Here's to another 5 years of "We're all in this together"

Farage 'forced through leadership confirmation'

Didn't have you down as a Breitbart reader Chris

I'm not.

Seems plausible though.

Does sound plausible. Problem is they are still an embryonic party with too few really strong characters. I'd like to see Suzanne Evans given a bigger role.

Those that oppose Farrage are dead scared of what he might achieve one day.......not only do they want to keep him in a metaphorical coffin they plan to sit on the lid until he's dead......the status-quo will do everything to stop him.

So rumours of his resignation being a set-up would certainly be spread around by those that oppose him.

What UKIP needs to do is throw all their efforts behind next years Council elections to gain as many councillors as possible.....then prove to the electorate their grass-root ability to shake Councils up and push for changes.......most Tory Councils have literally no opposition (in the south-east) and can vote things through with only half their number bothering to leave the local Conservative Clubs drinking den........

The civil war is out in the open. Paddy O'Flynn (senior UKIP MEP, economic spokesman and former Daily Express hack) says Farage is thin-skinned, snarling and aggressive. Says that cuddly old Nige is trying to turn the party into an 'absolute monarchy' and a 'personality cult'. Carswell is refusing to endorse him as leader after the unresignation shambles.

Doesn't sound like much has changed since the Kilroy-Silk days.

It is difficult for UKIP because in many ways they face the same problems that the Greens do: they are in effect united by a single-issue but have no over-riding ideology regarding everything else. In effect they are a very successful lobbying organisation but a disaster in terms of being a coherent political force.

This is something that Carswell, who I saw being interviewed on the TV on Sunday, seems to grasp. He has ideas well-beyond just leaving the EU and sticking it to Johnny Foreigner and wants to build a whole movement around his vision of a new way of doing politics. To be honest he seems like an intelligent, thoughtful chap with a wider sense of purpose than I had previously suspected.

Mind you back then Farage was out and Carswell was obviously pitching, very professionally I thought, for the leadership but now Farage is back and Carswell is out.

And since then Carswell has turned down the Short money - and good for him for doing so. I like his rationale for so doing: "I don't need 15 members of staff". Given that he also fervently believes in cutting public spending this is a case of him not only talking the talk but walking the walk, too. In contrast, of course, there's the huge sums filched out of EU coffers by UKIP's MEPs simply because they can.

I don't much agree with Carswell but at least he seems to be a grown-up, serious politician with some backbone and integrity and if UKIP select anybody other than him as their leader then I reckon we've seen peak UKIP.

On another tack: once this referendum is done and the result is in where does UKIP go if we vote to stay in?

Could they do what the SNP did? Clean up the votes of absolutely everyone who voted for independence and a fair few of those who didn't?

I think UKIP are here to stay until they have something to run and make a hash of it. They've never had to make a single difficult decision in their history, because they've never had any responsibility.

It'll be more interesting to see what happens to the Conservatives after the EU referendum. Presumably Cameron will campaign for In unless the renegotiations are a total calamity (in which case he'd presumably resign). It's also safe to assume that there are dozens of Tory MPs who'd campaign for Out regardless of the outcome.  Can the party survive a chasm which would make the Major-Maastricht pantomime look trivial?

Very predictably BBC are furiously knocking one out over UKIP's problems.

Not much coverage of the hunt for new leaders of the Lib Dems & Labour though.
As someone who is happy to see Labour in perpetual opposition I'd like to see them appoint Chuka Umunna.
Some say the fact he is single would go against him but I can't see it. Didn't seem to be a problem for Ted Heath when he was PM.

I've never seen such a concerted campaign by the media against any other party, never, not even anything close to it, feckin Beeb should have its wings clipped, Farage has that right if nothing else.

Cornish Chris wrote:

The civil war is out in the open.  Paddy O'Flynn (senior UKIP MEP, economic spokesman and former Daily Express hack) says Farage is thin-skinned, snarling and aggressive.  Says that cuddly old Nige is trying to turn the party into an 'absolute monarchy' and a 'personality cult'.  Carswell is refusing to endorse him as leader after the unresignation shambles.

Doesn't sound like much has changed since the Kilroy-Silk days.

O'Flynn is hardly senior anything, he has only been in the party a short while and is not a professional politician by any stretch of anybody's imagination.

Half the UKIP hierarchy are complete amateurs, they will learn from their mistakes, all that matters is getting to the referendum with Nigey battering Juncker from within while the more photogenic and better performers like O'Flynn and Evans make the case on tv.

Nigey was on Question Time yet again tonight.

He has been on QT more often than the BBC has shown The Great Escape.

Apart form being biased against him might I suggest that the Beeb has given far more air-time to somebody no better than any other half-arsed, failed politician struggling to find a constituency to represent so that he can cling on to the expenses he claims from the public purse via our taxes that he is, apparently, desperate for us not to pay? How often has the elected, twice, MP Caroline Lucas been on in comparison? Where is the real bias here?

He's a clown. Nobody wants him. He'll never be elected anywhere. The sooner we're shot of him and somebody with the intellectual rigour Farage appears to be unable to provide emerges to take his place and there can be real debate beyond "the debate we are never allowed to have" (that we have had little else but for the last 5 years) the better.

He's a serial loser second only to Lord Sutch in failed attempts to gain a seat in parliament.

feck him.

Bring on the referendum that UKIP will lose. Get it out of the way and then we can carry on with grown-up, proper politics.

It can come soon enough.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Nigey was on Question Time yet again tonight.

He has been on QT more often than the BBC has shown The Great Escape.

Apart form being biased against him might I suggest that the Beeb has given far more air-time to somebody no better than any other half-arsed, failed politician struggling to find a constituency to represent so that he can cling on to the expenses he claims from the public purse via our taxes that he is, apparently, desperate for us not to pay? How often has the elected, twice, MP Caroline Lucas been on in comparison? Where is the real bias here?

He's a clown. Nobody wants him. He'll never be elected anywhere. The sooner we're shot of him and somebody with the intellectual rigour Farage appears to be unable to provide emerges to take his place and there can be real debate beyond "the debate we are never allowed to have" (that we have had little else but for the last 5 years) the better.

He's a serial loser second only to Lord Sutch in failed attempts to gain a seat in parliament.

feck him.

Bring on the referendum that UKIP will lose. Get it out of the way and then we can carry on with grown-up, proper politics.

It can come soon enough.

He does get under your skin don't he Franny? As for nobody wants him you could argue that he only polled 13% of the vote nationally (althought that's more than the greens and Limpdems put together) but if the Tories and Labour hadn't adopted his utterly repugnant policies he could have got twice that. Funny after the unbelievable treatment of UKIP over the election at the hands of the press that nobody has condemned those policies once adopted by new labour and new Tory.

I was down Broadstairs on Tuesday (hot sunny day)......and heard of some of the devious Tory tactics used to beat him.....they where so desperate to beat him....bussed lots of MP's in during the campaign.....but kept Cameron away, stickers everywhere.

I'll never understand why Farage chose that seat to fight.....I think it had a 7000 Tory majority before......when some of the predictions showed he was winning they swamped the place with Tory workers, 18000 plus to just over 16000 result in the end....not bad really in a Tory area.