UKIP – Fruitcakes & Swivel-Eyed Loons…

It was in 2013 that David Cameron called UKIP a bunch of Fruitcakes and Swivel-Eyed Loons and many of us fought damned hard to dismiss that image, at UKIP conferences they even started selling Fruitcakes just to ridicule Cameron but alas all that hard work now seems to have been all in vain because in the end (and that is exactly what it is for UKIP) they have gone out of their way to show the world they really are Fruitcakes and Swivel-Eyed Loons!

There were cheers from those FSE’s when 3.8% of the UKIP membership managed to oust their newly elected leader Henry Bolton, who had only been in the job for just 142 days. Henry Bolton had all the experience and qualifications that on paper was actually a dream come true for UKIP, a veteran who had been awarded an OBE for services to his country in international security and border control, a former police officer awarded for bravery. Yes he was found to be having a relationship with Jo Marney, which certain members of the UKIP NEC and the Indigo Group decided to use against him, in any way possible to discredit him, regardless of the damage that would do to their own party and for some reason, the FSE’s totally ignored that. Personally, I don’t care what he gets up to in his private life and it is not like he was a married MP caught with a couple of rent boys is it? This is actually politics, not Sunday school and the most hypocritical part of it all is in comparison to the UKIP hero, Nigel Farage, Henry Bolton is actually a Saint. So where these FSE’s get their moral high horse from I am not really sure. Then to further add to the hypocrisy of it all they put Gerard Batten in as Interm Leader who effectively turned UKIP into For Britain 2 overnight and the FSE’s all cheered that as well… As Nigel use to say, “you really couldn’t make it up”

Now don’t get me wrong, Gerard is a nice chap, I even bought him a ginger beer not so long ago but I never did agree with his thinking on there was no need to Invoke Article 50 and he even wrote a book on that. However, had we followed his advice it would have given the EU exactly what they needed to punish Britain for leaving, it would have been a breach of the Lisbon Treaty that we had signed and agreed to and that would have then allowed the EU to impose limitless trade barriers on us that would have been complied with by every other WTO member, in the same way as the sanctions on Russia have to be adhered to. I fully explained this to him in person and he agreed then the next day he continued to shout out that Article 50 never needed to be invoked. So his political brain was far from engaged in that particular idea Then you have his ‘Islam is a death cult’ approach even though the vast majority of Muslims do not think so but hey maybe he thinks it is acceptable to the voters to insult 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. Whether you agree with him or not is irrelevant, the simple fact is the vast majority of voters find that approach toxic and no party will ever progress on an Anti-Islam ticket, that is simply axiomatic and at least Bolton understood that. So a political genius Batten is not.

Now we have the Veterans Against Terrorism who along with Gerard Batten was stating quite categorically that if (the veteran) Henry Bolton was ousted and Gerard Batten (the Ex BT Salesman) became leader then 16,000 veterans would suddenly join UKIP. I did shout bullshit on that one the moment I heard it, simply because in the forces it is the norm to be apolitical, due to the fact it is political decisions that put our armed forces lives in danger. You also had the fact that UKIP had just shafted a veteran and that certainly would not go down to well with too many. I was actually a member of the VAT group on Facebook, well it would have to be as I have not seen VAT on Twitter, Google+ or anywhere else that has groups. They do have an official YouTube channel with 114 subscribers, which is not a massive following from 16,000 Facebook members, is it? But when they first posted this idea on the VAT FB Group it actually received less than 50 comments and some of them were veterans saying they were leaving the group because of this idea, I was also one of them. To me it was basically on par with if FLA suddenly turned round to all their supporters and said, right we have decided that now everyone in FLA should support Chelsea, imagine how well that would go down. Anyway as I predicted 16,000 veterans did not suddenly join UKIP because RB Inman said it was a good idea and the next thing I know there are videos going out by veterans saying how everyone must join UKIP or Brexit is doomed and how if everyone joined UKIP they could create real change for the better… I would love to know how? Now I am not sure if they are doing this because they had said 16,000 would join and are now feeling embarrassed or they have been totally duped by Gerard Batten and actually believe the nonsense that they are spouting in these videos but let me just point out some real facts here…

Can UKIP deliver Brexit? 

No, in fact, they have as much influence in Brexit as we do in Engage, zilch. From the moment Article 50 was invoked, it then became a two-horse race between the UK Government and the EU, that is it and whatever the outcome will be will not be altered one iota by anyone outside those two entities. Personally, I have complete faith in the EU not giving May any other alternative but to walk away on a ‘No Deal Brexit’. This is because the EU cannot agree to any mutually beneficial deal as that would only entice 27 other member states to follow our lead in Brexit, that is a blatantly obvious fact that I am sure the Tories have been aware of from day one and is undoubtedly the reason why David Davis keeps on laughing at everyone.

The Tories will deliver on Brexit and I suspect it will happen on or before June 23rd 2019, when she finally reveals her hand she will be seen as the new ‘Iron Lady’ in the eyes of the public and all those who have constantly attacked her will look incompetent and unelectable in the next general election for not having faith in her and you can be sure she will remind everyone how they nearly scuppered her Brexit plan. They even have Nigel Farage on side which became obvious when on every LBC show he constantly called May a Remainer for not answering Iain Dales question on how she would vote in a 2nd referendum. That question was really, “Who do you want to upset the most by answering, 16 million voters or 17 million voters” and no politician worth their salt would ever answer such a question. Nigel knows that so he is promoting the anti-May feeling that the Tories actually want.

Can UKIP become a serious political force in the UK?

No, for 25 years UKIP has been the butcher, baker, candlestick maker of British politics ( I think it was Godfrey Bloom who first said that and he was spot on) with no real structure and definitely lacking any knowledge of political spin. In those 25 years, they have had over £17 million in party donations, those are donations above £500 given directly to the party, so God knows what the figure would be if you included membership fees and donations below £500 but in that time they have not managed to get a single UKIP MP elected to office. Carswell doesn’t count as he was never really UKIP anyway and he crossed over from the Tories. The main reason for their lack of success has been their insane method of qualifying smears targeted at them instead of dealing with them, Steve Crowther has always been an expert at that. Political spin is what should have been done with the Henry Bolton/Jo Marney fiasco and that was just another golden opportunity lost once again by UKIP.

So why the sudden urgency for everyone to join UKIP?

Quite simply UKIP is in dire straights financially, they have a £200,000 bill from the courts for Jane Collins defamation case, a figure that could dramatically increase if Jane Collins declares herself bankrupt, they have the expense of yet another leadership and NEC election and a May local election campaign to fund. They simply have not got the money to do it and are desperate for people to join because they need those membership fees to survive or UKIP will very quickly find itself in a position where it will be trading whilst insolvent and I certainly would not want to be one of the directors of UKIP Ltd if that happened. Maybe they have offered VAT leaders NEC positions if they help to get the money in but not told them NEC members are directors of UKIP Ltd. That certainly would not surprise me one bit. The most annoying thing about that £200,000 bill is it was not something that was ever put to the members, it was done by a corrupt NEC who thought they could win and the members would never need to know about it. I have read the case and initially, all the three Labour MP’s wanted was £10k each to be given to a charity of their choosing and a public apology from Jane Collins. That £30k turned into a £670,000 defamation bill not because of Jane Collins but because of the incompetent NEC especially Steve Crowther who insulted the intelligence of the judge and wanted to delay things for political benefit. Why should UKIP members new or old have to fork out for their incompetence?

UKIP is now a busted flush…

UKIP will face a massive defeat in the May local elections, nothing can alter that and I would not be surprised to see a total wipeout. Every seat they lose to Labour or LibDem will then be portrayed as proof that people no longer want Brexit and that will strengthen the argument for a 2nd EU referendum. When you add yet another circus show of a leadership election, with Bill Etheridge running around in he Dragons T-shirt, it will undoubtedly lead to more people ripping up their UKIP membership cards. Those who have been falsely convinced by Veterans Against Terrorism leaders that UKIP will save the day, who not only have tarnished their own names by getting people to part with their money, it will also tarnish the veterans name because those people will realise they have been duped and that is the part that is truly annoying me the most in all of this.

So what is the solution then genius? 

I honestly do not know, what I do know is the answer is not UKIP and no matter what happens to UKIP now it will only delay the inevitable, Bolton was, in fact, UKIP’s last chance of survival! There are plenty of new parties starting up, Engage, Democrats and Veterans, Populist Party, For Britain, Unity in Action and many more. Take a good look at them and see which one suits your own personal beliefs and then help them to create a true party of opposition, that to me makes far more sense than trying to resuscitate the corpse of UKIP which will only continue making the same mistakes that they have constantly done for years. When we leave the EU (which we will) British politics will become a totally new ballgame and our elected representatives will no longer be the EU’s middlemen, with the right support from the right people, a true party of the people can be born. UKIP is dead, let it RIP now.