Party set up in response to Nigel Farage subverting the candidate selection process that had been created by a party and parachuting into the Eastern Region his preferred candidate of David Campbell-Bannerman as No. 1 on the list, contrary to the Eastern Region’s choice of Robin Page. In the South East he parachuted in Marta Andreasen as No. 2 on the list. This not unnaturally created a splinter group of people who were furious with Nigel Farage’s behaviour, including the former Chairman of the Party, the Barrister, Petrina Holdsworth. She and Robin Page and many others then proceeded to form the UK First Party.
In the Eastern Region the UK First Party was more successful in taking votes off UKIP than An Independence Party has been this time, as the UK First Party took 38,185 votes whereas An Independence Party only took 26,564 votes. In the South East and in the East Midlands UK First also took UKIP votes in 2009.
In these 2014 elections there was also Nikki Sinclair's “We Want an EU Referendum Party” which took some votes, presumably also almost all off potential UKIP supporters.
In addition to those splits there was also the major split in UKIP after Robert Kilroy-Silk had first given UKIP the publicity to surge in 2004. Then following Nigel Farage’s falling out with Robert Kilroy-Silk after which his new Party ‘Veritas’ was formed.
Coupled with that, out of the last lot of MEPs, half have either defected to other parties, like Nigel Farage’s former favourites, David Campbell-Bannerman and Marta Andreasen to the Conservatives, or set up alternative parties like Mike Natrass and Nikki Sinclaire, or more quietly dropped out of the picture. Such is the trouble with a too abrasive management style when dealing with people who regard themselves as colleagues not just as subordinates.
In addition it is worth considering UKIP’s own willingness to be involved in dirty tricks which certainly might have contributed to people thinking about creating a party with a similar name. Consider this item from the 'bloggers4UKIP' website :-
“LIBERTAS HAS hit an unexpected hurdle in Britain because a close associate of a rival political party has already registered Libertas UK with the electoral commission.
Bridget Rowe, a friend of UK Independence Party chief Nigel Farage, is listed as the leader of Libertas UK on the electoral commission’s website. The party was registered on December 19th, 2008 and is expected to field candidates in England, says the commission.
An electoral commission spokesman said yesterday one of the criteria for successfully registering a political party in Britain was that no party with the same name already existed on the commission’s list.
It is now unclear whether Declan Ganley’s Libertas, which wants to field candidates in Britain in the upcoming European elections, will be able to compete under its Libertas brand.
A Libertas spokesman refused to comment on the registration issue yesterday....
I don't know how much involvement Farage had in registering Libertas UK but it was a stroke of genius.”
Click here for the original story >>> Bloggers4UKIP: Irish Times: Libertas faces UK electoral hurdle over party name
I have just checked out John Laugland, as regular contributor to Cross Talk on Russia Today. He works for an outfit to do with democracy and co-operation in Europe and I forget the exact title. He is an Oxford philospopher and yet has obviously swum against the Marxist tide.
ReplyDeleteTogether with other contributors he said that the Western Liberal elite hate Russia because she is conservative and profoundly Christian.
They have created a Europe and North America which they see as progressive - but it is really Marxist and has fulfilled all the aims of the Frankfurt School - because it is post-nationalist, post-christian and even post-morality. So there are some who want to turn back the tide and the tide is now turning all over Europe; after all when our banknotes are all polluted with cocaine and the London banks are laundering drugs money then how much lower can we sink?
The English people never chose this path. They have been led down the garden path by our so-called progressive leaders who were mostly the Marxist students of the 60s and 70s who failed to grow up or were in it for the money, Marxist oligarchs like Tony Blair. It was noticeable that the demonstrators against Marine Le Pen's immigration policy in Paris yesterday were all young; the successors to the Marxist students of 1968. The idealistic but misguided young have been allowed to take over, even if they are now in their 60s, by the kleptocracy who have used them as their useful idiots. The old and wise, those with logic and common sense have been booted aside or terrified into silence through "polical correctness" i,e Marxist totalitarianism akin to Stalinism.
But action and reaction are equal and opposite and slowly the tide is turning and we will, I hope get our civilised homeland and national identity back, as others all over Europe are craving as well.
As regards the Ukraine, the BBC has finally broken its silence of the last few days to quote Big Brother Obama in the White House condemning the shooting down of the Ukrainian helicopter by "militants". They have not once mention the massacres committed by Yats - Victoria Nuland's picked man - against civilisans and others in the Dombas. Still, at least there are some in Germany still on the ball and they have been protesting against the Goldmann Sachs ex-employee Yats all over Germany, calling him a fascist lackey and a murderer; despite all the wining and dining that ex-Marxist Angela is treating him to.
Folk might find just published "Selfish, Whining Monkeys" by Rod Liddle of interest. In it Liddle rages against the "liberal" establishment and the changes wrought in England by the three "big" parties.
ReplyDeleteThere are now alarm bells ringing in UKIP circles about some of the self-publicists from Tory ranks and elsewhere who have been allowed into the party. Some feel that, just as the BNP might have been set up by the establishment to draw fire and wreck any opposition to the obliteration of England and the English, so UKIP with its founder Mr Goldsmith with links to the New York banking families might not have been all he seemed. It is a worrying possibility. And how on earth did they get tied up with that cardboard cut-out Robert Kilroy Silk and that wierd pair who will do anything for the limelight, the curious Hamiltons?
ReplyDeleteI will check ou Rod Liddle. In the meantime in our local paper a Tory was writing in the letters column of his pleasure that voters in the North West have rejected the "politics of hate" and that we no longer have any BNP euro mps. Little does he understand that those votes have not gone back to the three main parties, especially New Labour but probably to other parties of the "far right" namely UKIP and the EDs.
Meanwhile, the silence of the BBC over events in the Ukraine is deafening, the deaths of civilians and the evacuation of children to avoid the shelling by Kiev's forces do not even merit a mention. Imagine if this was happening in the "land of the free" we would be saturated with 24 hour coverage; but as President Obama has just reiterated America is an exceptional country and by extension the Americans are an exceptional people with no other people on earth being their worth.
Sorry but they are now a wholly deluded people, standing in total isolation from the rest of the world and only talking to themselves because nobody is listening. The disastrous thing is that we have lead by people who think that the American model is the best for England and the world. I can imagine them still spouting such a naive view as both America and Europe sink beneath the waters as a result of the Eurasian tidal wave.
Robin's blog is a perspicacious expose of the shortcomings of Farage's leadership. Time and time again he has shed MEPs each of whom represented hundreds of thousands of hard-earned votes - and sent them to the Conservatives or to the ranks of independents. His ratty dismissal of the councillors now known as the Lincolnshire Six was without doubt a blunder. To quarrel with Natrass was just silly. Maybe UKIP would have done better with Kilroy-Silk as leader. Love him or hate him he was an ex-MP so had that essential experience of working within a parliamentary team, which Farage lacks.
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