Britannist

There is no doubt that Nigel (Farage) has a very good knowledge of the workings of the EU inside out and of the damaging effect it has on all aspects of UK life.

He is well able to deal with the euro-leftist television interviewers who try to catch him out on the EU issue. None of the overpaid researchers at the biased pro-euro BBC have anything approaching as much knowledge about the EU as does Mr. Farage and 'trick' questions written by these researchers given to programme presenters to ask Mr. Farage MEP are slapped down by him like swatting a fly.

We do not know yet if Nigel (Farage) will contest the leadership of UKIP -but what we do know is this: UKIP needs a leader who knows the EU 'system' - it's rules, regulations, way of operating, current agenda etc. - and anyone without this will harm our aims and objectives for they will quickly be roughed-up by the pro-EU media :shock: .

arden forester

britannist, I agree with the above, except to add that Nigel Farage would be a good MP and positive standard bearer. He would be able to stand up to all three "major" party leaders. (I say "major" as none of them can get more than 20% positive support from the electorate!).

No disrespect, but the present leader comes across as a bank manager from the sixties. Petrina Holdsworth may be perfectly capable but has a "county" image and the others are relatively unknown.

Farage has the greatest assets of being reasonably well known (and well known to pundits!), politically astute, and can speak on non-EU issues.

Getting the leader elected to the House of Commons must be UKIP's single-minded passion from now on. In the Commons the leader has a platform to speak out!

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eublues

We need our strongest performer in the top job soon or it will be too late - people are getting complacent about the way we are getting more and more tied in to the EU.

Nigel has the knowledge and the style to present himself as a credible national party leader.

Lawrie Boxall

I honestly don't think Nigel or Petrina would make good leaders.

For Nigel - well the party as it is now is very much in his image except that now he is paying lip-service to the idea of "policies" which he does not believe in. He says they must be right wing core policies and hopes no-one will notice the corner he paints UKIP into. He has been the de-facto leader of UKIP for 4 years and was manipulating previous party leaders and NECs whenever he could get away with it years before then - so no surprise that I don't support him. He could prove me wrong of course but I somehow doubt it.

But to Petrina - sorry about that.

The reason is that someone told me of your analysis presented to the NEC post the 2005 GE debacle, which was essentially that UKIP should focus more on becoming a pressure group and influencing the Tories.

If UKIP is to become electable, which is the task the new leader should take on, then it needs to be much more than you said, more than just a beacon to EU realists. UKIP has to put forward an alternative economic and democratic vision for Britain outside the EU. Obviously this needs to go far beyond Nigel's simplistic ideas for (what he believes is a panacea) a free trade agreement.

Amongst other things the vision we need demands the case to be made for real devolvement of power to the voters at the expense of parliament. That is what Direct Democracy means - so if we believe in it how can that be achieved?

How can these two things, both massive changes, be done in a way which maintains economic stability and growth and still protects people's incomes, health and welfare. It entails major constitutional reform - something I would think Petrina is interested in - but it will not be done overnight. It will take at least 2 terms in government to extricate the UK from the EU and DD will take decades of steady reform. But the case needs to be made at home and abroad why this and not the EU is the future model.

The new leader will not see the end of what should be the UKIP project, but that person has to start laying the foundations now, 10 years or so after it should have begun.

Millennium3

You had better rejoin Lawrie and get your name in - unless you can offer the name of someone else who could lead the party in the way you suggest.

One Londoner

M3 neatly sums up the scale of the problem UKIP now has. Anyone who ever achieved prominence in UKIP who disagreed with Nigel about any fundamental issue either gave up in despair or got driven out. Let's hope someone who is equal to the enormous task Lawrie describes emerges pronto.

On a slightly different tack, has Roger actually confirmed that he is not seeking re-election? It is difficult to see how a campaign can start until this is made clear.

Petrina

Lawrie ,the analysis which I produced for discussion post GE was essentially that instead of fielding 500 candidates some of whom were essentially only "paper candidates "we could have drawn up a list of europhiles whom we would have targeted with extra resources and put some real bite in our campaigns there and also made a short list of eurosceptics from all parties ( but no Lib Dems came to mind ) against whom we did not field a candidate .The press would be so informed.

This could have engendered quite a bit of media interest and would have
alerted the voters to the fact that we were not just using UKIP as a scattergun but that we were trying to have a logical effect on the outcome .Better that we at least try and get MP`s who were sympathetic to our views than those who were not.


Obviously others will disagree, some for reasons of principle ,others on the basis that you never really know who is a true eurosceptic .However we live in an imperfect world and this is politics

I don`t think that you can really say that is turning UKIP INTO phpbb_a Tory pressure group ,after all had we done this we would have made our decisions on who was /was not a europhile /sceptic some time before the election but only announced it just prior to the election .

The ironic outcome of the election was that where there was a well known eurosceptic MP whom we stood against both UKIP and the MP improved their vote which just goes to prove that the best laid plans of mice and men often fail . :shock:

Millennium3

Does anyone know if, under the leadership election rules, a candidate could direct the membership to this forum on their personal statement with the purpose of using it as a medium to answer questions posed?

Britannist

I agree with Petrina (her posting of 25.4.2006 at 2.21 pm). UKIP must target. I can think of half a dozen parliamentary seats in which I believe UKIP stands a chance of potentially winning with targeting and highly efficient campaigning. Two of those I would throw the overwhelming majority of the party’s resources into. UKIP should put up the required number of candidates (‘paper’ candidates) to get a party election broadcast. That’s what the europhile Liberal ‘Democrats’ (Fib Dims) do to. They (the Fib Dims) don’t have a hope in hell in over 580 Commons constituencies but still deliberately give the impression that they are a national party in order to win the seats that they do.

David Holland

I agree with you but sadly I don't think this will happen. The lib dems have 3 times more MPs than the SDP/Liberal Alliance got in 1983 with about 5% less votes. Will we learn, I doubt it.

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