UKIP: Marta seeks an exit strategy, Dartmouth refuses to fund Lexdrum House and Richard North on the Death of UKIP

Marta seeks a new home

We have already reported that Marta Andreasen has left the UKIP delegation in Brussels. We can also now confirm that she is seeking to join Spain's EPP (European People's Party). However, the EPP's leadership is less than impressed with Marta and are rather reluctant to let her on board. But we should not forget that Bannerman was also intially rebuffed by The Tories in 2010. And look what happened to him! Marta shouldn't get too upset at this stage!

Dartmouth declines to continue funding Lexdrum House

How sad that Dartmouth is now declining to fund Lexdrum House in the South West. He actually now expects Trevor Colman to pay for the lot! We can also confirm that Malcolm Wood is placing heavy pressure on the Earl to back Farage following Bannerman and Andreasen's very public criticism of Nigel. Farage wants to close Lexdrum and it has been suggested to us that the Fuhrer is just pulling Dartmouth's strings in order to achieve this.

Here is short report on last Saturday's SW meeting. The splits continue.......

all

as promised, an update [for your info] following the meeting held at lexdum on sat 21st, re item 12 on agenda, "loss of s/west support" and the outcome of a rather heated [at times] debate on the loss of financial support for the funding of the regional organiser due to trevor colman withdrawing his contibution of financial support for this purpose.

1/ it was agreed we need an r/o in place full time to co-ordinate the region,

2/ trevor explained the reason he had withdrawn his financial support for the funding was because the eu allowances given to mep`s cannot be used directly and legally for this purpose and his actions were to protect his good name etc.

3/ trevor stated he was very unhappy in the way the issue had been presented to the membership by the letter sent out by the s/west chairman, and how in his opinion .it tarnished his name and reputation due to the incorrect and misleading way it presented the facts, he felt the issue should have been discussed between the committee and himself, and he had therefore to attend the meeting to defend his reputation.

4/ the chairman made comment that his intended action to withdraw his financial support also had not been made known to the committee for discussion.

5/ trevor asked if he still had the support of the committee to carry out his role and following a frank open discussion it was agreed that trevor had been very active for ukip and had contributed substancial financial support as well as donations of material items such as desks chairs computers etc used at head office.

6/ a vote was taken on the specific point of continued support to trevor and all members voted in favour.

7/ an alternative way to secure financial support by trevor from his eu allowances to help fund a full time r/o was proposed by the chairman, this was agreed by trevor in principle that should it be found to be legal and within the eu rules of how an mep`s can be used he would be happy to contibute to the r/o`s cost`s.

8/ a much needed and frank clear the air meeting that concluded a wrong approach to the issue had been taken regards actions and communication by both sides, and all present agreed that the alternative way suggested to enable trevor to legally use part of his allowances to fund the r/o should be investigated, trevor agreed to this.

regards
brian slade

And finally......

Come Nigel, The End is Nigh and the Ferryman is waiting by the River Stix

The Death of UKIP by Richard North. Richard was UKIP's former Research Director in the European Parliament.

The Death of UKIP

Actually, it died a long time ago - as a worthwhile campaigning tool. The momentum kept it going, but it no longer achieves anything of value, while its overall effect is to damage the cause.

Such has long been my conclusion, but this is now confirmed in spades by sight of David Campbell-Bannerman's (DCB) more detailed reasons for leaving UKIP, following his desertion to the Tories. I have no time whatsoever for the man but, nevertheless, some of what he writes - and the frustrations he experienced - I recognise. His words bring back vividly the utter impossibility of working in a political party dominated by the destructive and dangerous Nigel Farage.

First of DCB's problems is that, on joining the party, he perceived there to be a "lack of a proper plan and objective", and indeed it is self-evident that this is the case. But it was also the case in 1999, when the electors first sent UKIP MEPs to the EU Parliament. There were only three, of which Farage was one, and with it came funds and staff - myself as the senior British member on the group staff.

Four years later, when I found myself peremptorily dismissed from my position by a man who did not even have the courage to tell me to my face he was sacking me - getting a functionary in Brussels to ring me up at home to notify me - we still did not have a "proper plan or objective". But it was not for want of trying. Where DCB trod most recently, others had trod before ... with exactly the same outcome.

In my time, I worked under the title of Research Director but I shared some of the tasks which DCB undertook under the more formal title of "Head of Policy". He complains of spending "four years of hard work creating 18 policy groups to produce a comprehensive set of domestic policies that UKIP could campaign on".

But then Farage intervened, arbitrarily to jettisoning all his domestic policy papers, ordering them off the national website. DCB regards this as "an act of sheer political vandalism". That was not the first time and, in my experience, "political vandalism" is the only area where Farage is truly world class. Throughout his entire career, he had made as his speciality the deliberate, malign sabotage of any and every political initiative which would drive forward the eurosceptic movement.

As it happens, I believe DCB's attempt to set up a wide spectrum of domestic policies to be flawed, and was never impressed by what was delivered. And further, the honest response to Farage would have been to have broken away from the Party and gone independent. His arguments for joining the Tories lack credibility and all but destroy any argument he might have to make.

The issue here, though, is that Farage brought DCB into the party as his protégé. Now to have even this man turn against him tells us a great deal - the rat is deserting the sinking ship, returning to the Tory cesspit from whence he came.

One must always be wary of resorting to absolutes, but one could advance a tenable case for saying that Farage is the man who has, single-handedly, done most to damage the eurosceptic cause, possibly to the point where the damage is irreparable. It is time to dismantle UKIP, to walk away from it and start a serious campaign for the recovery of our nation. Perforce, anything which has any chance of success will not include Nigel Farage and most of those currently closest to him.

Therein, however, lies the problem. Already today we see the political carousel in motion. "Support for the governing Conservative Party has fallen slightly but most people do not believe the Labour opposition is ready to govern, blaming it for the country's economic woes", Reuters tells us, conveying the results of a Reuters/Ipsos Mori poll which shows Labour up two points since last month on 42 percent, while support for the Conservatives fell five points to 35 percent of those who plan to vote.

It beggars belief that anyone, so soon - or ever again - could vote Labour after its last disastrous administration, but the British electorate is locked into "carousel politics", where we lurch from one unpopular party to another and back again. UKIP, in this context, is seen as the least best hope of breaking out of the cycle and the hegemony of the "Lib-Lab-Con".

However, it has also to be said that political parties are very poor vehicles for securing major political change. They tend to respond to events, rather than lead public opinion, their main concern to get elected and then stay in power. Yet it is precisely this model chosen by one branch of eursocepticism - the Farage paradigm. And even in this the party has not been successful.

One might here observe that, prior to 1975, no europhile ever stood for election on a platform of joining the then Common Market. In the election prior to our entry, joining was not even on the Conservative Party manifesto. Thus, contradicting all logic and experience - and from a position of considerable weakness - the Faragistas believe they can reverse the process by using the electoral process.

That they have not succeeded was inevitable. Even without Farage it was never going to happen. The model is wrong.

To read the original: LINK