Why UKIP will hit the buffers

UKIP claims to be a party that wants to break the mould.  The reality is that the party is nothing like that.

In a recent post this blog made a passing reference to UKIP, where we highlighted that UKIP has departed the field where the EU membership battle is being fought.  We outlined briefly that the party is instead focusing itself on ignorant immigration pledges, train lines and water usage in urinals and toilets, rather getting the UK out of the EU.  No doubt there are UKIP supporters who would reject this observation, but the evidence is clear.

A piece published yesterday by the Guardian, whose editorial meeting recently played host to Nigel Farage, goes some way to explaining why UKIP is leaving EU membership behind:

Facile explanations about the surge of Ukip support being exclusively about Europe have been comprehensively dismissed in extensive research commissioned by Lord Ashcroft. It showed that Britain’s relationship with Europe was the top issue for only, roughly, a quarter of the people considering Ukip. And yet the surge in support is a phenomenon that remains, to paraphrase Churchill, a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside the enigma that is Nigel Farage.

Firstly, let us get this ridiculous talk of a surge in support out of the way.  Looking at an average of the 16 polls (accounting for weighting) carried out in October by YouGov, Populus, Opinium, Ipsos-Mori, TNS, ICM and Survation, UKIP’s support is sitting at 11%, just about neck and neck with the detested Liberal Democrats.  Electoral Calculus in September had UKIP’s polling average at 13%.  In May it was hard to find a poll where UKIP wasn’t sitting on around 16%.  So where is this surge?  UKIP’s support trend since the 2013 local elections is downward.  It is falling away as the people who flirted with the party have discovered the political equivalent of the Emperor’s new clothes.

Back then to UKIP’s quiet departure from their previous core objective of getting out of the EU.  What the Ashcroft polls, referenced above, have shown simply reinforces what Farage has already grasped.  It is possible to appeal to some voters if you talk to their issues, even if they are not particularly exercised about yours.  So Farage, in an attempt to make UKIP an electoral fixture as a fourth mainstream national party, is trying to be all things to all men.

Sure we still get the odd bit of poorly understood and even more poorly researched nonsense about the latest guff they think they’ve uncovered coming out of Brussels.  Just look at this story, written in a manner so appalling it makes the Daily Sport look highbrow in comparison.  Let’s not forget also UKIP’s capacity for ‘cor blimey’ write ups of stories they’ve jumped on that aren’t even true, such as the supposed banning of the UK flag on meat packaging.

But the party (Farage) has decided to focus much more on domestic matters.  In this way Farage hopes to hoover up the protest vote that previously went to the Lib Dems – before they got their feet into Whitehall and showed they are every bit as establishment as the Tories and champagne socialists.  That is why UKIP is reverting to dog whistle politics by banging on about HS2 and sentencing in courts across Britain.  It’s part of Farage’s desire for a chip in the Westminster game to help him achieve personal ambitions he is trying to realise through UKIP.

The problem is that far from breaking the mould, UKIP is trying to squeeze itself firmly into it.  It is trying to compete in a relatively crowded space by talking about the same issues the mainstream parties are, albeit by taking a opposing view to capture protest votes.  This approach has been taken in order to service party electoral interests, rather than push the core objective of leaving the EU.

While UKIP is taking this approach and slipping backwards, the debate about EU membership and business inspired nonsense about the single market is ramping up and UKIP is nowhere to be seen.  By intent.  The proxies of the mainstream parties are pushing the narratives and trying to convince voters of the need to stay in the EU, confining the arguments to the degree of imaginary reform that is required; and UKIP is somewhere else, playing to narrow issues which are largely rooted in EU regulations and directives in any case, but themselves refusing to point at the EU elephant in the room.

Why will UKIP hit the buffers?  Because the UK electorate is becoming so polarised the next general election will see the classic two party squeeze.  The debate will be channelled onto the economy, energy, NHS, defence and other core areas where UKIP has no profile.  UKIP with its sensationalist, badly thought through and BNP-like focus on immigration in the south east and East Anglia, and small voice on HS2 around London and the south midlands, won’t get a look in.

UKIP’s core vote may help to undermine Tory candidates in a number of marginals, but that will be the extent of the UKIP impact.  Having given up its place in the fight on EU withdrawal, the party has structured itself as a dustbin for the disaffected with no positive message to offer.  Farage, far from increasing UKIP’s appeal, has found a way of restricting it.  With impetus lost after an expected good performance in the most meaningless of elections (European elections in 2014) and no succession plan to replace the vain and money motivated Farage, UKIP will slowly contract back into terminal irrelevance.

Dr Eric Edmond, a man a greatly admire for his principle and abilities, gets it when it comes to Farage and his harmful priorities.  Regrettably he remains convinced that a political party is the vehicle to use to secure an electoral mandate for EU withdrawal. But what UKIP – and every other party –  teaches us is that good intentions at the beginning inevitably give way to servicing party interests, internal squabbles, vote chasing by talking to other issues and diluting the objective.  Alan Sked’s New Deal, if it actually fully gets of the ground, will end up with internal squabbles and like UKIP will, over time, lose track of its original aims and become opportunist.  It has already tried to position itself on the political spectrum, playing immediately into the hands of the mainstream parties.

Norway’s non-party political anti EU campaign offers us a model to follow.  It was a success because rather than fighting within the party political electoral arena and taking on the incumbents, it made itself relevant with an unswerving and well informed message, and had the politicians seeking its endorsement at election time.  Getting out of the EU is not something the kind of campaign that a political party can win, because no party can succeed as a single issue entity in the way a non party political movement can.  History shows us no party ever has and the UKIP experience has simply reinforced it.

Farage, fudge and farce

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.

Farage on Brexit: ‘The only mechanism by which we can withdraw is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty’

It is noteworthy that when it comes to discussion about how the UK should go about leaving the EU in a legal and structured manner that , the only place where the mechanism was properly considered and investigated was by Richard North on the EU Referendum blog with support in the Telegraph and Daily Mail from Christopher Booker.  The conclusion was that the UK must invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon.

After many discussions with Richard and reviewing the information about the process, it became clear Richard was right and the legal exit process was clear and defined, even if it is only the start of a long and complex process.  It is the only provision that guarantees and requires the EU to discuss with a member state withdrawal from the union and negotiate what relationship that member state will have with the EU after exit – thus ensuring the UK can protect its economic and commercial interests, particularly with regard to trade.  Hence this blog began to advocate the Article 50 route in addition to a number of other blogs that had weighed in with support and additional analysis to advance the case.

So it has been frustrating thereafter to see a number of vocal Eurosceptics arguing that Article 50 is a ‘trap’ and arguing behind the scenes – only occasionally breaking cover on forums – that the mechanism for exit should be a simple repeal of the European Communities Act (ECA).  Overnight, via this scorched earth approach, the UK would be independent in so much as all treaties that bind us into adhering to EU law would fall.

However, it would also mean the UK would have no trade agreement with the EU – or any country or bloc with whom trade agreements have been made by the EU on the UK’s behalf – and no customs arrangements enabling our goods to enter the customs union.  ‘Ha, it doesn’t matter.  They sell more to us than we do to them, so a trade agreement would be in place within 24 hours,’ runs the argument of the scorched earthers, pretending the complexities of international trade and product standards with a bloc representing 27 other countries can be sorted out in a day.  In fact, Lord Digby Jones, the former Labour trade minister in the House of Lords, made this very argument at the UKIP conference the other day, demonstrating a capacity for delusion and level of ignorance that is truly breathtaking and disturbing in equal measure.

North’s hard work and detailed argument was however of interest to many Eurosceptics and UKIP members.  Ploughing a lonely furrow for a long time, EU Referendum (with minor assistance from Autonomous Mind) continued to explain the merits and protections of the Article 50 route to raise awareness among those who wanted to answer that longstanding question about Brexit – how it could be done. It was therefore extremely gratifying to see at Farage’s Q&A session at the UKIP conference that the first two questions raised by UKIP members concerned the ‘how‘ and focused on Article 50.

It was a measure of North’s success in bringing the mechanism issue to the forefront of the Brexit agenda, when even UKIP’s leadership was refusing to define the approach it endorsed and was planning for.  In answer to the question, Nigel Farage finally came off the fence and told the UKIP audience (as you can see in the first five minutes of the video below):

“The only mechanism by which we can withdraw is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.”

Farage did explain he is not comfortable with it because the Lisbon Treaty was not put to the British people, and applied a caveat that if the EU messed the UK around he would make a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, but he accepts it as the only appropriate and legal mechanism for starting Brexit.  This is a huge step forward.

We now have clarity about the mechanism and the approach UKIP accepts must be taken, contradicting the scorched earth approach pushed by UKIP MEP Gerard Batten and UKIP’s economic adviser and former leadership hopeful, Tim Congdon.  An important part of the battle has been won.  The persistence of one blogger, supported by some other blogs and a continuously growing number of Eurosceptics convinced by arguments for Article 50, has brought us to this point.  Richard deserves recognition and huge thanks for this.

The next step is for UKIP to start work on understanding what issues need to be negotiated and establishing the position the UK needs to take to get what it wants out of the negotiation.  It needs to engage people who understand what needs to be negotiated to ensure the UK is not adversely affected by withdrawal and formulate the approach to follow.  This has two benefits

1. UKIP can genuinely declare to voters that it has a plan for leaving that does not harm UK interests
2. UKIP can assure the business community that after exit, companies will not lose access to their European markets or ability to hire skilled employees from Europe

Only a high level explanation needs to be given, to give people confidence that there is a detailed plan behind the summary that covers the areas that concern people.  Polls have shown consistently that the greatest fear people have of Brexit are negative economic impacts.  The Europhiles have played on this remorselessly with spin, conjecture and outright lies to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.  But if UKIP steps up, this FUD can be countered and more people will be reassured to vote to leave the EU should a referendum take place.

The comments made in a few moments from a stage in London might just now trigger a fightback by the Eurosceptic side, one that is backed with truth and evidence that destroys the arguments of the Europhiles.  This could be a seminal moment in the Brexit campaign.  It is now up to UKIP to use its platform to push this up the agenda for the benefit of the whole Eurosceptic side.-

Perhaps, just maybe, hope has been restored.  We have to wait and see if this Damascene conversion by Farage becomes more than words.=/

UKIP on the defensive as Bloom reverts to type… again

Having spent some hours mulling over the Godfrey Bloom idiocy today, and whether I should intrude of private grief, it seems there are grounds for comment.

The reaction to and defence of Bloom’s previous ‘Bongo Bongo Land’ comments demonstrated there is a very vocal section of UKIP support that has extremely poor judgement when it comes to character, and no concept of what is considered decent or dignified.  Looking at comments elsewhere today, it is clear the penny has dropped for some people about the kind of person Bloom is.

It wasn’t just his smartarse attempt to use a word, which while one definition of it is a slovenly (untidy or lazy) woman, the other, more frequent and prominent definition in the Oxford English and Cambridge dictionaries is ‘a woman who has many sexual partners’ and ‘a woman who has sexual relationships with a lot of men without any emotional involvement’ respectively – underlining that the common use of the word is in a disparaging manner.  It was his bahaviour afterwards in the street, where he bellowed and accused Michael Crick of being racist for asking why a UKIP publication did not contain a single picture with any person who was not white, before hitting Crick with it and throwing it on to the street.

Either way, Bloom’s behaviour indoors and out, was not dignified, respectful or responsible – and it demonstrated a propensity to lose his temper as a result of a worrying lack of self control.  Joking or not, for a professional politician it was no way to describe the women in the room and no way to behave to a journalist with a huge platform at his disposal.  But then, what can one expect from a man whose view of women is that of domestic slaves in the home, and sexual commodities on the street to be purchased for his sexual gratification, who hates the media for focusing his boorish stupidity.

Sadly though, far too many people still seem determined to defend and excuse anything Bloom, does because in their eyes he is just a fun loving, stout gentleman who doesn’t take things too seriously, standing up to challenge political correctness and take on the establishment.  They are filled with contempt and take delight when someone exhibits that contempt in order to antagonise and irritate the people they dislike.  But Bloom isn’t a ‘lad’, he is simply an attention seeking, sad excuse of a man, who delights in trying to be as insulting as possible within parameters that enable him to plead that he hasn’t crossed the line of what is acceptable.

Only now, after the Blessed Nigel has had his headline speech thunder stolen, canned and buried so deep it may as well be next to material that has a half life, is Godfrey Bloom considered to have gone beyond the pale.  The suspicion is that if this had been on any other day, Farage would have again excused the immaturity of his pet manchild and Bloom would be keeping the party whip.  Farage has just paid the personal price for his appalling judgement and for not dealing with the Bloom problem previously.

It was only ever going to be a matter of time until Bloom shot his mouth off again.  But it suggests a particularly incredible depth of stupidity to do so in front of various journalists, who according to Janice Atkinson speaking on Radio 5 Live earlier, had knowingly said to keep the cameras on Bloom because – to paraphrase – he always fucks things up.  Common sense would dictate that Bloom would be on his best behaviour and portray himself as a serious politician.  But no.

So UKIP were left looking desperate and disingenuous trying to defend Bloom’s comments by playing semantics, Annabelle Fuller racing into the breach to provide feminine cover.  Then a short while later la Atkinson was left looking like an idiot on BBC radio as she robustly defended Bloom, then when told Farage had thrown him to the wolves, contradicted herself and tied herself up in knots.

It seems Farage’s professionalisation of the party isn’t quite going to plan and the reason is him showing the same kind of cronyism he attacks when it happens in other parties.

Mainstream journalists have “a powerful reputation for accuracy” and bloggers are “no more than electronic versions of pub gossip”

Time and again that deluded tool of special interests, Lord Justice Leveson, will eat those words in return for his rank ignorance and opinionated myopia.

There is nothing that destroys the trust people have in a movement, or its credibility, or indeed undermines its objectives, as comprehensively, as being shown to be wilfully spreading inaccurate or knowingly false information.  But that is exactly what the Daily Express stands accused of today.

As Richard explains on EU Referendum, leading Eurosceptic journalist Christopher Booker, was approached by a newspaper who asked him to write a ‘robust’ commentary on the ‘plan’ by the EU Commission to ban the Union Flag from British meat packs.  Booker, along with Richard who often provides much needed forensic research expertise, soon discovered there is actually no such plan and went back to the newspaper concerned to tell them there was no story – foregoing what likely amounts to a four figure fee in the process.

This was after the Daily Express had contacted the European Commission about this ‘story’ only to be told it was not true.  Rather than dropping the piece, having been unable to deliver the narrative it wanted, the Express had commissioned John Ingham to write an article about this non existent plan the Express published despite the editorial team knowing it to be false.

An absence of fact checking is bad enough for the financed and resourced legacy media, but publishing a story for which they have been told there is no evidence and no basis in fact, is reprehensible.  This lack of integrity, this unprincipled behaviour, is damaging to the Eurosceptic cause.  If the Express knowingly published this story having been told it is false, how many other times have they done the same thing?  How much more false material is there waiting to harm the case for withdrawing from the EU?

As if this isn’t bad enough, it seems this false story has elicited outraged commentary from people whose very job necessitates them to sort fact from fiction using vast resources available to them.

Yes, that’s right.  UKIP’s seemingly infinite capacity for failing to do detail and instead shooting from the lip, has seen Paul Nuttall MEP, the party’s Deputy Leader, quoted on the UKIP party website as saying:

The EU is has launched this horrible offensive against national identity and scrapping appearances of the national flag is a way of doing that.

Consumers look for simple symbols like that when they buy meat to know they are buying British. We already have food supply chains that are far too long and British shoppers have lost faith in supermarket stock since the horse meat scandal.

Now I wouldn’t be surprised if shoppers instead are faced with the ring of stars logo instead. Well the general public are losing faith rapidly in the EU and will be seriously offended by these latest moves.

Really it makes more sense to be offended by something real rather than imagined, but hey ho.  With UKIP offering official comment that condemns plans that don’t exist, perhaps the faith the general public will lose will be in what the party has to say on EU matters.  On reflection, despite my regular complaints that UKIP is failing in its role by not using its platform to counter Europhile FUD, it is probably a blessing that its spokesman and MEPs stay silent on such EU related matters.  They should stick to filling vacant parish council seats until they can get their act together.

By knowingly publishing a false story the Daily Express is making fools of its readers and treating them with appalling contempt.  Rather than bolster the Eurosceptic cause they may well have done the opposite. So much for the mainstream media’s ‘powerful reputation for accuracy’.  It was a blogger who flagged up the media’s error and demonstrated integrity by setting the record straight.  Electronic pub gossip, or reliable and accurate guardian of the truth, m’lud?

The only way to defeat the Europhiles and their campaign of FUD is with the truth, with facts and with evidence.  The Express is therefore not an ally of our cause, but a ticking time bomb that could blow it apart.  The paper’s editors and journalists need to shape up or sod off.  We don’t need or want what they’re bringing to the table.

UKIP: Fighting the battles of yesterday

Our model should be the Liberal Democrats. Not in policy terms but on how they focused on areas where they are strong, focusing on district councillors and parish and city councils. They trebled the number of seats in Westminster that way. We need a volunteer army. We need people to stand up and put their heads above the parapet.

So said Nigel Farage at the UKIP rally in Telford.

What sounds like a step change in progress is, in reality, Farage seeking to fight the battles of yesterday.  When UKIP was formed it was for a clear purpose, to secure withdrawal from the EU.  Using the party political model was the right approach for the time because the only way to force withdrawal was via taking Westminster by storm, securing a parliamentary majority and voting to repeal the European Communities Act. The focus, however ambitious, was on going after the politicians by defeating them in elections and taking power.

It was the wisdom of its time.  There was no Lisbon Treaty back then, therefore no other route to an orderly exit.  There was also no suggestion of a referendum either.  But that is not true today.   Now we have Article 50 and a defined route to an orderly exit from the EU that didn’t exist before.  We also have talk of a referendum.  Yet in Telford, Farage spoke of the need for a volunteer army,  for people to stand up and put their heads above the parapet.  To what end?

It’s a puzzler because UKIP has no clear policy message for this army to carry to the public.  Farage won’t let a defined policy be articulated for two reasons:

1) because it allows him to remain all things to all members by not coming off the fence to explicitly chart the course the party will take, therefore avoiding a split with the half of the party that wants a different approach to be taken, and
2) because Farage fears having his policy pulled apart by political opponents, resulting in a loss of confidence among potential UKIP voters when the detail-free policies collapse under scrutiny.

As a result, there is nothing for UKIP to teach its members and activists in the proposed training, therefore they will get chewed up on doorsteps and in hustings as soon as detail is sought and the responses are on-the-fly, off-the-cuff answers that may easily contradict what other UKIP candidates assert elsewhere.

Setting these considerations aside, what can this volunteer army realistically achieve?  Most of them will be supporting the party because they oppose EU membership, but having arrived they will be encountering a party whose leader is now dramatically reducing any discussion of EU matters.  Ironically, of those things which Farage does deign to talk about many have come about or become an issue precisely because they come under EU competence and have been imposed on the UK.  But even Farage is refusing or failing to connect those dots to help voters understand just how relevant and how much impact the EU has on their day to day lives.

This volunteer army would be part of a force in a party that was created in a time when seizing political control was the only way to realise its aim of exiting the EU.  But today the world is rather different.  There isn’t the need to directly tackle the political class on its own terms in its own domain to move the UK towards the exit door.   The battle that needs to be fought is to win the hearts, minds and confidence of the general public to get them on side to vote in a referendum for an independent Britain.  How does UKIP having its army and getting Farage and others into Parliament achieve that aim?  Norway has already shown the way, winning its referendum to remain independent without having a UKIP type party leading the campaign.

But when it comes to winning the hearts, minds and confidence of voters, many vocal UKIP supporters argue that it is sufficient just to say ‘UKIP wants the UK to leave the EU’ to get them onside, and that giving voters detail will put them off.  But unless voters have confidence that the solely political aim of leaving (to achieve self determination) can be achieved without damaging the country’s economic and commercial interests, they aren’t going to get onside.  They will stick with the status quo out of fear.  This partly explains why UKIP is stubbonly rooted on around 12% in the polls, unable to increase its support because it is mute on the EU issue and is leaving the field to the Europhile voices who are happily sowing misinformation and outright lies without challenge.

Then there is the issue of business involvement in the campaign.  Even though it isn’t the place of business to decide how this country should be governed, there’s benefit to the business community also having confidence that an orderly exit can preserve what they want to hold on to and there’s nothing to fear from a Brexit.  Leaving the EU is about politics and democracy, it is not an economic matter and must not be allowed to be positioned as such by the Europhiles, using economic concerns to corrupt the debate and scare people into accepting the wishes of the political class.

We do need UKIP as a membership organisation to be onside with a Brexit campaign, articulating the right arguments to win people over to the merits of independence.   But UKIP has gone awol just as the Europhiles have started spreading false arguments, which unchallenged are therefore presumed by voters to be accurate and true.

UKIP is working back to front, adopting an approach they should have used years ago just after it has become obsolete.  The party is dancing to Farage’s tune, but he is way off key.   So what is UKIP good for if it’s so far behind the times and won’t show leadership in the independence campaign because it wants to win the protest votes of fed up people to realise Farage’s ambitions?

The sad fact is, in fighting the battles of yesterday UKIP is not helping us win the bigger battle that is coming tomorrow.  The party needs to change and that isn’t going to happen under the Blessed Nigel.

This should be of concern to every person who wants the UK to leave the EU

On 5th September, UKIP held what it described as its biggest ever rally as 900 people gathered to listen to Nigel Farage and others speak.

The event received a write up in the Shropshire Star, which covered the key points made by the speakers.  Those people who have looked or will look at the report in the expectation of seeing some red meat on the subject of withdrawal from the EU and plans for how such an exit can be delivered, can be forgiven for feeling some disappointment.  The report shows the EU barely warranted a mention, and when it did it wasn’t Farage talking about it.

Being a curious sort, this prompted me to have a discussion about it with a highly placed source in the party.  They confirmed that EU matters were only mentioned in passing, but more revealingly explained that after the event Farage was delighted that the focus on the biggest political issue affecting the UK – membership of the EU and its consequences – was minimal.  It wasn’t an accident, it was by design.

While David Cameron talked the talk in imploring his Conservative members to stop ‘banging on about Europe’, Farage is walking the walk by doing just that.

Previous insights provided to me by well placed UKIP sources, one of whom has just landed on the party’s MEP candidate list for next year’s elections, asserted that Farage is more interested in building a rival to the Conservatives in the hope of splitting that party and capturing a segment of it, than pushing for an exit from the EU.  The new focus on emulating the targeted campaign approach used by the Liberal Democrats, in order to win a few seats rather than putting resources into all constituencies, confirms their assessments.

But what should cause even more concern for withdrawal realists – who understand leaving the EU while preserving the UK’s commercial interests requires a structured approach where Article 50 is invoked and agreement is reached on the relationship the UK will have with the EU after departure, before the European Communities Act (ECA) is repealed – is my source’s confirmation that Farage sees such a negotation as time consuming and an opportunity for EU meddling.  Farage, who has carefully straddled the fence in public by not siding for or against the Article 50 route despite a clear split in his party on the matter, in private advocated the scorched earth approach of leaving first and trying to negotiate something after, which would leave UK commercial interests at serious risk of damage.

This represents a serious threat to an ‘out’ campaign in any future referendum on EU membership.  The withdrawalists would come under incessant attack from the business community which would only look kindly on withdrawal if they could be assured their interests would be protected after the UK leaves the EU.  The Farage approach does not and cannot give that assurance.  In the meantime, Farage will not let UKIP announce its policy and approach for fear it will alienate a substantial number of UKIP members and will see the party exposed to (justified) attack from the Europhiles who will seize on such naive stupidity with alacrity.

What this demonstrates is that, once again, a political party created to achieve a particular end has compromised itself to service internal party maintenance and management.  As Norway showed during its referendum campaign on EU membership, a non party political campaign is the only way of ensuring the objectives are not watered down or jettisoned in favour of a party’s interests.

By way of a closing thought, if you think it is ridiculous that an anti EU party such as UKIP could be pulled off to focus on other things at the whim of its leader in this way, then consider for yourself the evidence that Farage is reversing from EU matters as part of his dream of being a British MP and leading a party in Parliament.  In the Evening Standard we see Tony Blair getting substantial space to set out yet another FUD-laden argument against withdrawing from the EU.  You would think the UKIP leader and by definition the supposed leader of the Eurosceptic movement would be all over this, exposing the misrepresentation, falsehoods and errors in Blair’s and numerous others that have been published in recent weeks and months.

You would think Farage would be demanding a right of reply to set the record straight – or at the very least shotuing loudly that he is being denied a platform.  There is still no counter to this prolonged Europhile line of attack in the media, and certainly nothing rebutting it on the UKIP website.  But Farage did somehow find time to be quoted at length in the Daily Express on High Speed Rail 2… he didn’t even mention the EU origins of the project in order to create a high speed rail network across the union.  I’ll leave it to Farage’s vocal band of supporters to explain how this focus does anything to develop public support for withdrawal from the EU or move us foward on the journey to successfully leaving the union at a time the Europhiles are working the public and winning them over to supporting continued membership.

The implications of this are clear.  The Eurosceptic movement is not being helped by UKIP because Farage’s agenda means he has other fish to fry.  The campaign is weaker as a result.  UKIP should be a standard bearer, it should be the flag ship of the ‘out’ campaign.  But under Farage it has relegated itself to the position of day-tripping passenger on a support vessel.  Do UKIP’s members realise what’s happening, or do they even care?

Does UKIP have a secret position on EU withdrawal?

On the subject of withdrawal from the EU, there are other issues besides UKIP’s lamentable performance to focus upon, so it will be a relief to move on to other matters.  But before I do, there are a couple of things that need to be addressed here.

Firstly, a response to the comments on Raedwald’s blog following the recent argument between Richard, me and a couple of UKIP loyalists.

To describe me as an intellect is something of an insult to those people who really are.  The criticisms of UKIP on this blog are not fuelled by jealousy and there is no denigration of personalities.  What I’ve been doing is criticising UKIP for what I see as fundamental failures, caused in large part by the approach dictated by Nigel Farage.  If it is denigration to point out the failures, missed opportunities and questionable direction of Farage, or the boorish and patronising mentality of Bloom, then fair enough.  But this isn’t personal, this is criticism of terrible leadership.  I don’t agree that I’ve been egotistical.  These criticisms stem from frustration and disappointment at the way the Eurosceptic agenda is being undermined by a catastropically bad approach.

Further, to suggest as ‘Anthem’ does that my aim or that of Richard is to take over leadership of the cause is ridiculous.  We have both offered friendly advice, help and support to UKIP over the years.  It has been rebuffed because if the idea doesn’t originate within the armchair cabinet at UKIP HQ then it is considered a threat to Farage’s position.  I could not care less who leads the cause, my only concern is how they lead it.  But, in order to prop up Farage, the truth of the matter must be replaced with accusations of jealousy, self interest and personal ambition against the critics.

Then there is the need to reply to this from ‘Carnwennan’

Richard’s chief issue with UKIP seems to be that they have failed to explain to the public just how difficult it would be to leave the EU. A problem to which only he has a fully thought through plan.

Surely for UKIP to highlight these technical hurdles would be hugely counter productive. Far from a priority… unless you like that kind of thing, which only RN and AM do.

If you are an intellectual hammer, every problem looks like a nail, even those that no one else can see.

This again shows the point has been missed.  It is not a complex, technical argument for UKIP to explain that getting out of the EU is easy, but becomes difficult when starting to unpick all those treaties and regulations we have been signed up to over many years.  It is not complext to explain that before leaving we need to start negotiating what relationship we will have with the EU and secure continued access to the single market to protect UK commerical and consumer interests.  It is not rocket science to have the details in your back pocket so, when challenged by the likes of Open Europe and the CBI, you can go into more detail to give confidence to the business community that leaving the EU does not mean losing 3 million jobs or huge tariffs on our goods, while rebutting the politically motivated ‘economic arguments’ of the Europhiles.

Far from being counter productive, having a thought through plan would give reassurance to voters that UKIP is a safe pair of hands that has done its homework, knows how to achieve its stated goals and provides a genuine alternative to the lying and self interested mainstream parties.  So why are Farage and UKIP so dead set against it?  Decide for yourself.

Secondly, a criticism that has been directed at Richard and me is that we are outside the tent pissing in and should be inside pissing out.  We’ve tried that.  So have a good number of other sound, qualified and talented people who could have helped UKIP move things forward substantially – but instead have been picked off and driven from the party in case they become more popular than Farage.

When we have cited the lack of a plan or question marks about UKIP’s position, some of the tribal ‘UKIP can do no wrong’ crowd argue there is a plan and UKIP’s position is very clear.

They argue the media don’t give UKIP space to share the details, but go silent when we point out UKIP’s own communications channels, (website and magazine) do not reveal this information!  Most recently this group has featured Roger ‘Tallbloke’ Tattersall.  When we ask what the plan is or challenge the lack of position, they try to tackle the claim but always fall well short as reality defeats them.  This exchange on Twitter is a classic example.  It seems there is a UKIP position, but a UKIP candidate is not allowed or willing to speak about it and we as potential voters are not allowed to know about it:

It is a bizarre approach to reassuring voters, dangling a ‘neat’ position but then not detailing it when asked.  The ‘I know the plan and think it’s neat so trust me that all is good and run along’ doesn’t really cut it.  So does this mean UKIP has a secret position on EU withdrawal?  It’s all a bit silly.

Anyway, I hope this post clears up some misconceptions for those who have been reading in large numbers but have kept their thoughts to themselves.

How UKIP has fallen into a Tory trap and abandoned its priority of EU withdrawal

In the comments on the previous post, one of the commenters, Jacq, said something that deserved a considered reply.  However as my reply covers important issues that need to be understood more widely, I am sharing it as a blog post of its own.  In Jacq’s comment was this paragraph:

In some people’s eye’s, UKIP are damned whatever they do. Talk about something else like foreign aid, immigration etc, and they are “not talking about the issue that matters”. If they talked solely about the EU, the same critics would accuse them of having no credibility as a political party as they only had one obsessive strand of policy.

The reply to Jacq was this…

This opens up a very important issue. UKIP has proved the point that a political party cannot be the channel for a campaign of the nature of EU withdrawal. They have fallen into the trap that was laid for them by the Tories some years back.

When UKIP focussed on EU withdrawal they were accused of being a pressure group. So to appear like a serious grown up party they began to focus on other areas, such as the ones you mention and Farage’s ludicrous attempt (given his personal behaviour, some of which is not in the public domain) to espouse family values.

As UKIP has deliberately vacated the high ground on the EU to further their party political credentials and focus on Farage’s electoral ambitions, so the Tories and their outriders – having waited so patiently for their plan to unfold – have gleefully moved onto it and are relentlessly spinning their faux renegotiation narrative, setting the agenda with the lie that single market access requires EU membership, and having an unchallenged run in falsely claiming Norway and Switzerland get told what to do by fax without having any opportunity to influence the rules. Where UKIP should be tearing the Tory lies apart, they can be found in the pub or talking about anything but EU matters.

My limited attempts to draw attention to this, and the need for UKIP to not only rebut the Tory lies but reassure voters UKIP has a plan for getting us out of the EU while avoiding all the catastrophes Roland Rudd and his minions are claiming await us on Brexit, have resulted in the personal invective you refer to. They probably deserve more of the same because they have still not uttered a word about the likelihood of Matthew Elliott, a pro-EU Tory, being backed for leadership of any ‘No’ to EU referendum campaign. The Tories have encouraged UKIP to leave their house, have moved in, are selling off the possessions and now plan to let it out to their friends who will use it to support Tory pro-EU aspirations.

Because Farage, Batten, the Bowler-hatted buffoon, Nuttall et al are being criticised by us for not addressing with this central issue, their very defensive supporters have attacked Richard and me and berated us for not getting in line and offering unquestioning fealty to the Blessed Nigel. Regardless of the evidence we provide that a simple and easy to understand message (backed up where necessary with hard, uncontestable facts) can be communicated repeatedly, to reassure voters that we can leave the EU and retain access to the single market, because Farage and Co have not argued it we are charged with being pro-EU trolls, accused of walking us into a EU trap and rejected out of hand of being of any account.

What I did not include in the reply was this… campaigns of the kind that would be run to get the UK out of the EU do not work if they are run by political parties.  UKIP, in order to satisfy party political considerations, has backed away from the focus that is needed to achieve Brexit.  That is why they have gone ‘off reservation’ and are talking about issues that, ironically, we cannot possibly resolve unless we achieve withdrawal from the EU in the first instance.

UKIP has ceased to be fit for the purpose it was created for.  It has given up leadership of the Eurosceptic movement by pushing EU withdrawal and the focus on it down the list of priorities in order to play party politics.  Instead of keeping EU matters at the forefront of its agenda UKIP is devoting more of its energies to servicing narrow party interests, such as trying to appeal to floating voters and win council and parliamentary seats.  Instead of being the raison d’etre of the party, withdrawal from the EU is now just another element of a larger agenda.

Say what you like about the Europhile Tories, they know how to do politics and they have successfully neutered UKIP.  Sure, a number of Tory voters and floaters will back UKIP in the EU elections next year (and due to the date change, increase UKIP’s council election prospects) but come the General Election, UKIP will achieve hardly anything.  By the time any referendum came around, the UKIP piece will have been removed from the board and the Tories will be rolling the dice.

It’s time for a non party political movement to take the helm.  And it must not be the pro-EU wolf in Eurosceptic clothing, Matthew Elliott, who is leveraged into position to guarantee the false Tory ‘reform/renegotiation’ option goes unchallenged.  That would be the final nail in the coffin.

The Europhile plot to steal a future EU referendum vote

For the last couple of days it has been my intention to close this blog, following my annoyance and despair at the extent of support for the reprehensible Godfrey Bloom; and the continuing ill informed and factually inaccurate assertions made by people in the comments, who nominally share my determination to extract the UK from the EU.

For now, while I consider whether there is any value in carrying on with the blog, there is one important issue that should be brought to wider attention.

Some readers may be familiar with the name Matthew Elliott. He is a Conservative strategist, the co-founder and former Chief Executive of the TaxPayers Alliance, founder of Big Brother Watch and he led the No to AV campaign that saw the Lib Dem effort to force the alternative vote system defeated in a low turnout referendum alongside other elections.

Last week, Elliott’s latest campaign vehicle, Business for Britain, got a mention in the Daily Mail, which reported that:

Tory Eurosceptics will challenge David Cameron to toughen his line on renegotiations with Brussels by calling for the UK to pull out of the single market altogether.

Up to 100 MPs are expected to back a tough manifesto to be released in November by a new pressure group called Business For Britain.

The group is run by leading Tory strategist Matthew Elliott, who ran the No To AV campaign against Lib Dem proposals for electoral reform in 2011 and is widely expected to take the helm of a No campaign in an in-out referendum promised by Mr Cameron for 2017.

The interesting – and concerning – bit here is the last paragraph and the assertion that Elliott is widely expected to lead the ‘No’ (or Out if you prefer) campaign in a prospective EU Referendum.

Why would this be a problem? On the face of it Elliott seems phenomenally qualified to lead such a campaign. The answer can be found in Business for Britain’s own manifesto and an article written by Elliott back in July this year for City AM, in which he wrote:

BUSINESS for New Europe’s manifesto – A Europe That Works – is a useful contribution to the debate on Britain’s membership of the EU, a debate that has often been dominated by political, rather than business voices. But the assumption that the UK’s wealth and job creators would seek to preserve Britain’s place in the EU at all costs has already been dispelled with the launch of our own campaign – Business for Britain – supported by over 750 business leaders, and calling for a fundamental renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership.

The EU Referendum ‘No’ campaign is a vehicle for people who wish to see the UK leave the European Union. The clue is in the nature of the prospective referendum – in or out. Which begs an all-important question that I now ask…

How could Matthew Elliott lead a ‘No’ campaign for people who want to leave the EU, when his latest venture is an organisation making arguments only for reform of the EU, not withdrawal from it?

Elliott is a favourite son of the Conservative Party, which wants to re-pay him for helping defeat the Lib Dem AV campaign, The Conservative Party is an entity that describes itself as Eurosceptic but aggressively fights any suggestion that UK should leave the EU, instead they believe it should be reformed from the inside. A state of affairs that leaves Brussels as this country’s supreme government.

So it stands to reason that Elliott is being tipped for the role of leading a ‘No’ campaign, because the Tories know he favours reform, not withdrawal. Any effort to install Elliott as the ‘No’ campaign leader would be a cynical effort to steal a referendum. No football team would turn up to a match and name one of the opposing team’s players as its captain and put him in goal. Putting Elliott in charge of a ‘No’ campaign would be no different to that folly.

Regardless of his campaigning credentials, no Eurosceptic should be fooled into accepting Elliott as the leader of a ‘No’ campaign. The Electoral Commission must not be allowed to hand control of the ‘No’ / ‘Out’ campaign to a Europlastic who wants to stay firm in the EU.

It would be nice to see UKIP, the UK’s only national political party that advocates withdrawal from the EU, speaking out on this important issue. Naturally the followers of the Farage cult will complain they would if only the media would take notice of them. Well, it doesn’t seem like Farage has any trouble getting the ear of the Guardian’s editorial team and they do have a website on which such messages – if they actually existed – could be shared.

An open letter to UKIP supporters

In recent months this blog has clearly caused some supporters and sympathisers of UKIP to exhibit a degree of consternation at our criticisms of Nigel Farage and the party’s general performance.  This has been evident in the comment threads and also in emails sent to me.

When one shares an important objective with a large number of people who are therefore kindred spirits, or colleagues in that aspiration – namely the UK leaving the European Union – it gives no pleasure to see them angry, frustrated and upset in response to the criticisms and observations this blog has made.

The criticisms are not directed at UKIP party members, or people working behind the scenes in an effort to realise our shared goal of an independent United Kingdom.  Rather they are directed at the leader and the decision makers around him who, in the current political environment, should be hitting the ball out of the park when it comes to exposing the lies and distortions of the pro-EU parties and their front organisations.  A leader and decision makers who should be setting the agenda, talking to our key issues and oozing credibility and mastery of the subject, but who go missing just when they are most needed to speak up.

In this country there is a large number of people who are looking for a rallying point for their views and wishes.  That rallying point should be set on a firm foundation.  That is where UKIP should be.  But under Farage the rallying point is located on quicksand.  This is not the fault of the members, but of Farage himself.  For years under Farage leadership, UKIP has seen people rally to it, only to find that once they arrive there is a vacuum where there should be substance, detail, education and assurance.  This is the core problem with UKIP under Farage.  Some people just hope and believe there is a detailed plan to get us out of the EU, (much like all those Tories who believed for so long that Cameron would one day throw off his social democrat cloak to reveal a classically liberal, eurosceptic Conservative underneath) but the reality is there is no detailed plan.  There is an ideal and no thought out strategy about how it can be realised.

As such many lose interest and drift off, some try to elicit change and improvement but all too often they are marginalised or forced out as they are considered disruptive and a threat to the leadership.  But the fact is many do stay and continue to support UKIP because for genuine Eurosceptics, not the Europlastic ‘reformers’ who would still keep this country firmly under the control of the machine in Brussels, it is the only party political show in town.  There are people who genuinely believe the party is exactly what it needs to be and enthusiastically endorse and revere Farage.  There are others who hang in there but have to pinch their nose and reluctantly accept the failings they see as part of the package.

I respect the opinions and decisions of both types of supporter, even if I disagree with them.  It is for each of them alone to make a judgement about the party and its leadership based on their own views, values and principles.

Likewise, I have my views, values and principles.  While there are many people who are willing to give their support to the ‘least worst option’, it’s something I just cannot do.  I need a positive reason to vote for someone.  I need to feel enthusiasm for them, what they stand for and how the go about trying to achieve it.  Simply supporting the ‘best of a bad bunch’ isn’t a positive decision.  That is why I don’t vote for UKIP.

As a former Conservative I have a lot of experience of politics, campaigning and winning elections, including against incumbent candidates.  I readily accept there is also a lot I don’t know and am yet to learn.  But I do know something about trying to change an organisation from the inside.

It’s one of those things that many have tried and most have failed.  For it to be possible to change a political party from the inside either you need to lie about your views in order to achieve influential position then reveal your true self as you use your position to effect the change you want to see; or there needs to be a properly democratic, transparent, accountable structure in place without an autocratic and overly powerful leader or individuals behind the scenes whose money translates into power and thus enables them to be the party’s puppeteer.

I make this point because I frequently read emails from people saying. ‘if you don’t like it then get in the tent and change it.’  It’s not that simple.  Under Farage, far better qualified people than me have tried to change UKIP for the better, and each of them has been run off.  There are few things as powerful as an ambitious and ruthless man who has a personal goal, puts that first, and also enjoys increasing control over the fiefdom he runs.  Changing UKIP from within just isn’t a realistic option.  Even if the members choose to dump Farage, his paranoia has seen to it that any half decent replacements have long since been exiled.

That’s a brief summary of where things stand and why I hold the position I do.  For as long as I choose to blog (which may not be much longer given the way I am feeling), shutting up about it isn’t an option for the simple reason that, rightly or wrongly, Farage is seen by many as the head of the Eurosceptic movement by virtue of his position as UKIP leader.  If he fails, the Eurosceptic cause will fail.  Hoping no one will notice the failings by keeping quiet about them is not the way to get the problems addressed.  In speaking out I am not trying to ‘do down’ or undermine UKIP.  I am trying to draw attention to what needs to be improved in the hope more people will apply pressure for change.

As long as Farage is fearful of challenging and rebutting the many false assertions and claims made by Cameron and Hague and their outriders, like Rudd, Cridland, and Open Europe; and as long as Farage shies away from explaining in simple terms how the UK can leave the EU while preserving the benefits of the single market that most Britons want to retain, the Eurosceptic cause will suffer.  The recent increase in support UKIP achieved will slowly peel away as the ‘all fur coat and no knickers’ reality of UKIP dawns.  Many people who might otherwise support the party, if it behaved competently and relentlessly presented a positive vision of the new opportunities an independent UK could grasp, will either not vote or stick with their status quo.  Many of those who did vote for the party are already losing interest.

If the current situation is not changed, and quickly, any prospective referendum will be lost due to voters being made fearful by the lies of the Tories, Lib Dems and socialists.  The more they hear the lies and distortions without them being challenged with facts, the more they will believe them to be true.  We need Farage to succeed for us.  We want Farage to succeed for us.  But all the evidence so far is that Farage is failing.  He is putting long standing electoral self interest (the desire to split the Tories and lead one part of the resulting mess) before the cause he is supposed to be leading.  In my view he is not the man for the job and UKIP would be performing much better with someone else in the role.

Agree with me, don’t agree with me.  It’s completely up to you.  But if you prefer facts and evidence to ‘gut feeling’ then consider this.  In four recent by-elections in areas where UKIP returned county councillors in May, UKIP has already lost three of the seats they won, and slipped back to third place in a district election result.  Meanwhile the pro-EU voices continue to spread their lies without challenge and Farage is nowhere to be seen or heard.  Hopefully you can see the point I’m making.

Is this leadership?  Is this a winning strategy?  Is that what you are happy to put up with?  Are my criticisms valid?  Now I’ve tried to explain where I’m coming from, I would like to hear what you think before I carry on.

Over to you.

Godfrey Bloom MEP, a class apart in ignorance, idiocy and inaccuracy

When UKIP says the pathetic and stunningly inaccurate comments of MEP Godfrey Bloom are being ‘discussed right at the very highest level of the party’, we can be absolutely certain this is true. But there won’t be any sanction for Bloom.

For while Paul Nuttall may be Nigel Farage’s deputy leader, Bloom occupies a special and very senior place in the Farage hierarchy, not just as a party ally on the Brussels gravy train, but as one of Farage’s closest confidantes and advisers. He is very much first among Farage’s right hand men.  He is also too stupid to represent a threat to Farage’s position as leader, so he fits the criteria for senior status in the party.  As such, Bloom is teflon and regardless of the harm he may do to UKIP, Farage adores him.  It will all be laughed off internally over a pint or six.

So what of the comments themselves?  Racist?  No.  Pathetic, boorish, arrogant, demeaning, antagonistic, needless and stupid? Absolutely.  But then this story is not unexpected because Bloom has demonstrated these same character flaws, among others,  many times before and he does it because he revels in courting controversy and thinks it plays well to UKIP’s core constituency.  Making such comments also allow him to indulge his fetish for acting like an uneducated juvenile delinquent.

But lacking judgement of a soundness even a 10-year-old can boast, Bloom is the poster boy for much of what is wrong with UKIP and Farage himself.  He was talking to an audience of activists who would likely benefit from reassurance that UKIP’s leaders, of which Bloom is one, have serious messages to convey which have the capacity to resonate with respectable voters who are sick of the mainstream political stitch up and want a viable alternative at the ballot box.  Instead they got the hackneyed old misogynist and cultural supremacist staggering along his usual path, the bottom of the sewer.

Bloom could have made a serious point, using powerful oratory to burn into people’s minds the injustice of sending billions of our tax pounds overseas, where so many of them are squandered and snaffled by corrupt agencies and politicians, while vulnerable people at home are in desperate need of a hand up and get less help than they need or deserve.  A serious message delivered in a compelling manner by a person of substance can have irresistible appeal.  But no.  UKIP has Bloom.

That covers the pathetic, so what of the stunningly inaccurate?  Bloom, lacking the intelligence God gifted to an amoeba, decided to venture onto the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to force the state to review whole life tariff prison sentences that are handed down to the very worst murderers.  In what he probably considers to be a very witty little rant, he said:

You can torture people to death but you jolly well can’t give them a full life sentence because that’s against their human rights.

He went on to berate the lack of a death penalty.  The wannabe hangman, as per usual, was wrong about life sentences.  As much as I despise the activism of, and our submission to, the ECHR that was not what the ruling did.  There is nothing preventing a whole life tariff being handed down.  There is nothing preventing the state keeping the most dangerous criminals behind bars until they die.  What the ECHR did was require that from time to time the sentence is reviewed to ensure it remains appropriate.

I resent that the ECHR required this.  It should have been a British court making such a ruling.  But there is nothing wrong with the ideal of reviewing sentences, at which point the state can say ‘yes, the sentence remains appropriate in this case and remains applicable to this convict’.

But when we are dealing with someone as superficial and disconnected as Bloom, facts and reality are repelled by the sheer life force of ignorance that denotes the man.

UKIP should be ashamed of the shocking embarrassment that is Godfrey Bloom.  But behind closed doors today they are probably lauding him.

UPDATE: Well, well, well.  As I expected UKIP’s course of action on this is to effectively do nothing.  The official response is in.  Steve Crowther, the Ukip chairman, said:

We are asking Godfrey not to use this phrase again, as it might be considered disparaging by members from other countries. However, foreign aid is an extremely important debate that needs wider discussion.

Yeah, that should do it.  Heads being stuck firmly in the sand as Nigel’s pet must not be chastised.

Also par for the course is that UKIP clearly has no issue with Bloom’s misrepresentation of the ECHR ruling on whole life tariff sentencing.  Perhaps their lack of ‘doing detail’ means they don’t understand exactly what was said.  Far more important to them is getting the Blessed Nigel a photo call in a pub, or trying to keep up with him as he is pursued from venue to venue in Scotland.

Will this give UKIP’s minority of aggressive commenters food for thought?

Every so often one comes across something that is a little witty and makes one think.  Below is a screengrab of a comment exchange from the Telegraph about a story on Maersk’s new huge EEE container vessel.

While the vast majority of UKIP supporters are super people and receptive to others’ ideas and views, having been on the receiving end of the cultist wing of the UKIP commentista on the pages of the Telegraph (a small band of aggressive UKIP supporters with a particularly obsessive zeal and intolerance for anything that does not perfectly match their ideals and vision), comment three certainly resonated.

One wonders what the large number of non-commenting readers of comment threads in the Telegraph must think of the yah-boo stuff that gets plastered digitally on that website.  Do the cultists ever stop to wonder how they come across to the silent majority?   Food for thought for some, perhaps?

Click to enlarge

The self inflicted decline of UKIP

The blog post title on PoliticalBetting yesterday said it all…  ‘All the firms have UKIP in the same direction’.

Courtesy of PoliticalBetting.com

One wonders if there is still time to get Farage out of the pub and talking to the issues.

The polling data is bad news not just for UKIP but also for the wider Eurosceptic community.  It suggest support for UKIP is drifting to the Conservatives, despite Cameron’s strongly pro-EU messaging, and the negative and dishonest picture he and the Tory outriders such as Roland Rudd, Open Europe and the CBI have painted about the future the UK could enjoy outside the EU.  In the absence of leadership the masses will turn to the loudest voice they hear.  Thanks to Farage’s warped priorities, the EUphiles are the only voices being heard.

This blog has been castigated by some in the Faragista cult for daring to criticise Farage and for saying that he represents the biggest threat to UKIP success because of his questionable past, his refusal to do detail and his fear of engaging in the important debate where the EUphile are using lies and misinformation to frighten people into thinking the Only Way is Brussels.  It is too soon to claim we have been vindicated, but it is certainly heading that way and we take no pleasure from it at all.

Despite a spurt in electoral support, Farage’s failure to challenge the fear, uncertainty and doubt spread by the Tory machine and its external allies, and his dumb mute act on the substantive issues about how the UK could leave the EU, enjoy political freedom and still prosper economically as part of the single market, is giving voters the impression that UKIP is all fur coat and no knickers.  People want to know how UKIP could get us out of the EU and Farage won’t commit to an answer and hammer it home time and again.  The lack of substance is being reflected in the opinion polls.

If Farage was doing his job instead of engaging in daft self promotional stunts, UKIP would not only be holding its new supporters, but adding to their number and strengthening the Eurosceptic cause.  This could be an opportunity lost for UKIP and the prospective ‘Out’ campaign.  Getting the support back after it has lost confidence will be harder than winning it the first time around.  Farage is possibly the best ally Cameron has.

Media bias and UKIP’s failure highlighted yet again

Another day and yet another example of how the the media distorts coverage of matters EU, while UKIP continues to act as if the cat has got its tongue by offering no Eurosceptic view on the subject in question.

Robert Watts, writing in the Telegraph, gives that pro-EU paper’s take on the burden British businesses experience as a result of EU regulations.  According to Watts, the details will be laid bare in a series of reports which will be published on Monday by the Foreign Secretary, Concrete Willy, beginning with a focus on how the EU affects UK taxation, health, overseas aid, foreign policy, animal welfare and food safety.

Watts goes on to tell readers that a further 26 reports will be published in coming months, ‘in a boost to the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservatives’.  Having made his reference to Eurosceptics, Watts runs off to get a Eurosceptic quote from… yes you guessed it, the Tory stooge EUphile ‘think tank’ Open Europe which, as the Telegraph intended, prattles on about the non-existent fantasy renegotiation where the UK can supposedly secure more flexible membership terms from the EU.

Where the main Eurosceptic force, UKIP, is supposed to be leading by rebutting the bullshit coming out of the Tory delusion department, instead we get the Europlastics of pro-EU Open Europe taking a break from acting as official minder to Andrea Leadsom (wherever she speaks about EU matters, Open Europe are at her side keeping her on message) in order to blaze a trail for the Tory line, being the only supposed Eurosceptic voice that readers hear – and in the absence of any challenge, those readers assume what they hear to be accurate and well informed.

The problem is not only that UKIP isn’t establishing itself ‘go to’ organisation for Eurosceptic commentary in the mainstream media, it is that UKIP isn’t even talking about this issue on its own website.  How can potential supporters take UKIP seriously when it is voluntarily absents itself from engaging on core issues concerning the negative aspects of EU membership, just as the subject gets serious media profile?

When it comes to boosting Nigel Farage’s personal profile, no column inches or photo opportunities are spared.  But when discussion turns to subjects that are supposed to be at the heart of the very reason for UKIP’s being, the party goes AWOL.  This isn’t a one off, this is part of a consistent pattern.  The only logical explanation is that Farage deliberately refuses to engage on these topics because he doesn’t understand them himself.  He determination to not do detail means he doesn’t have anything of value to add and he is scared of being bested in an argument as a result.

This is just the latest in a long line of examples of both the public and the UKIP membership being ill served, by the press and the UKIP leader respectively.  In such circumstances how can we Eurosceptics possibly hope to win any prospective EU in-out referendum?  The media is ‘in the tank’ for the EUphiles and the sole Eurosceptic political party is asleep at the wheel as its leader plays ‘look at me’.  The media is serving its own interests and Farage relies upon his cult to lash out at any criticism of his ineptitude.  With this seemingly unresolvable issue, we can be excused for asking ourselves why we bother.

UKIP, party of the people?

In 2011 the Public Prosecutor of Bielefeld in Germany asked the European Parliament to waive immunity from prosecution for Elmar Brok MEP.  The authorities in Bielefeld wanted to bring a criminal action against Brok for failure to report to the tax authorities a €5,000 (£4,300) fee paid to him for giving a speech by HypoVereinsbank Group, a large Munich-based bank owned by Italy’s Unicredit.

The committee on legal affairs at the European Parliament refused point blank, instead deciding that politicians such as the left wing EU fanatic Brok must have immunity from prosecution for crimes such as tax evasion.  It’s one of the many perks the ‘elite’ treats itself to – considering themselves to be above the law, the rules only applying to the little people.

So it was with interest that in recent days another immunity case concerning a sitting MEP has come to the fore.  It so happens that the Chief Prosecutor of Lyon in France opened a case, also in 2011, and asked the European Parliament to waive immunity from prosecution for Marine Le Pen MEP.  The authorities in Lyon want to bring a criminal action against Le Pen for comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France.

The committee on legal affairs at the European Parliament has agreed with the request, recommending that the right wing Le Pen be stripped of immunity forthwith.  The perk, it seems, only extends to the favoured sons of the EU who travel the world at our expense – including Downing Street – preaching the EU gospel and challenging any opponents to the vision of a a single political entity for the whole of Europe.

But there is another interesting angle to this story concerning our very own UKIP.  It transpires that UKIP voted in favour of Le Pen keeping immunity from prosecution.  This was gleefully seized upon by Labour MEPs, one of whom – the fragrant Arlene McCarthy MEP – took to the Public Service Europe website to ‘expose’ UKIP’s hypocrisy.

Regardless of McCarthy’s opportunism there is a real issue here for UKIP.  How can UKIP declare in all good conscience that is opposes the mainstream political stitch up here and across the EU, yet vote in favour of keeping a group of citizens above the law and out of the reach of prosecutors when accused of criminality?

It is not only hypocrisy, as charged by McCarthy, it is outrageous and plain wrong.  For those who think UKIP represents a challenge to the political class, this should act as a wake up call that under Nigel Farage the party simply aspires to break into the political class for its own ends.  If UKIP doesn’t believe in equality under the law then it cannot claim to be working in the interests of ordinary people.

If you are not talking about the issues, people will drift off elsewhere

The UKIP bubble seems to be deflating.  That’s the impression we can take from a snapshot of YouGov surveys of voting intentions taken over the month of June.

Having started off the month getting support of between 13-16% and remaining consistently ahead of the Lib Dems, UKIP has now dropped back to 10% in the latest poll and fallen back behind the Lib Dems, with the four polls prior to that all showing a steady decline in support to arrive at this point.

From Mike Smithson’s (Political Betting) Twitter

The declining level of support correlates with Nigel Farage’s disingenuous comments over his Isle of Man based trust fund, and the all too common absence of any substantive comment or agenda setting from UKIP on the major issues that are catching the attention of likely voters.

UKIP can still be expected to do well in next year’s European elections because attention will be focussed on EU matters for a couple of weeks.  But if the party’s broader appeal is already waning after a proportion of voters used May’s county council elections to show their disdain for the main three parties, it suggests UKIP’s hopes of a breakthrough are just a pipe dream.

Leadership, of the paucity of it, is the main driver here.  It is all well and good for Nigel Farage to engage in vanity exercises in the media that pump up his personal profile – even if they make him look like a fool – but it is doing nothing to educate people or advance UKIP’s vision for a UK outside of the EU.  We can learn a great deal about the mindset of the upper echelon of the party when more time and effort goes into attempting to shut down discussion and debate rather than raising awareness of issues and provoking a conversation among voters that gets them talking about UKIP’s goals.  It seems personal agendas take priority in UKIP and ultimately, voters will not stand for that.

While not a popular view among a good number of this blog’s readers, the assertion that Farage is not helping UKIP move ahead but is a limiting factor, seems to already be starting to be borne out by the failure to capitalise on the recent increase in popularity.  The numbers were soft and those people needed to be given a reason to stay with UKIP.  But in the absence of a voice, they are already drifting away to find someone who is speaking.

Farage shows no sign of adjusting his behaviour or approach and UKIP will suffer for it.  The reality is that showing blind loyalty to the captain of the ship may be a jolly decent thing to do, but it doesn’t make any difference to the outcome if the ship is holed below the water line and sinking.  Ultimately the journey for that vessel is over.

Farage’s prospects facing death by a thousand column inches

It gives us no pleasure to see Nigel Farage courting the kind of controversy this blog has long warned was just waiting to be dropped into the public domain.  The media have been waiting for the opportunity to inflict the most damage possible on the Eurosceptic movement, and see the leader of UKIP as being a fulcrum in the movement.  It’s not rocket science.

The issue this blog has had has never been about UKIP or its supporters.  There are many decent people in that party with the wisdom to understand the interests of the British people and the United Kingdom will be best served with our nation outside of the EU.  The problem has always been Farage.  As we have noted for a long time, Farage doesn’t do serious and he doesn’t do detail.  This undermines UKIP and weakens the Eurosceptic campaign as a whole.

Witness the complete absence of a formal UKIP response to the political class’ efforts to hijack the narrative on trade to push the EUphile agenda during the G8 conference at Loch Erne. With the need to throw off the constraints of political union within the EU, the sight of Barroso and Van Rompuy pitching up at the G8 and addressing the media should have had Farage on the air, providing the media with balancing comments and rebuttal.  In fact he should have been briefing the media in advance of the meeting, but that’s a discussion for some other time.

Instead he was playing out a humiliating and self inflicted tragi-comedy, running from venue to venue around Aberdeen under police protection trying to dodge left wing protesters.  If potential UKIP supporters were watching and weighing up whether to throw their support behind the party, this episode – so close on the heels of another abortive Scottish visit – may have put many off.

If Farage did detail and listened to people who know things, he would have learned from the experience of the other parties how to conduct business north of the border.  There the parties are Scottish with their own leaders, not run out of Westminster.  The party leaders down in London do not cross Hadrian’s Wall unless they have an invite from the Scottish party leader and Scottish party supporters lined up to attend speeches and events.  Rightly or wrongly, the Scots do not like the Sassenachs mincing north from the capital and delivering what is seen as an English vision in their country.  It is seen as imperialist and an exhibition of bad manners.

Compounding this strategy of doing things his way to appear like a plucky outsider thumbing his nose at the very political elite he aspires to be part of, is Farage’s questionable character.

Sure, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.  But Farage doesn’t just break eggs, he burns down the chicken shed, kills the chickens, flattens the surrounding farm and hurls insults at the onlookers.  This is why there are so many ex-senior UKIP  members.

Away from the camera – although we’ve seen glimpses of his true nature at times – Farage is a psychological bully who believes he is the party.  But it’s not just his lack of interpersonal or leadership skills that is the problem.  It is his behaviour in other areas of his life, both professional and personal, that have left a trail of scandals and incidents with unsavoury outcomes which have largely gone barely reported due to UKIP’s previous lower profile.  But you can be assured the media has been digging into these and adding more detail, ready to drop damaging stories into the public domain at moments that best serve the interests of those who are trying to keep the UK firmly under EU control.

UKIP will be tainted by the assault on Farage and exposure of incidents and issues that he thought had been airbrushed out of public discourse.  UKIP doesn’t deserve to suffer this and neither does the wider Eurosceptic movement.

While it’s Farage’s prospects that are being dragged to the edge of the cliff ahead of rapid acceleration followed by deceleration trauma, the real issue is the collateral damage to those near him.  This was always the concern of those who have not supported Farage yet want to see UKIP do well. It now appears to be coming to pass.

With Hague a sitting target on EU renegotiation what does Farage do?

Politics needs serious people for serious times.  With Concrete Willy trying to sneak old, rejected suggestions past the media to appear like a new thinking on the faux renegotation, Nigel Farage should be showing leadership and setting the agenda by exposing the Tory fraud and convincing people to support a referendum ‘no’ campaign.

But it seems the blessed Nigel is having more fun in the self publicist game, playing up to the stereotype of a womaniser who likes a drink or two while looking like an utter buffoon posing for ludicrously posed photos…

One can’t help but wonder if the paucity of thought out policy on the UKIP website and the absence of detail about just how UKIP would extract the UK from the EU while preserving access to the market we would be leaving, is because Farage is having too much fun as a media personality to do politics.

No doubt the Faragista will rush forth with excuses in defence of the blessed Nigel, but voters will only wait so long to see some substance before concluding he’s all talk, just like the politicians he claims to be so different from.

Article 50: UKIP’s crucial weaknesses under the spotlight

Writing in the Telegraph today, City AM’s Allister Heath delivers a balanced if whistlestop article exploring some of the major problems that UKIP faces yet is doing little to overcome.

However Heath’s otherwise valuable piece gets off on the wrong foot from the get go with its title, ‘Nigel Farage’s biggest problem is Ukip doesn’t do details’.  For the piece to be more accurate that should have read, ‘UKIP’s biggest problem is Nigel Farage doesn’t do details’.  After all, Farage alone calls the shots and the party dances to whatever tune he chooses to play on any given day.

Even so, some of the analysis is penetrating and underlines much of what this blog has been arguing, even if Heath’s colour commentary about ties with the EU needing to be ‘significantly loosened’ is weak fluff.  The emphasis below is mine:

Ukip’s problem is that its policy positions are uncosted aspirations, rather than properly thought-through proposals. Until this is sorted, they risk being torn to shreds as media scrutiny increases. Those who simply wish to protest against a snooty establishment, or who like how Farage “represents people like us”, won’t mind; but much of the country will, and Ukip’s bubble would deflate almost as fast as it takes its leader to down a pint.

In particular, Ukip doesn’t have a plan to exit the EU and to introduce alternative trading arrangements that reflect the complexities of the modern economy. The challenge is especially acute when it comes to complex rules of origin for manufactured goods, and to protect London’s financial services industry against protectionism. This problem is shared by the broader Eurosceptic movement, including in the Tory party; a lot of work is needed, and fast. For those of us who agree that the European project is a busted flush and that the UK’s ties with the EU need to be significantly loosened, this is a source of major frustration.

The absence of a cohesive UKIP exit plan and vision for new trading arrangements is the most critical issue for the whole Eurosceptic movement.  This gap is a knife to the heart of the credibility of withdrawalists. It is the equivalent of a boxer not lifting his gloves and instead allowing his opponent to rain blow after blow on him.

Without a plan that triggers negotiation to bring about a replacement trading arrangement and access to the single market before the UK leaves the EU and abrogates existing treaties and agreements – which can only be achieved by invoking Article 50 – voters will be convinced to stick with the status quo, through a combination of Europhile FUD and the all-too-accurate exposure of the damaging consequences of simply leaving before securing trade deals that safeguard our economic interests.

Unless and until Farage gets serious about withdrawal, does detail and understands the mechanics and states the strategy to enable the UK to leave the EU, while maintaining our access to the single market – and crucially ensuring we can trade with those other countries around the world with whom trade agreements only cover EU member states – the ‘No’ campaign will lose any referendum.

Article 50 is the path to restoring our independence after which we can unpick the acquis at our leisure, secure in the knowledge we have access to the markets our businesses are so worried about losing.  If the Eurosceptics present a robust plan to give businesses confidence that decoupling from political union does not mean we lose access to the single market or the countries with whom we have EU-negotiated trade deals, they have no economic basis for opposing the out campaign.