Hi,
I have just discovered this forum and hope to participate.
I flirted with the Anti-Federalist league, started by Alan Sked, way back around 1990. Then joined the fledgling UKIP when it was formed. Since then I have resigned and joined three times! Resigning in disgust and rejoining because there was nowhere else to go.
Over the recent years I spent six months as office manager of the UKIP HQ when it was in Regent Street, in the London West End.
The real power behind the UK Independence Party is an MEP called Nigel Farage and, whilst he wields such enormous power (he has his own people in place all over the party) we will never be in a position to get anywhere in the polls.
Our tremendous success in the last European elections was almost entirely down to the publicity the press gave Kilroy-Silk And he did all this in Nineteen Days!.
I have been trying to get the authorities to kick me out of the party for ages now, perhaps this might do it :-) Then I won't be in a quandrary should I decide to resign again!
There are a huge amounts of frustrated members such as myself, I meet them whenever I attend party meetings. However Nigel Farage seems to now have the Constitution so stitched up that it is almost impossible to raise an EGM from the branches.
In addition, I read information on
http://ukipuncovered.com that the leadership will not recognise any call by an EGM for a leadership election.
But HEY! I'm in a political party, what else should I expect from politicions, especially the EU kind!
Andrew