UKIP In Meltdown

Ah, the spirit of the 1980s - the time when the Labour Party came close to tearing itself apart, only to hand the baton to the Tories, who spent much of the next decade doing something similar. Labour had its dust-up over, among other things, entryism. For the Tories, it was mainly Europe. Putting both of those fun ideas together brings us to the current highly entertaining, yet destructive, goings-on at UKIP.

Squeaky big split finger up the bum time

Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow saloon bar propper-uppers garnered almost four million votes in last week’s General Election, but when the self-destruct button gets pressed, such niceties are forgotten. Farage, displaying a significant amount of brass neck, went on Question Time last night and tried to brazen out the rows, saying it was just people “blowing off steam”, but his party is now in the mire.

As I told yesterday, matters came to a head after Patrick “Lunchtime” O’Flynn declared that some close to Mr Thirsty were “poisonous”, calling for them to go. The two as-then unnamed individuals were Farage’s chief of staff Raheem “call me Ray” Kassam, and party secretary Matthew Richardson. Both departed Planet Kipper yesterday, amid a fog of spin which held that they hadn’t really been sacked. Just like Jeremy Clarkson.

The problem for Farage is that, not only were yesterday’s events highly damaging to his party, but that the ruckus shows no sign of dying down. Kassam, an appallingly immodest individual with much to be modest about, fetched up on the Radio 4 Today programme to suggest that UKIP’s only MP Douglas “Kamikaze” Carswell, and O’Flynn, should leave the party, seemingly unaware that his opinion is worth approximately jack shit.

What his sounding off will do, though, is to prolong the in-fighting, and the loyal intervention of the Daily Express, possibly under direct instruction from Richard “Dirty” Desmond, shrieking “3.9 MILLION REASONS TO SAVE UKIP” this morning, will make no difference. Question Time demonstrated that.

One of the audience told Farage “Like most politicians you said something and have gone back on what you said. Surely you’re in the Nick Clegg group now. People will just not believe you. They will think of you as a clown. They will not think of you as a proper politician anymore”. That was only underscored when Farage decided that UKIP would not be taking any of the £650,000 of “Short money”, after first saying they would.

And Kassam is threatening to carry on his fight when he returns from the USA, as the Guardian has told: “Kassam told Sky News on Thursday evening that O’Flynn ‘ain’t seen nothing yet’ when it comes to aggressive-style politics as he would be returning to a role as a journalist at the rightwing website Breitbart London. ‘I will be scrutinising quite heavily what the Red Ukip team are trying to do to the organisation,’ he said”.

Serves Farage right for hiring the vindictive SOB in the first place. But the Kippers can’t turn back the clock - they are where they are. And that is up shit creek without a paddle.