The Stoke on Trent Central by-election could not have been set up more favourably for UKIP: a candidate at odds with his party leader on the EU, an area that voted strongly the way the Kippers wanted in last year’s EU membership referendum, a mainly post-industrial constituency with discontent over the whole political system waiting to be exploited - and a storm on election day to depress turnout among Labour voters.
An' I used live bullets last night
Yet UKIP’s new leader, “Bad Bootle Meff” Paul Nuttall, got nowhere near Gareth Snell, who retained the seat for Labour. The Kippers only just retained their own second place from the 2015 General Election, with the Tories hard on their heels. And while Snell had faced his own questions over the occasionally dubious contents of his Twitter feed, he had come clean and ‘fessed up every time. Nuttall had lied, been caught, and then lied again.
There is still the possibility that Nuttall will be disqualified for making a false statement on his nomination papers; he could even face criminal sanction, possibly ending with a prison sentence. So he’d be a Crim as well as a Meff. What is also looming on the Kipper horizon is the spectre of the EU’s OLAF anti-fraud agency asking how UKIP funded their campaign manager Lisa Duffy, who is employed as an EU civil servant.
Squeaky selfish SOB finger up the bum time
That means she cannot work other than on European Parliament related business, and a Parliamentary by-election doesn’t count as anything like that. On top of that, the excuses made for Nuttall’s defeat have been lame in the extreme: the idea that Stoke on Trent Central was only 72nd on UKIP’s target list doesn’t stand up when the party’s leader makes a personal commitment to stand. Sack the spinners.
And then there are the two clowns who did not have to stand on the stage in the small hours of this morning and share in the defeat, but who need to take their share of the blame (although they won’t). Arron Banks, UKIP paymaster, prioritising a skiing holiday in a suitably exclusive part of non-EU Switzerland over bothering himself to do any more than insult the Hillsborough families on social media, is one of them.
WRONG
The other is former Kipper Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who took his bat home on discovering that Ms Duffy, who had passed adverse comment on The Great Man, was involved in the Stoke campaign. Farage has instead gone off to attend CPAC, showing the world that UKIP under his leadership was nothing more than a vehicle to provide More And Bigger Self-Promotion Opportunities For Himself Personally Now.
UKIP has still not enjoyed its Orpington moment, and with its current dysfunctional leadership and tendency for infighting it probably never will. The party won’t replace Labour in its northern heartlands by fielding a candidate reviled in his own city who is known to be a refugee from the Tories, and who struts around the constituency in tweeds like some minor landed gentry. This is not a serious political party.
As Winshton might have put it, this may not be the end for UKIP. It may not even be the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning. Bye bye UKIP.
7 comments:
A good result given the circumstances, which included mass-murderer Blair's usual gutless Quisling last minute attempt to sabotage this and the other result.
But UKIP's 5,000 plus votes still show how divided, deeply reactionary and fearful this country has become. The tories of course will make things even worse, as they always do and as the people of Copeland are about to discover.
The Labour Party has to come a long way back from the horror of the traitor New Labour faction. It won't manage it if it turns to the likes of "Bomber" Benn, the thug Mann, the puppets Eagle and Smith and "Three Time Loser" McTernan. Quite rightly people don't trust the unprincipled mob that got us into illegal wars in the Middle East and even in European Yugoslavia, and who continued and intensified spiv-divisive tory domestic policies. Nor of course will mainstream media be anything other than bought-and-paid-for jeer leaders for a far right establishment.
The odds are heavily against. But so what? The Labour Party was founded in the face of much worse evil opposition. Now is the time to remember that and use it to regenerate, however long it takes.
In the meantime the present tory gang don't rule in my name. Not ever. And not even through a majority of the registered electorate. Sooner or later they will be yet again exposed for the ugly anti-social gang they are. The longer it's delayed, the worse things will become. And once out of Europe, yet worse.
looking at the numbers it's interesting to see a surge by LibDems in which they got nearly 10%. If you speculate where those voters came from it probably wasn't UKIP, meaning without the LibDems Labour would have won even more or the Conservatives would have pushed UKIP into third (or probably both!).
I know from bitter experience that a candidate can quite blatantly lie, break Numerous election rules, libel fellow candidates, send the boys and girls round to disrupt hustings and threaten candidates. And the powers that be won't give a toss.
A low turnout, with the Tory and UKIP combined vote swamping Labour. Without the kippers where would the UKIP vote go?
While it's good we don't have Paul Nutalls MPs it's not a good result for Labour, just a relief. A lot of people worked very hard for the party.
I have grave concerns that Corbyn truly is leading the party nowhere.
Simon has a point, without UKIP standing I suspect a number of Labour and LibDem wouldn't have braved the weather. The UKIP votes would probably have mostly gone to Conservative. So Nuttall can reflect on the fact that his campaign probably saved Labour!! Well done that man - now go home, your neighbours want a word with you!
The 'surge by LibDems' comes from Remainers who see Brexit as a catastrophe which will affect all those issues which Labour believes it's strong on. Why Corbyn and his crew don't recognise this as a large potential source of Labour votes I haven't a clue. Instead Corbyn just farts around unconvincingly on the matter and then whips his sheep through the lobbies to support the government, allowing May to claim that 'parliament' supported the early invoking of Article 50 just as 'parliament' supported the suicidal referendum in the first place. The LibDems (whatever else they may be) come across as a clearly Remain party and a rallying point for Remainers. It's come to something when Tim Farron can come across as some kind of potential saviour. It's too late for Corbyn to atone for his earlier feeble mumblings on Brexit and no one would be convinced anyway. It is , however, a bloody good reason for him to do us all a favour and piss off at the earliest opportunity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1EyFKmI7to
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