It could only happen in UKIP.
Having dodged the disciplinary action bullet for his derogatory comments and loutish behaviour, Godfrey Bloom, has resigned as a UKIP MEP, will now sit in the European Parliament as an Independent and almost certainly will not feature on the party’s candidate list in Yorkshire and the Humber. However he did not resign his membership of UKIP, despite saying that the ‘New UKIP’ is not really right for him any more.
This left Nigel Farage in a position where he had to either eject his friend, drinking partner and Brussels landlord from UKIP, or adopt a farcical fudge position of having a UKIP party member, who it not a UKIP MEP, sitting in the European Parliament, taking his group funding allocation that would have been collected by the party and doing completely his own thing.
Farage has opted for the fudge and farce so as to not sour his and Bloom’s bromance any further.
To show how lightly Farage takes this whole issue, he even told BBC Radio 4 that the vast majority of party members would not want to see Bloom ‘drummed out of the brownies’.
As a political entity, Farage has unwittingly summed up the level at which the party operates. There is no way the three main parties would have settled on this fudge. It underlines the lack of professionalism in UKIP and the appalling leadership Farage exhibits, undermining a seemingly strong action at the weekend only to flit back to weak arsed ineptitude by Tuesday.
Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise. If Farage can forgive Bloom’s being banned from hotels for urinating in a plant pot in a hotel foyer while blind drunk, and invoking European Parliamentary immunity when police tried to arrest him for having sex with a prostitute on the bonnet of a car in the street in full public view, then using an insulting word in front of the media, hitting a journalist in the street with a brochure, and threatening to hit another unless he was ‘polite’ to him, is clearly no big deal.
Autonomous Mind 
Will they remain flatmates in BXL?
Not really the kind of message that UKIP should be wanting to send out. This is the last thing they need to do.
Don’t worry too much, he’s still getting the votes, isn’t he!
Better Farage than Clegg as a coalition partner, that bloke just has so many fence posts up his behind, and so do all his chums!
You can say with some justification that Bloom is a problem of Farage’s making.
That said, this is a difficult one. Bloom does have a following in UKIP. It’s not clear that the mechanisms exist in UKIP to sanction Bloom in the way that the Conservatives could sanction an embarrassing MP without much of it becoming obvious. I don’t see that there’s the scope to do what Blair did with Mandelson, slap his wrists then bring him back to take the credit for a done job.
Furthermore, if Bloom set his mind to it, he could become a dangerous loose cannon, even split the party, or go overboard and produce a series of articles and interviews sounding like a caricature of a caricature.
No, I think Farage is probably doing the best he can in the circumstances. Whether he should be faced with those circumstances is another story, but he is where he is and he is what he is.
Bloom and plant pots and other carryings on, I’m inclined to put down to the embarrassing youth of a party which has, through the EP, managed to prolong adolescence to an unnatural extent.
They’re going to have to grow up fast.
AM – unfotunately this type of fudge/farce is exactly the way the other 3 parties would have managed a similar type of incident.
One only has to look at the Precott ‘punch’, Brown ‘bigot’ and numerous other ‘incidents’ in the past 20 years or so to see how it works. Clegg has even brought a ‘criminal’ back into Cabinet with David Laws!
Unfortunately, Farage in his inaction has shown UKIP to be no better than the LibLabCon.
The bottom line is that Bloom will be gone from the mainstream in less than a year. Doing what he has done and denying UKIP funds will not endear him to many. A clear case of goodbye and good riddance !
At the moment, I think it prudent to calm things, and hopefully Bloom down, and limit any damage he may cause. We are coming close to two major elections over the next two years.
Maybe for Farage, this may prove a turning point, just like accepting Art. 50 as the only legal means of exit.
UKIP, whether we like it or not, is the most high profile of all the Eurosceptic organizations out there. With the likes of Bloom out of the way, Farage may be a little more vulnerable and susceptible to change ?
Time to draw a line and move on methinks.
“There is no way the three main parties would have settled on this fudge.”
That will be the three “professional” parties that everyone hates and which have turned most voters off politics then? Who wants to ape them?
Godfrey’s the man!
Thankyou for publicising the information in your last para.This man is even viler than I thought! Thank goodness he’s finally got his comeuppance!
So MEPs have ‘European Parliamentary immunity’ ? Please could you let me know where this is provided for.This is yet another example of the iniquitous nature of the EU – one law for us,another for them.I’m surprised that it hasn’t received more publicity.
Nigel’s friendship with him shows appallingly bad judgement,doesnt it?
Filmisking, if you think a disgraceful, bile filled oaf who behaves like a pissed up teenager in Ibiza is ‘the man’ then you are an idiot, frankly.
Your comment is clearly bile-filled-oafist and surely a hate crime.