Apologies for our absence. A worldwide problem with blogger was responsible! And now more from Marta!
Taken from her blog:
Open letter. Why I am calling for Nigel's resignation
Many in the party have argued for years that to be able to get out of the EU we need to have a presence at national and local level in addition to the one we have at European level.
In 2009 when UKIP came second in the European elections we all celebrated and anticipated the start of a new era where the party would grow to become a credible option not just at European Level but also at national and local level.
I put a lot of effort into that election not only by travelling around the country speaking in support of candidates but also by managing the party coffers, a key role in a growing party, not least during election. Complying with the electoral commission requirements and making ends meet in UKIP proved to be a terribly difficult job as there was no financial discipline.
However I stepped down as Treasurer at the end of September 2009 with the enormous satisfaction that having paid all election and ordinary debts, the party had 150,000 pounds in the bank. I managed this by an enormous and exhausting control effort while also investing my time in convincing donors about the credibility of the party.
However today the party is bankrupt and so it has been for the last six months at least. The reasons are long but can roughly be summarized in the following:
1. The party has engaged in costly and unnecessary court cases resulting from Mr. Farage´s internal disagreements with colleagues or staff members; 2. The party has engaged in the costly and unnecessary promotion of by-elections where we had no chance at all of winning a seat; 3. The party has recruited staff over and above its capacity.
The management of the resources that we get from the EU as a result of our belonging to a political group is subject to the same abysmal mismanagement characterized by undemocratic and non-transparent recruitment decisions.
The results of the 2010 General election that followed Ukip’s great success in the 2009 were disappointing to say the least but I have to say my disappointment started when Nigel announced he was standing down as leader 8 months before the General Election and with no advance notice. Buckingham’s results left me in doubt about his strategic ability, which up to that point I was convinced he had.
The results of this year, whatever the EU-style massaging of the figures, are bad without doubt: winning only 0.7% of the seats contested is a dismal result. And Nigel, who promised great success, should be the first one to recognize this.
The candidates, the activists and the staff are not to blame. I value their efforts enormously and in fact those who have succeeded have done so only on their personal efforts and the ones who have not should not feel they are to blame.
Campaigning, in my view, does not start two or three months before the election. We should campaign all the time in different ways and according to the contributions we are most fit to make. I have been campaigning all the time since I have been with UKIP: raising awareness about how taxpayers money is being wasted at EU level, alerting about the threats the EU is posing for UK citizens and businesses, defending British people from abuses, participating in financial and budgetary forums, speaking at schools, universities, public meetings, in all cases looking to get the best media coverage for the party. The aim of our campaigning should be to show voters (present and potential) that we care for them. Then the canvassing and leafleting in the last weeks before election date would allow us to achieve the objective.
But all those efforts combined become diminished if there is no adequate leadership, one who is credible and disciplined and who sets the objectives and recruits responsible people on which he can delegate. And this is what we are missing.
Nigel is a fantastic speaker and performer, the best I have ever known in the UK but his performance has not resulted in seat gains in this election and if we do not want to have the same results in 3 years time we should start making changes NOW. Nigel was re-elected 6 months ago but he was not a new comer, in fact he had only resigned from a 3-year leadership one year before.
I want to see UKIP become an important political option in the UK and lead the way out of the EU! That is why I have made this call.
I have no plan to stand as a candidate for leadership now or ever. I am quite conscious that I do not have the profile. But I am confident we can find the right profile among the membership.
Marta Andreasen
Strasbourg, 12 May 2011
To see the original: LINK
Also see: LINK
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