UKIP Spins Sanya-Jeet Departure

With just over a week to go before elections to the European Parliament (EP), the last thing any political party needs is a defection. And what they need even less is a defection, followed by the defector confirming all the bad publicity that party has received over one very sensitive issue. When the party is UKIP, and the issue is racism, those nice folks on the Farage fringe will not just let it go.

Sanya-Jeet Thandi helps a confused and pissed older man to post his letter

So it came to pass: Sanya-Jeet Thandi, not only British and Asian but also a former member of Young Independence, the youth wing of UKIP, decided last Tuesday that she had had enough, and “announced that she is leaving the party on the grounds that it has descended into a terrifying ‘form of racist populism’”. What was harder for the Kippers to swallow was that she had told the deeply subversive Guardian first.

There was only one thing to do, and that was for Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow saloon bar propper-uppers to spin for all they were worth, starting with the official party mouthpiece, Patrick “Lunchtime” O’Flynn, who told anyone listening that “YI member who has left the party spoke up for UKIP’s immigration policy on TV last week”. Yes, “Lunchtime”, that is shown prominently in the Guardian feature.

Meanwhile, there were some among the party faithful ready to deny that Ms Thandi was ever a member: one prize specimen with the Twitter handle of “Captain Scarlet” asserted “The girl who just left UKIP and went straight to the Gaurdian [sic] ... mmm looks like a setup to me ... she’s never been UKIP ... she was a plant”. Spoken like a former scriptwriter for Dallas. And, as the man said, there’s more.

The equally cranially challenged Nationalist UK was quick to pretend that Ms Thandi was Indian (she’s British by birth, but hey ho): “The Indian girl is clearly angling for a position in the Conservatives. Just used UKIP as a platform”. It takes no small amount of bottle to stand up and speak for a party the way Ms Thandi has done for UKIP, so that’s another pile of steaming bullshit, then.

Never mind, the same Tweeter was ready to have another go: “I would suggest that the stupid Indian girl was a Tory who managed to slip into a position in UKIP solely on ethnicity”. Yeah, these ethnics are dead devious, innit?!? There’s always a little old-fashioned bigotry just beneath the surface.

And then there was Mark Dobrzanski, telling that “She couldn’t have timed this better if she had been a Labour plant. Immigration control does not equal racism”. The author of this supremely wrong-headed swipe is a UKIP candidate in next Thursday’s elections. I kid you not.

What they are all trying to spin away is that Ms Thandi has concluded “I will abstain from voting in the upcoming European elections. I urge other Ukip supporters to do the same”. But that statement is going nowhere. Deal with it, Farage fringe.