Anthony Butcher

So are you saying that the party is deliberately misleading its members and the public over this situation? i.e. they are on the one hand distancing themselves in Britain from the man, yet on the other hand they are continuing as normal behind the scenes?

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Barboo

To a certain extent, yes. The written explanations (it has happened on several occasions) prove that UKIP MEPs are still operating in the European parliament as an entity with Tom Wise in jointly articulating UKIP policies and views. In each case Wise is included with Batten/Clark/Farage/Whittaker/Knapman/Nattrass in making statements on behalf of UKIP, as in: "the party could not support . . .", "we agree with . . .", "we believe . . .", "UKIP have supported . . .".

See 'Explanations of vote':

5 September 2007
Gerard Batten, Derek Roland Clark, Nigel Farage, John Whittaker and Thomas Wise (IND/DEM ), in writing . Although UKIP makes the point on principle to support any repeal of EU Legislation, this is a national security issue and as such the party could not support a measure that could place air passengers and crew at risk. As HMG has stated, terrorism remains a serious and continuing threat.

20 June 2007
Gerard Batten, Roger Knapman and Thomas Wise (IND/DEM ), in writing . The UKIP does not recognise the legitimacy of the ACP-EU JPA and therefore cannot support this amendment. However, we agree with the spirit of the text and sincerely hope that the international community as a whole will ensure that the international travel bans on key figures in the Zimbabwean regime are fully respected.

26 April 2007
Gerard Batten, John Whittaker and Thomas Wise (IND/DEM ), in writing . The UK Independence Party will not support this resolution because we believe the European Parliament has no business laying down moral standards in different Member States.

15 March 2007
Gerard Batten, Nigel Farage, Michael Henry Nattrass and Thomas Wise (IND/DEM ), in writing . UKIP have supported this amendment because it states very clearly the factual position that the Constitutional Treaty has been rejected and therefore should be abandoned. However, in no way does voting in this manner imply any support whatsoever for the political Group that have tabled the amendment.

ends

In the face of this evidence it is clearly absurd to pretend that Tom Wise is no longer a UKIP MEP, but the MEPs are not the party. I'm not in a position to know whether the MEPs have misled the NEC over this, or the NEC has decided to mislead party members and public. Nor am I saying the MEPs are continuing exactly as normal behind the scenes. The fact that Wise, in addition to Farage as co-president, is now a member of the group's bureau indicates some division between Wise and the rest. It may be that Wise now controls his own portion of the group budget, but again I am not in a position to know that. I do know that as far as their political activities are concerned Tom Wise and a majority of UKIP's other MEPs, including the party leader and chairman, are making joint statements together in the European parliament on behalf of UKIP. That makes them all UKIP MEPs. The proof is there on both parliament and IND/DEM websites.

SponPlague

Did you see the post on the other thread, yesterday?

The hub of referendum campaigning

Barboo

Thank you, I hadn't seen that.

gc

Did I say that? Some might...