So, UKIP. What is really going on?

Following the resignation of UKIP's only sitting MP, Douglas Carswell the other week, the poor showing of Paul Nuttall in Stoke and the latest resignation of the Welsh Assembly member, Mark Reckless, who is aligning himself with the Conservative Party. I wonder just what on earth is happening here.

To go back a bit, When Nigel resigned, (the last time), he said one of the primary jobs of the new leader was to tackle the National Executive Council. A group drawn from within the party that oversees the general direction of the whole show and who he had been "at war" with for years.

Dianne James was elected leader and promptly resigned. She was the most Faragian of the candidates and it's clear she was forced out by elements within and without the party.

Next we had Paul Nuttal, who has been a massive disappointment to me. He was a great 2ic, but just doesn't seem up to the job of leader. He also hasn't had any of the resistance from within the party that Dianne James faced and, it makes me wonder about the rumours of a Tory coup going on by some elements of the NEC.


It's long been rumoured that certain people within the party are more Tory than UKIP and are going out of their way to damage the party's standing in the country.

Carswell, Reckless and Evans are the three most often mentioned names and, Nige had this to say about the last, Evans, here www.telegraph.co.uk...

In my opinion, the problems within UKIP are two fold right now, there is a fifth column that is working to reduce UKIP to a protest group, possibly hoping for favours from Tory HQ, this includes the two former Conservative MP's and Suzanne Evans.
The second part is pretty much all the fault of the NEC and is down to their inability to step back and let the leader run the party properly. I firmly believe that Nigel wouldn't have left if it weren't for the toxicity of the NEC and they are also the main reason that UKIP's biggest backer, Aaron Banks left.


Things are approaching boiling point within the party now, I have seen a lot of emails and such like from the local party that attest to the growing disquiet among members. There are some who will not be renewing their membership, others that are trying to drum up support for a coup against the NEC and still more, who are members in name only and have given up supporting the party.


Now the conspiracy.

The main fault lines are between the broadly conservative elements and the more diverse membership. We know that Reckless has been welcomed back into the Welsh wing of the Conservative party and we can also hazard a guess that Carswell will vote along with the Conservative whip for the remainder of this Parliament, if he does, there is a good chance he will also be taken back into the fold. What of Evans and the Tory wing of the NEC? She will soon lose her well paid job as a MEP and will need something else, maybe she and others will be offered something within the Conservatives?

Why?
Couple of reasons, UKIP was taking huge chunks of the electorate off the Tories, making their MP's feel much less secure. (They also took big lumps from Labour). This is what forced the referendum by Cameron.
A vote he fully expected to win, and, when he lost, instead of enacting article 50 that day (as he promised to do) “If the British people vote to leave, there is only one way to bring that about, namely to trigger article 50 of the treaties and begin the process of exit, and the British people would rightly expect that to start straight away.” Sauce

Instead, he promptly resigned and forced a leadership election within the Conservative party, one that saw the leading pro leave candidate mysteriously being forced to resign when she had beaten all the others to remain the sole challenger to the pro remain candidate, Theresa May, who, we all know, went on to become Leader of the party and Prime Minister. "Andrea Leadsom has pulled out of the race to become the next Conservative leader, saying it is in the “best interests of the country”, paving the way for Theresa May to become prime minister." more sauce

So, after losing the referendum, The government did a shuffle with the leadership and we then had a PM who talks a good fight but was an arch remainer before the vote went against her.
The danger of watering down Brexit would have been that many more Conservative voters would have defected to UKIP, possibly triggering a wave of MP's to cross the floor and removing the government's majority. Maybe even causing a no confidence vote and a fresh election which could have seen serious harm come to the party.

Now though, UKIP is in such disarray that, if she chose, May could so stymie the Brexit negotiations that the vote to leave now becomes pointless and, she could count on almost every other MP in Parliament to support her in her decision to hold a new vote on the basis that the terms are so poor. She can do this with relative impunity because the only people likely to stay with UKIP are Labour and Lib Dem voters who are anti EU.

So, in conclusion, UKIP is being put to the sword in order for the referendum result to be annulled (If not outright, then by some deal that leaves this country as a functional member of all the institutions of the EU but without actually being an official member state).

originally posted by: SprocketUK
So, after losing the referendum, The government did a shuffle with the leadership and we then had a PM who talks a good fight but was an arch remainer before the vote went against her.

Not everybody agrees that Theresa May was an arch Remainer.
One of the charges sometimes levelled against Boris is that he secretly thought it would be better to Remain, but opted to follow the Leave line for the sake of his ambitions. Even before the referendum, there were people who thought Theresa was doing the same thing the other way round- supporting "Remain" to be in Cameron's good books, while privately preferring Leave.

Now though, UKIP is in such disarray that, if she chose, May could so stymie the Brexit negotiations that the vote to leave now becomes pointless and, she could count on almost every other MP in Parliament to support her in her decision to hold a new vote on the basis that the terms are so poor.

That would make her look like a failure,which she would want to avoid. I think her self-interest would now propel her in the direction of carrying through the decision triumphantly (even if she had secret misgivings). She has put all her eggs in that basket.
Wanting to do down UKIP would be a natural Conservative aim in its own right, so it would not necessarily be evidence of any ulterior purpose.

a reply to: DISRAELI

I do see your points. Occam's razor probably cuts that way, but I thought that if I am going to go down the conspiracy route, I'd jolly well go all the way


I've heard criticism of May in the same vein as Corbyn has got stick for being less than gushing about the remain campaign, so it's a definite possibility.


Interesting how you see it as aa failure on her part if it all goes to hell, though. I'm not 100% behind that line but can certainly see it's merit.

a reply to: SprocketUK
My thinking was about how it would look, or how she would be expecting it to look, in the eyes of public opinion and history,

Consider the story of the 1867 Reform Act. My name-sake was more concerned about the achievement of getting the Act passed than about the details of the Act, with the result that the final version was much more "reformist" and much less conservative than a previous bill which he had opposed.
It's the attitude that getting something done against opposition constitutes the victory, making it more important than getting the right thing done.

a reply to: DISRAELI

I always saw it as a case of him wanting to outdo Gladstone, but then, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Other than Farage referring to the EU as the mafia, I've not seen anything about UKIP's take on how negotiations are progressing. Is this because UKIP are too busy infighting? Certainly the media are happy to report about that, just as they inferred discredit to Farage's assertion the EU were attempting to extort large sums of money from the UK.

I think UKIP need to take a deep breath and try to work out what their post referendum role is now and what role it wants to have in the future.

The career politicians (your postulated 5th columnists) party-hopping whores probably keeping the waters very muddy. I thought UKIP had some balls but as they have not expelled the turncoats, I am not so sure.

a reply to: teapot
Good points about the infighting keeping them in the news for the wrong reasons.

I think the expulsions are coming, but strangely the 5th columnist s are entrenched in the NEC and its far more difficult to get them out. Though I get the impression that their time is coming. Probably at the annual conference

You might be right about the eventual outcome of Brexit being watered down the point of meaninglessness. When the elite of the western world unite to attempt to stop something happening they tend to succeed in one way or another.

Unfortunately, you mistake UKIP for something more than a right-wing populist reactionary party that rode on a wave until it broke.

Most people view them as crusty old reactionaries too conservative even for the tories, who blame the country's ills on Islam and foreigners, who yearn for a golden age that never was, who don't have the brains to understand the changes in financial systems and the ongoing shift in energy and resource control and not as a valid political movement with anything relevant to offer the people of Britain. Occasionally, it seems even the masses can get it right!

Bye bye UKIP. Don't forget to die.

a reply to: mersaultdies

I take issue with your assertion re crusty racists.


That's just a silly, tabloid smear that people are too lazy to examine. Pretty much the same one as "All leavers are old, racist and thick" Oft peddled by bitter nut jobs like Tim Farron.

a reply to: SprocketUK

I take issue with your assertion re crusty racists. That's just a silly, tabloid smear that people are too lazy to examine. Pretty much the same one as "All leavers are old, racist and thick" Oft peddled by bitter nut jobs like Tim Farron.

I didn't use the word racist. The terms I used would imply xenophobic and islamophobic rather than racist.

I don't read the tabloids.

Plenty of leavers are young and xenophobic, or young and thick, or old but just selfish and conservative, or ignorant rather than thick. There's lots of combinations. 'Leavers' are not UKIP.

I am just putting across that UKIP is irrelevant and will become more so because of the false premises that it is based upon. I do think, however, that new movements will spring up as the noose further tightens on the quality of life that Britain has been used to, both pro and anti-european, and I am sure one will be reminiscent of UKIP.

originally posted by: mersaultdies
a reply to: SprocketUK

I take issue with your assertion re crusty racists. That's just a silly, tabloid smear that people are too lazy to examine. Pretty much the same one as "All leavers are old, racist and thick" Oft peddled by bitter nut jobs like Tim Farron.

I didn't use the word racist. The terms I used would imply xenophobic and islamophobic rather than racist.

I don't read the tabloids.

Plenty of leavers are young and xenophobic, or young and thick, or old but just selfish and conservative, or ignorant rather than thick. There's lots of combinations. 'Leavers' are not UKIP.

I am just putting across that UKIP is irrelevant and will become more so because of the false premises that it is based upon. I do think, however, that new movements will spring up as the noose further tightens on the quality of life that Britain has been used to, both pro and anti-european, and I am sure one will be reminiscent of UKIP.

Same inference different word though isn't it? Plenty of remainers are thick, scared, full of hate and utterly ignorant about the world also. But many more are just ordinary folks voting how they see fit for their own reasons.
Its quite telling that you never had one single positive thing to say about leavers as people, your prejudice shines like a beacon.

Gord, the naivety of some people. All UKIP are Conservatives on speed. The ONLY reason they survived till the last election was to split the vote in favour of the Conservatives. Which they did magnificently as shown how they just scraped into power.
Now the elections are well past these pseudo Conservatives realise they have been made dupes of and the only way to get their snouts back in the trough is to go back to the fold that spawned them.
But, but there is another general election coming (When ???) so they might keep ticking along to try the same tactic again.
As I said, a new party they aint, new policies, nah. Same old, same old under a different banner.