UKIP’s manifesto launch day got off to a great start this morning, with interim leader Pat Mountain having her first outing with Adam Boulton. It made for classic election TV…
During the eight-minute interview, viewers saw Pat:
- Refer to “other racist parties” before quickly correcting herself
- Not know where the party is standing
- Read out a policy from the manifesto and didn’t know the details when pressed
- Say UKIP don’t have any black candidates but might have an Indian man
Pat Mountain, who of course replaced Dick Braine, joins a long list of very tough future pub quiz questions…
UKIP continue lurching from cock-up to disaster as the latest leader, Dick Braine, has sent a statement to party members saying he will be boycotting his own party conference this year. At least the captain of the Titanic had the decency to go down with his sinking ship…
Some members are speculating the conference may not go ahead at all due to depressingly low ticket sales. According to one activist, the party hired a 700-seat venue but have struggled to sell more than 100 tickets and “stand to lose a fortune”, and it is only because of the party’s chairman’s insistence that the event is still going ahead.
Many party members are also deliberately boycotting the conference over the NEC’s refusal to accept Gerard Batten’s appointment as deputy leader – including Batten himself. Today’s UKIP would struggle to organise a piss-up in a spoons.
UPDATE: Read Braine’s email to party members here:
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:
At the National Exhibition Centre on Sunday the Brexit Party is having a big rally with over 5,000 attendees expected. This will, they say, involve revealing of the first 100-plus Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) selected for Westminster elections and the unveiling of the start of their policy platform. Guido suspects, and on this point they are being a little evasive, they will also reveal some Tory councillor defectors.
Co-conspirators tell Guido they have been vetting a batch of local Councillors who are defecting from both UKIP and the Conservative Party. The first forty have been undergoing vetting and checking of their social media history. Given CCHQ’s 150 or so suspensions of Tory activists there could be quite a few more in the future. Could the first forty be unveiled this Sunday?
UPDATE: A Brexit Party source has now got in touch to say Guido is broadly correct, apart from the timing. The roll out will be held back until after the Tory leadership election. They scoffed at the rumour George Galloway would be a PPC, “We do vet our candidates.”
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.
Guido knows they were wrong in Australia, but this one feels like a stretch…
