T.N.Warry

In your dreams!

No doubt UKIP HQ are able to legitamately say there are new members joining each week. However I reckon many more are not renewing. It was ever thus and I speak as the ex Office Manager in Birmingham a post I held for 6 odd months until I was sacked because I think they feared I was not the sort of guy who would happily to kiss a***!

Geoffrey Collier

BobFM: You scoff at the difficulties encountered by Richard Suchorzewski, but remember the origins of his problems. On being elected to the NEC, being a banking gentleman, he asked to see all the accounts. A legitimate request from a NEC member. Rather than provide the information requested the, then, Treasurer, resigned within seventy-two hours. From that moment on Ski was a marked man.

You post incessantly, but you never support anyone, like Ski, who have tried to solve our problems.

Millennium3

What is really needed is an independent survey of the constituency chairman by someone who is trusted. Is there a list of these available with addresses/e-mail addresses?

If UKIP had become successful it would have had to suffer endless polls from the pollsters - because it has failed/is failing there is no interest in the MSM.

Stephen Booth

These are fair criticisms of the leadership, but external factors also affect this situation too.

The Lisbon Treaty is in the public focus, but what opportunities have there been for the electorate to express a view on this? - The May local council elections might be one place, but unless a lot of UKIP candidates stood, the party would have only a small effect on this. You'd need a big media profile and build up on the issue (something which the BBC etc aren't likely to help UKIP with). The many local issues tend to confuse things, and not every council area was voting. Perhaps only a small proportion of places were holding local elections.

Part of this is the lack of money, part of this is the lack of people, the self-confidence, the skills necessary. Some, but not all of this can be laid at the door of the leaders.

The membership declining, the low poll ratings and poor election results tend to combine together as factors in a vicious circle.

I think one of the big problems for UKIP (typing as an outsider) is the way that it has these MEPs, and perhaps the focus is too much on this, rather than the local areas. If Nigel Farage is so embroiled in the European Parliament, how can he focus on the local level, the real place where UKIP needs to organise and start to gain results?

This is a major misjudgement on the part of the leadership. I don't think the European Parliament really matters so much as trying to overturn Europe in every way possible in your local area. If the UKIP leadership is to pull its weight, (on a UK level) it needs to be getting in amongst them in London. Newsnight, and the tabloid newspapers. Something bad about Europe every day - plus the UKIP answer to this, a positive alternative, a way out.

Do you remember the Wetherspoons pub chain having no Euro beermats? What about UKIP beer-mats?

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Britain Out of Europe Now !

T.N.Warry

Do you remember the Wetherspoons pub chain having no Euro beermats? What about UKIP beer-mats?
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Been there done that - it had an octopus on it?!

Millennium3

Winners find solutions - losers find excuses. NF can hardly share the blame since he is an autocrat - just amongst his clique.

Lawrie Boxall

Hear hear to that. I say if you can't produce, get off the pot and let someone else use it. I very much hope that will happen when the 2009 debacle is over.

Knowing UKIP I am not holding my breath.

Does anyone have a spare...?

HULKMAN

I suggest as many charman get together and demand some changes at the top. The NEC has only three honest members. The rest are weak or turn a blind eye to corruption. Whittaker, Gill and the rest don't deserve to be in charge of a party. They are part of the problem.

Millennium3

This would be a waste of time I am afraid. NF etc have got the party sown up - it would be impossible to get any changes that they did not want.

I did post this on the 'If NF gave up...' thread in reply to a reminder of the Pheonix/Grassroots initiative.

Yes, that was an honest attempt based on the belief that UKIP had a future. It is now pretty obvious that the party are going to come a poor second to BNP in probably all elections if it continues with its current profile and that profile is the one chosen and reinforced by NF and his clique. The UKIP name is now a liability as are most of the MEPs. One of the main reasons that the party has declined under NF is that he is a MEP based in Brussels when the party needs a British based leader for it is only through Westminster that any changes in our relationship with Europe can be made. Although success in European elections does cause a short lived stir - it is little more than a stunt, like most of NF’s actions.

If someone could be found, who was trusted by the constituency chairman [who are responsible for most of the important work], to keep abreast of their current opinion - the time is bound to come, if it has not here already, when the vast majority will agree that the best course of action would be to start a new party so that the liabilties of the party name, most of the MEPs and NF and his clique could be disposed of in one fell swoop. If this happened in good time for the next GE - there would be a very good chance that the new party could revive UKIP’s original purpose along with replacing either Labour or the Lib/Dems as Britains third largest party by the time the following GE came around.