Bluemerle

This is a call from a former UKIP member and Branch Chairman for some sanity. I write this because UKIP has failed to run with the ball. A lot of people who could ill afford the time and money to back a seemingly insignificant party had propelled it despite incredible odds and incredibly odd leadership to a point of political significance in June 2004. By the end of 2005 UKIP membership had been drastically cut and the media could ignore it. It could not surely have been planned could it? That as the European Parliament elections were meaningless people could lend their vote - but then UKIP had to return it - was a presupposition. But could UKIP have kept those votes or at least borrowed them again in 2005? I think so, but that opportunity was squandered by in - fighting and a total lack of leadership. This is the 11th hour. Get the leadership election wrong now, and the future will be the wrapping up of UKIP.



A quick look at the candidates web site for Richard Suchorzewski will define many of the problems. But perhaps the question we should be asking is WHY is that which is wrong with UKIP wrong with UKIP?
http://www.richard4leader.co.uk/

firstly let me give you some background
I came to UKIP in 2004 with some eurorealist qualifications; but I came reluctantly. I began studying politics for my own interest in 1980.
In 1992 I was introduced to the full horror of the EU when I read the Maastricht Treaty. This led me to become co-Chairman of CIB North Yorkshire with my old friend Graham Wood. I attended the Maastricht counter summit in Edinburgh in 1992 where the AMA was originally established. I later moved south and was Chairman of the Freedom Association in Dorset for a short time until Tony Woodcock returned from his time in Spain and returned to that office. I did not join but in I did work for Sir James Goldmsmith's Referendum Party and at that time we had one of the best results in the country (North Dorset - Margaret Evans) who polled nearly 5 per cent (THEN!). The result was bittersweet as the refusal of UKIP to stand down cost Margaret her deposit by 52 votes. Here are the results.

Evans, Margaret Ref 2,564 4.90%
Wheeler, David UKIP 801 1.50%



I had previously tried to persuade UKIP not to field a candidate in N Dorset. I suggested the RP would not field a candidate where UKIP could have done better without the competiotion. I believe we discussed Salisbury as being a seat for a reciprocal withdrawal. However UKIPs leader at the time (Sked?) insisted UKIP was a national party so he refused to cut a deal. Once again optimism beat pragmatism. Consequently I came to view UKIP as well meaning and decent but as with other parties containing a few nutters. It lacked sendible direction and its leadership showed by its inflexibility that it was hopelessly out of touch with real politics. I remained friendly with the local UKIP people in Dorset and the southwest but decided not to join.


I helped with a local group called S-Bag (Sovereign Britain Action Group). We had a lot of fun and this developed into a successful venture when as a result of Sbag action Lord Tebbit and Mick Mahon and others addressed a crowd of over 900 at Westlands in Yeovil in Somerset. At the time we were one group among many ( our group functioned well for ten years) there were many calls from various people for us to all "join together" to give the anti EU movement one voice. S-bag debated this many times and in the end we felt we had done our bit and we closed the group and joined whichever party or group each of us felt closest to. UKIP, the Democracy Movement (what is the DM for? - there is another fascinating question!) and the Conservatives (when people had hope for IDS). We keep in touch but that chapter in history is closed.


In North Dorset in 2001 UKIP received 1019 votes and the Conservative majority was 3797. I had become very disillusioned with UKIP but between November 2003 and February 2004 in a series of phone calls Greg Lance Watkins told me that it would be ok to join UKIP because the UKIP had reformed. UKIP wanted a Chairman to establish a branch in North Dorset. I agreed to stand as chairman as I had known many of the committee members previously through anti EU activities. In June 2004 despite the idiotic situation of having their flagship star Robert Kilroy Silk turn on the party, UKIP achieved what will come to be seen as its political zenith. A truly commendable result which has sadly proceeded downhill ever since.


In December 2004 RKS left a considerably demoralised UKIP. For the May 2005 GE I worked with what must have been one of the most outstanding UKIP candidates and teams in the country. We had a go at a useless pro EU Tory with a majority that he had managed to reduce from 11,907 in 1987 to a mere 2,746 in 1997. Even the Tories tried to de-select their own candidate, a Clarkeite who had been parachuted into the constituency by Major upon the death of the excellent then Tory MP Sir Nicholas Baker. We wanted to remove our MP Bob Walter from Parliament as he was (and is) very pro EU and we believed we could at least damage him severely. In retrospect I was too optimistic but we had help from the SW Regional organiser Malcolm Wood. Our candidate here was a thirty something local man with a large and ancient estate, ex Army, head of the Dorset Regiment, served in the 7th Armoured Brigade in the first Gulf War. The Tories were horrified and despite recognising his worth they begged us to forgive them for not voting for our man but a great number of them eventually voted tactically for the Conservative candidate in order to keep out a very strong local Liberal Democrat. There were politics inside politics so the end result was a bitter disappointment for all of us. I am of the opinion that this particular election was fought as a negative campaign to keep a Lib Dem out not a vote of confidence in our MP.

start-

I use the background I have with UKIP because that's my experience but there are other issues with UKIP. My sister lives in the London Borough of Croydon South and canvassed for UKIP two General Elections ago. The literature she was to distribute arrived the day before the election so she could not deliver it. This evidently happened in more that one place. The excuses were that UKIP had not paid its bills, or the leaflets were delivered to the wrong place etc. Some of the copy on the leaflets was wrong. In the 05 MEP elections many of the profiles / candidate statements were not published and instead an anodyne UKIP statement appeared on the literature. Some candidates photographs were left off.

Now the conclusion one can reach is that mistakes will happen to the most careful of people but the chances of all of these mistakes and **** ups happening year on year to one party really stretches credulity. Take Kilroy - Silk for instance. Who funded Veritas? Were promises made to him and then broken about him being the Leader of UKIP? I have heard (so this needs corroboration) that Nigel Farage had offered RKS the Leadership, but after the election when asked, simply threw up his hands and said "Well that's politics", of course it might be assumed that no one had said when.

In itself this could be seen as a "so what?" because it IS the kind of thing that happens in politics. Look at Cameron on Tory MEPs leaving the EPP. But RKS almost single handedly wrecked UKIP and the party he founded, Veritas, has expired. Was RKS a useful idiot who simply wanted to make some money to pay for the upkeep of his Spanish estate? I don't know because I called him at home on the Sunday before his announcement of the launch of Veritas and asked him what he was playing at and he said "I'm sorry I have guests I'll call you back". He then hung up without asking me for my phone number and I did not call him back because he had clearly been caught out and I knew he would not want to discuss it. So here is RKS a nationally known figure who did get votes for UKIP and then when he ditched the party, UKIP suffered. To be charitable it can be put down to bad leadership.


After the poor performance in 2005 we held a Southwest Regional wrap up meeting in Devon. It was clear that many people there were seething with anger over the disappointing results and appalling leadership. Many called for a radical leadership change and policy debate (ie is the party a Party or a pressure group?) and the response was just silence. An ex Tory MP was drafted in to help and a couple of other experts but UKIP went nowhere. UKIP was leaderless and this dissipation of energy and funding continues to date. The blunt truth is that at a by election where UKIP threw everything it had and more at a seat where UKIP's star lived and which should have produced a credible vote produced little other than a very big bill at the end. There will be those who argue that the Tory lead was cut to the bone. To them I say look at the Tories who stayed at home. They did not believe Cameron and they recognised that the slot-in EUphile was not an Eric Forth kind of Tory. Nor did the Liberal Democrats think Cameron was a Lib Dem under his baby face smile. Nor did many think UKIP was worth bothering to vote for. And it is the stay at home Tories in the by election that UKIP should have galvanised.

Problems
UKIP has had so many problems I had forgotten how many. Deliveries of campaign literature. Printing and publishing of the same and mistakes therein. Mistakes in the distribution of literature.

Communications
We have a saying at work "Communication is an art". Well UKIP has had a long time to get it together and it has failed. Moving out of London would have been a good idea if you have a mail order shoe shop to manage. But with the press and most media of any significance based in London one really has to question the wisdom of moving to Birmingham. Now it appears Devon is the lucky place. I have little but praise for the Southwest UKIP people (Simon Muir an ex chairman from Bristol can correct me if he sees things differently)** but to keep UKIP MEPs IN Brussels and OUT of London and the UK seems idiotic - or if you have a bent towards conspiracies, very shrewd. In modern times communications are instant but there is nothing better than a personal meeting as seen by for example Nigel Farage on Question Time and with Amanda Platell where he made himself very credible. As people have said he is a fantastic PR man. If the BBC ring up to interview they want the people there on site now. Many times there was no connection and I felt was that UKIP Southwest was totally isolated.

**SImon replies:

"I'm largely not critical of UKIP SW save in one regard: they view Bristol as a sort of inverted "ere be dragons!" area on the map.
When I was active, I tried several times to get resources to blitz parts of the city - answer came there none, even from places with literally
hundreds of members. UKIP is spectacularly unsuccessful in left-leaning cities, largely because they are an ideology and policy-free zone. We've had nothing to gain traction with here for years, despite making this clear, with increasing bluntness as time has gone by.
I'm not one who believes the media have to be our enemies. It's true that there is interference behind the scenes, but at a day-to-day
relationships basis journalists _like_ working with us. The problem is we don't engage at a political level and thus give them nothing they
_can_ report. Again I've said this to anyone who might listen... [put the above comments in, if you wish - it can't do any harm]
Best regards,
S.


UKIP Bournemouth West has the best web site I have seen. It has an easy interface and is updated daily. Compare it http://www.westbournemouthukip.com/
with the national site and then ask why if the resources are so great coming from having ten MEPs, can UKIP only produce this
as a national web site?
http://www.ukip.org/
Ask why with barely three years to go, UKIP congratulates itself for coming ahead of Labour in Bromley where Labour had no chance at all of winning anyway. UKIP national voting percentages are so horrific that for anyone to think UKIP will have an MP in Westminster by any other means than an MP crossing the floor of the house is madness. And what if UKIP had twenty MPs? With the Parliament as it is now it would make no difference as all three parties are pro EU. So UKIP must change and become the nucleus of a new cross party movement of the British people of left and right black and white old and young - the non voting majority who know they have been betrayed by a political class who have traded government by the people in Parliament under a Monarch for the EU Commission and who feed like pigs at the trough caring more for giving themselves huge pensions than saving our country. And there are millions of them.


NEC
One of the questions I asked over and over was "What is the NEC FOR?" No one to date has been able to answer this. The NEC appeared to be a place to put people (were they elected or appointed and by who?) who so disagreed with one another that the only possible outcome would be strife. And where was the leader? The leader was somewhere but where? And what was the leader for? Leaders are not supposed to be nice they are supposed to lead. UKIP has failed in this from the start. One wonders if it was meant to be that way? Where was the discipline and authority over the MEPs?


POLICIES
UKIP as everyone knows is polarized between those who believe UKIP will never have an MP, will have MEPs and councillors and those who think UKIP could actually see an MP or two in Parliament in London. I for one admit I do not believe UKIP will ever have an MP at Westminster but I do think that were a decent leader to be found UKIP could wipe the floor in the European Parliament. However things have moved on a lot since December 2005 and the Conservative Party is run by a man who is either a fool or a knave but he is most assuredly not a conservative. He is a perfect politician because he claims to keep his promises while extending the time frame. (I never said when we would leave the EPP). He is a fraud. So UKIP is now the only political base where a vote may be cast to represent disgruntled Britons. It is therefore time to alter radically UKIP and draw into a national coalition all those from all parties to come to the aid of the COUNTRY. Therefore unless UKIP is to have a real leader who can inspire and discipline people the outworking of the disenfranchisement of the British people will be seen on the streets and in the cities and it will be ugly. The remains of UKIP can be the vehicle to accomplish this. If it fails it will have to admit its own guilt having put party before country and its leaders will have self before party; precisely what the other parties are guilty of. Therefore UKIP becomes another part of the problem not the solution.



PURPOSE
I briefly wrote of the NEC but another problem UKIP failed to resolve is what are MEPs for? Some appear to be for fun. No one remembers one single thing MEPs do that is serious but they all remember the funny guy with the bowler hat who made his wife clean behind the fridge. The papers are full of rumours of MEPs being buddies of the BNP or having champagne and sex but they won't write about the EAW.

So what on earth do MEPs do? Well according to Independence, the members' magazine they stand up and tell fellow MEPs how rotten the EU is and one told Blair he was a chump. That much is true but all these incidents are trivia - sensational tittle tattle. MEPs have offices and staff and they are paid well and have a lot of allowances. But they should spend much less time in Europe voting like mad in a wickedly undemocratic joke Parliament. They need to be seen and heard up and down the country week in week out telling the sheeple about the EU. That anyone could not know VAT is a European Tax administered as directed by Europe (as was revealed at the Bromley by election) shows the anti EU movement has failed to get the message across. There is work to be done and we have around three years left before all the activity we are involved in now will simply be illegal and irrelevant. No wonder Commie Ron wants to wait until 2009 to pull out of the EPP - it will all be over by then. And anyone wanting to Get Britain Back will have to be prepared to die in the process. Scaremongering? What did the idiots in NewLibLabCon say when told about Corpus Juris? QED



MONEY
Where there's muck there's brass or so the old saying goes. Well where there's brass there are usually accounts. The history of UKIPs inability to manage money is too long to waste time on here. It would be hard for a saint to walk past a rolled up wad of fifty euro notes and
hand it back to the casino and brothels it came from. So it seems there is tom foolery going on. I do not know the facts. I do know every cent was accounted for here and we had a good treasurer and decent men and women who spent what little they could afford to make UKIP work. But there are questions over Ashford and UKIP's accounts in general. There is also the question of where the MEPs money goes. UKIP owes its membership the courtesy of disclosing this information. This is mechanics not philosophy. If UKIP accounts are clean then show them. Make them public. If not then sack the crooks or incompetents who cook the books. This is not a matter of getting at anyone this is a matter of UKIP playing the straight bat in a world full of snakes and ladders.


DESTRUCTION
Now we come to destruction. Living south of the M4 it appeared from here that UKIP southwest was pretty good and UKIP southeast was good. To give credit where it is due the people running UKIP Bournemouth West have the best web site online and it makes the UKIP national web site look like a joke. Go take a look and see for yourselves. In the few telecons I had with UKIP Birmingham suggested their staff were both incompetent and rude. There was no communication skill here. The Newton Abbot office, undermanned but with volunteers of a kind who would give you their last cup of tea, was chaotic but good humoured and helpful. I recall months of bitter strife in Northern England. Yorkshire and Lancashire and UKIP in Eastern England appeared to go into terminal suicide. I do not know the names of all the people involved but I do know of one man who was sent into UKIP (he has now left - please do not ask me for his name as lawsuits are time consuming) in East Anglia I think, who had caused disruption in the Channel Islands and almost certainly works for the EU and tried to disrupt UKIP as far as he could. Fortunately he was spotted and evicted before he could do any more damage. So where in all this mess was the leadership? It is a question you have to answer for yourself.


PRESS OFFICE
I have had one dealing with the press office. It concerned allegations and insinuations made about me by the leader of the Labour MEPs one Gary Titley. The press office was helpful at that time because it knew I was right. Telling the truth is easy and I did so with the BBC and the newspapers including the Jewish Chronicle but as I said I had the truth on my side. Had Mr Titley pursued his suggestion that I was anti Jewish I might well have taken him to court and used Mishcon de Reya as the law firm and Oliver Letwin as a character witness! I have no doubt that eurofacts eurorealist UKIP and all of the higher profile anti EU web sites and people were and are being observed by our enemies and they will stop at nothing to make sure we are tripped up any way they can manage. Given UKIPs ability to trip itself up one has to ask "are these or at least some of these self inflicted wounds?" But back to the press office. I complained to the Press Office that UKIP never gets any press unless it is bad (see the huge list following) but was told that despite press releases being issued like confetti (I never see any do you guys?) the press never takes us up on anything. Well not true. They took up the fake email exchanges within UKIP and that caused a storm. This concerbed traps being laid to catch NEC members and all the skulduggery of the Skull and Bones Society. Then it emerges the Press Officer is filtering membership applications through another organisation to weed out nazis fascists racists and other undesirables. Hey - not a bad idea you say but wait - how come it failed to use the other filter? The "Angel of light" filter. Does anyone get the impression that some ex Tories in UKIP appear to be less than competent? That a man can just appear from nowhere and try and take over a branch (he was expelled thank goodness). And should UKIP want a left wing organisation to vet membership applications? Where does the Data Protection Act apply here? Who on eurorealist sent my (unedited cut and pasted) post to the head of the EU Labour Party? We have powerful enemies and they are using people who have been and it is my belief still are members, to cause mischief. I include the Tory Party BNP Labour and in one known case a suspected EU employee who was so firewalled he vaporized. Although the Press Office acts its success rate is poor. It needs radical change. MEPs need to be available in London and the Leader and Chairman need to work seamlessly to get whatever the UKIP message is across to the general public. Press reports should hopefully be positive - some of the time. (see below).




PERSONALITIES
All parties have personalities. Labour has Denis Skinner (bravo) and Kate Hoey (double bravo) and they have their share of nincompoops - Blair Brown Prescott and all the old totty they dare put up to represent Labour Woman. - No I will not apologise for that.
UKIP had RKS and Damien Hockney who once threatened to sue me if I posted any more of Greg Lance Watkins monographs about him. UKIP has Nigel Farage who is the only truly competent politician in the pack of cards. But he is also a liability as he will not delegate and he
behaves in a manner unbefitting a leader of a party which decries the sleaze and lies of all the other political parties.
UKIP publicity has included but is not limited to the following::

Taken off the Internet today.>>


"In the course of that I learned that there were 23 gay candidates in 2001. There could have been 24, 25, 35, or 45. I have no idea because obviously people don't write it on their foreheads. I just knew of at least 23."
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/p...post?id=113424


current problems
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75819


Not Racist?
by Ois - WSM Wed Jun 07, 2006 16:48
UKIP should be called stodgy but nothing exciting like racist or fascist.

I never said they were fascist. But they are racist. If you want to know more about them I advise reading the document at the below link.

A brief selection from the pamphlet:

Dr Alan Sked, UKIP’s founder leader, 1993-97 has said: “They [UKIP] are racist
and have been infected by the far right”2
Robert Kilroy-Silk (UKIP MEP since 2004) wrote in the Daily Express: “They
[Muslims] are backward and evil and if it is racist to say so… then racist I must be –
and happy and proud, to be so”.3
In December 2003, he discussed what he called “bleating blacks and Asians” in
Britain, asking “Why don’t they stop whining and get a life?”4
In the unrest following the Iraq war, Kilroy-Silk also went on record saying that
“the orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than
the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding
young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this
thieving mob”.5
He believes that “Moslems everywhere behave with equal savagery”.6 And he also
referred to Ireland as “a country peopled by peasants, priests and pixies”.7 Robert
Kilroy-Silk later apologised for this remark.
Discussing Britain’s rise in HIV infections, he wrote “The indigenous population is
not responsible... It is the foreigners that we have to focus on”.8
Nigel Farage (UKIP MEP since 1999, leader of the UKIP group of MEPs in the
European Parliament since 2004; former UKIP Chairman, 1998-2000 and cofounder,
UKIP) told former UKIP leader Dr Alan Sked “We will never win the
****** vote. The nig-nogs will never vote for us”, according to Dr Sked.9
Dr Richard North (UKIP’s former Research Director in the European Parliament,
Brussels from 1999-2003) described our Spanish neighbours as “rag-arsed dagos” in
a BBC TV documentary video, The Enemy Within , which UKIP has described as “a
perfect tool for converting the sceptical… and showing at branch meetings”.10
Peter Watson (Chairman, UKIP North Dorset branch) distributed anti-Semitic
messages via e-mail, including one remark that read “Jewish merchant bankers
[are] responsible for the ills of England”.11 The party refused to take any action
when Labour MEP Gary Titley brought it to their attention.12
Frank Maloney (UKIP’s candidate in the 2004 London mayoral election), visited
Whitechapel in May 2004 and subsequently complained: “Barely anyone speaks
English and to look around you would think you are in a different country”.13 (It
was this remark that led Mayor Ken Livingstone to conclude, “UKIP are the British
National Party in suits”.)
Reigate Grammar School banned a planned political meeting on its premises after
it judged UKIP’s website to be “racist and offensive”.14 A UKIP leaflet circulated in
South Derbyshire during the 2004 European elections expressed the view that the
rest of Europe is ruled by “barbarians”.15

2 The People, 6 June 2004.
3 Daily Express, 25 February 1991.
4 Sunday Express, 7 December 2003.
5 Sunday Express, 4 May 2003.
6 Daily Express, 15 January 1995.
7 Daily Express, 9 November 1992.
8 Sunday Express, 1 December 2002.
9 The Mail on Sunday, 6 June 2004.
10 London Evening Standard, 16 August 2000 and The Independent, 22 August 2000.
11 Jewish Telegraph, 26 March 2004.
12 Bury Times, 1 April 2004.
13 Press release from Frank Maloney, 1 June 2004.
14 Surrey Mirror, 6 April 2004.
15 The Independent on Sunday, 9 May 2004



So much for how the Press sees UKIP!


SUMMARY
So that is a selection of UKIPs success in limited political office. Compare this to Roger Helmer or Dan Hannan. Or the unfortunate Ashley Mote. UKIP has money and status and because of appalling leadership, an uncertain purpose, and dubious accounting now stands on the edge of an abyss. It is only going to be possible to use UKIP to help save the UK in whatever form it takes if it gets some adult leadership and stops appearing to be a joke. I know people who used to be enthusiastic about UKIP. They all hate Labour and feel betrayed by the Tories, can't vote BNP because they don't hate sufficient kinds of people for just being there, but nor can the any longer vote for UKIP because people vote for winners and after June 2004 UKIP declared itself bankrupt of ideas and leadership. Is it salvable? Yes. But this depends entirely upon its members and how they vote in the forthcoming leadership election. That choice if UKIP is to be useful must be Richard Suchorzewski.
http://www.richard4leader.co.uk/

Peter Watson
Hinton St Mary
Dorset
July 25, 2006

David Holland

Although RKS said that in a silly way compare it to the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2756849.stm


For labour to critiscise for being anti-Semitic is something - what about Ken Livingstone !

Aardvark

...the unfortunate Ashley Mote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :roll: He owes me nearly £4000. The claims will be out in the next few days (other pressures have delayed me).

AM is not unfortunate. The reason his case has yet to come to trial is that, instead of allowing the case to go ahead so that he can get the acquittal he claims to expect, AM's lawyers are appealing to the European Court against a decision of the European Parliament that AM does not have immunity from prosecution. AM is actually claiming that he is immune from prosecution, the first commoner in the UK to ever claim this, and that he cannot be prosecuted for events that happened before he became MEP.

When AM is finally prosecuted he will destroy the whole Eurosceptic movement. If he avoids prosecution because he is immune, using European law since no such beast exists under UK law, then he will have successfully branded us all as hypocrites. A Eurosceptic MEP who has written a book and many articles condemning immunity from prosecution for others has himself sought to use the same law to avoid prosecution - how sick is that? :roll:

komerad

I wonder why if you expect to be acquitted, you would try to get immunity from prosecution. :?:
IIRC it was something to do with housing benefit fraud, but this must have been at least 2 years+ago.
Though it was all done & dusted by now.

chikrodah

Without falling foul of the sub-judice elements of Mote's case:

1. The DT reported in June 2004 that Mote was charged with 9 counts of benefit fraud.
2. The plaintiff is the DWP (which only usually gets involved on behalf of local councils if the sum of money is large and the defendant's case is slim).
3. Mote's barristers are doing a sterling job of delaying the proceedings while all legal options are pursued.
4. The Attorney General, on behalf of the DWP, applied to the EP to waive Mote's immunity (if it actually existed - British MEPs are supposed to be treated like British MPs and our MPs don't get immunity from prosecution - ask Archer or Aitken!) in early 2005.
5. The EP voted after due diligence had been undertaken by the appropriate committee to waive Mote's immunity.
6. Mote's legal team applied to the Court of First Instance to strike out the EP's decision. This case is still pending.

komerad

Chikrodah,
Thanks for your info.

Robin

This post started with Bluemerle`s writing an analysis of UKIP.

One of the problems seems to be discipline of the major players in the party.This allows some egos to be bigger than the fight against the EU.
Is there a diciplinary committee in UKIP?

How can leading lights within the party be brought down to earth before they see themselves as above the wishes of party members and the electorate?