Former UKIP leader and ‘Tommy Robinson’ superfan Gerard Batten has been barred from standing again as leader of the party. The NEC passed a motion on Sunday entitled “Gerard Batten has brought the party into disrepute by his actions and associations and should therefore not be allowed to stand for the leadership of the party.” He’s now fighting back with a Twitter poll…
UKIP’s NEC has now decided to extend the nomination process. Read their letter to members here:
With no MEPs for the first time since 1999, just a handful of councillors and only two full time elected officials (both in the Welsh Assembly), Gerard Batten’s remodeled NewKip is on its last legs. That doesn’t stop them launching the third leadership battle currently waging on, after the Lib Dems and the Tories, as former leader Gerard Batten announced his term had come to an end today. Now Guido brings you the runners and riders for the leadership…
- Paul Oakley – General Secretary of the party who made headlines when he compared UKIP to “the Black Death” on the Today Programme. He has since written a book on UKIP called “No One Likes Us. We Don’t Care.” Unsuccessful as both an MEP and MLA candidate, maybe this is an election Oakley could win…
- Gareth Bennet – one of just two remaining full time elected politicians for UKIP, Bennett has already thrown his hat into the race. Bennet was previously suspended from the Welsh Assembly when he superimposed the head of a female Labour colleague onto the body of a scantily clad women for a YouTube video. His big transformational idea is to mandate at least one referendum for every Parliamentary term. Guido couldn’t think of anything worse…
- Neil Hamilton – (yes, he still exists). The other remaining full time elected politician for UKIP, also as a member of the Welsh Assembly and now wannabe edgy YouTuber. With more controversies and scandals than Guido can mention, Hamilton recently finished third in the Newport By-Election with 8.6% of the vote. Could he do better within his own party..?
- Elizabeth Jones – UKIP NEC member and failed MEP candidate, who was recently un-suspended from the party after a group of people she was linked to invaded and rampaged a socialist bookstore. The party concluded she never entered the shop.
- Count Dankula – of unfunny but unjust Nazi-Pug video prosecution fame, Dankula (real name Marcus Meechum) sunk further into the UKIP fold, eventually standing for (and losing) the contest to become one of Scotland’s six MEPs.
- Milo Yiannopoulos– trying to raise his profile and put together a new career after his stateside adventure came tumbling down two years ago. During the European Elections he campaigned for the failing party. Could leading it resuscitate him? Guido suspects not.
- Carl Benjamin – another YouTuber and one of NewKip’s most prominent faces, for all the wrong reasons. His refusal to apologise over an incredibly bad taste ‘joke’ about Jess Phillips and his subsequent electoral performance revealed that he might not be best suited to front-line politics.
- Tommy Robinson – still not actually a member, due to a constitutional ban, but the party executive could change the rules.
Whoever gets it, there’s little chance UKIP will rise much beyond the 1% they currently sit at in the polls. RIPKIP.
UKIP leader Gerard Batten was flushed with embarrassment after he missed the start of his eve-of-conference talkRADIO interview with Julia Hartley-Brewer this morning for “personal reasons”. Her producer had already got him on the line when he disappeared. The prospect of Julia’s fearsomely tough questions clearly loosened his bowels. For a moment the producer thought they had been dumped. The subject matter of Julia’s cheeky question pushed the interview into a sticky situation. After passing that initial conversational blockage, the sit-down interview was back on a roll…
Nigel Farage is saying he will return as UKIP leader if Tory MPs don’t stop their Brexit sellout:
I never wanted a career in politics. I only ever wanted to stop the country I love being sucked further into a political and economic union which is most unnatural to the instincts of the majority of my fellow citizens. However, my own red line is that if Article 50 is suspended or delayed, I will have no choice but to resume campaigning in all parts of the United Kingdom. In March 2019, the current leader of Ukip, Gerard Batten, will reach the end of his term in office. Unless Brexit is back on track by then, I will have to seriously consider putting my name forward to return as Ukip leader. I never thought I would say that again, but the government’s sell-out leaves me with no choice. The latest Brexit betrayal must be reversed.
A warning to those Tory MPs worried about losing their seats…
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…
MEPs resigning the whip, councillors going independent, membership despairing and disappearing – this weekend could be the end of UKIP. The UKIP NEC is meeting to decide the fate of their beleagured leader Henry Bolton. He is appearing on Peston for a potentially last interview as leader on Sunday…
UKIP have been counted out many times without being knocked-out. Is this the final count for the single issue party soon to be without an issue?
