UKIP - Kassam Still Stirring

The Mail On Sunday prophetically profiled Raheem “Call me Ray” Kassam last November, telling readers “This is the man Ukip leader Nigel Farage hopes will help his party win this week’s Rochester and Strood by-election – posing proudly with a real handgun … Raheem Kassam has been hired as the Ukip leader’s new election strategist, and tasked with turning the party’s poll surge into more Commons seats”.

Pretentious? Who, moi?

The article went on “Critics have described Mr Kassam variously as ‘troublesome’, ‘wildly self-important’ and ‘a professional wind-up merchant’”, all of which was putting it mildly. Here on Zelo Street, “Call me Ray” has been considered one of the genuine Walter Mitty figures of the rabid right for some time, and in the wake of his being binned by the Kippers last week, disquiet in the party over his presence has surfaced.

Deputy UKIP leader Suzanne Evans appeared before the host’s inquisition on The Andy Marr Show (tm) this morning and told that “I think we have had some problems with advisers around Nigel, who very much kept him in their pocket if you like and I think he has had too much influence from them … Raheem Kassam has gone” before damming with faint praise: “He has taken a job with Breitbart ... I think he will be right at home”.

Why she should say that can be seen by looking at a pre-election ConHome profile of the UKIP team by Mark Wallace, where he says of the also-departed Matthew Richardson that “He is a close friend and ally of Kassam, with whom he also shares an enthusiasm for American-style attack politics”. That would, let us not drive this one round the houses too much, be the attack politics of the right, hence being “right at home” with Breitbart.

And it seems the influence of Kassam has returned to Breitbart, even if the presence has not: “UKIP POLICY CHIEF SUZANNE EVANS ‘CRIED’ AFTER BACKSTABBING FARAGE” it tells, claiming “Breitbart London has learned that as Suzanne Evans discovered that she was Mr Farage’s favourite to be interim leader of the party, she began plotting to make the left-leaning Patrick O’Flynn the chairman of the party”.

“Lunchtime” O’Flynn is “left-leaning”? But do go on. “Ms. Evans is said to have returned to her office in UKIP’s Brooks Mews HQ, ‘screaming and crying’ over what she perceived was the end of her career. She was later heard to beg former Farage advisors for ‘a job with Breitbart London’ in an attempt to shore up her own financial situation”. The post is, surprise surprise, posted without a by-line.

I’ll put this directly: that sounds very much like Kassam taking revenge on Suzanne Evans for the fact that he, like Austen Chamberlain, played the game, and lost it. And if it isn’t “Call me Ray” behind the post, then the author should grow the proverbial pair and come clean. I doubt very much that this will happen, because nobody will want to own up to this crude hatchet job - and, in any case, Raheem Kassam is a coward.

“Call me Ray” is not only a loser. He is now an irrelevance. Even to UKIP.