Yesterday UKIP announced it won’t go bankrupt – contrary to predictions – after it raised £300,000 in donations to meet the costs of the Jane Collins lawsuit. The party also said a £175,000 legal bill had been met “by other means”. Nope, no idea either…
If upbeat new leader Gerard Batten is to be believed, UKIP’s roller coaster fortunes may once again be taking a turn for the better. The party says it has signed up 1,000 new members since Henry Bolton was ousted. Ambitious Batten wants to stand 740 candidates in May so that the party qualifies for a TV broadcast. Interm leader Batten is now expected to remain in place for at least a year rather than the 90 days mandated by the party’s rulebook. None of this answers the really important question. What’s Henry Bolton up to nowadays?
He’s on a skate fishing trawler off the Kent coast. In his first promo video since launching new one man party ‘One Nation’, Bolton is seen chatting to fishermen about EU regulations. The somewhat surreal video, posted on One Nation’s new YouTube channel (3 followers), includes staged shots of Bolton walking into a fishery, shaking hands and sitting on the trawler as workers throw fish back into the sea. There’s no sign of Jo Marney.
The logo needs some work…
Henry Bolton is back together with Jo Marney, after being voted out as UKIP leader. Here they discuss the controversial comments she made in which she said Meghan Markle’s ‘seed’ would ‘taint the Royal Family’… pic.twitter.com/NKD0QhU8gH
— This Morning (@thismorning) 22 February 2018
Henry Bolton has said it was worth losing his job as UKIP leader over Jo Marney’s racist texts. During a car crash interview on ITV’s This Morning Philip Schofield said of the racist texter:
“You just don’t sound like a very nice person.”
Bolton today announced his resignation from UKIP, just days after he suggested he could stand again for the leadership after he was ousted in vote of the membership. Bye…
Henry Bolton has been ousted as Ukip leader by party members. A vote today endorsed the no confidence decision of the NEC:- There were 1378 ballot papers
- 11 were spoiled
- 867 supported the motion of no confidence (63%)
- 500 members backed Bolton (37%)
Gerard Batten was made interim leader. The party will now have its fourth leadership election since the EU referendum. Bolton became leader just 142 days ago.
Kippers and hacks decamp to Birmingham tomorrow for the crunch EGM that will determine Henry Bolton’s fate. Senior Kippers say Henry could yet triumph. There has been a move on to line up Gerard Batten as interim leader in anticipation that the membership will back the NEC’s no confidence vote. Guido hears more than 1,500 UKIP members are set to attend. Jo Marney is still suspended so can’t enter the meeting itself. But will she come to Brum with Bolton to provide moral support?
Worth casting your mind back to UKIP’s last extraordinary general meeting, held in January 2000. Nigel Farage’s book Fighting Bull contains a vivid description of its apocalyptic political carnage, recounting how the meeting was close to descending into violence. One party member had a fatal heart attack and was evacuated by paramedics. Nigel wrote:
“It was held at Westminster Central Hall on 22 January 2000. Some 900 members attended… The crowd roared and wept and shook fists and sheaves of papers. Every speaker was shouted down. I have never, before or since, attended a meeting so constantly close to eruption into violence. One member of the audience suffered a fatal heart attack.
“I too was by now close to tears. Everything for which I had fought and worked was being ripped apart by self-seeking factionalism and idiotic pride. The people now walking out, maybe forever, they mattered. The ordinary advocates of decency and freedom who had sacrificed a precious day off to come up here from Suffolk, Devon, Yorkshire they mattered, not the vainglorious morons up there squabbling for position and power.”
What could go wrong…
A late night email dropped to UKIP members from Chairman Paul Oakden yesterday. It was signed off: “Interim Leader”. Had a bloodless coup taken place overnight?
A few minutes later Oakden followed up with a clarification email:
“To avoid any panic this is not a coup … I remain, for now, the Interim Chairman. There is no Interim Leader.”
“For now”…
Over the weekend Henry Bolton didn’t deny he’d been seen out again with Jo Marney since the last sighting. On LBC this morning he told Nick Ferrari he had been paid around £5,000 since becoming party leader, said it was LinkedIn’s fault he claimed he had a BA degree from Sandhurst. EGM on Saturday…
“Are you still in love with @Jo_Marney?” @AndrewMarr9 asks @_HenryBolton
“There are strong affections there, yes.” #marr pic.twitter.com/jmTKSE4jNX
— The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) February 11, 2018
Asked if the relationship is still live, he replied “yeah”…
