but I suspect there are some fairly glum faces amongst Ukip’s remaining intelligent members, faced with the reality that however ill equipped they have not only lost their only passably competent leader and now their only major backer.
On the 02-Mar-2017 I published the fact that Ukip was in trouble as they had lost backers see CLICK HERE and were failing to raise money to function, particularly now that Farage holds the Brussels purse strings as leader of the group.
This latest news of Arron Banks must give this fractured party pause for thought as to whether it has any meaningfull future, with a discreditted Walter Mitty fantasist as their current make believe leader and only a few MEPs actually pulling in the same direction, MEPs with a spectacular track record of failing to contribute financially to the cause except in order to try to buy themselves selection, election or re-election.
So #Ukip owner @Arron_banks has his membership of his own bought ‘n’ paid for Party suspended. That’s so totally #Ukip 🙂 Cheers !!
Realistically what hope have they got, when they clearly lack one wit of political nouse between them and with a track record best known for lies, distortions and fantasy as they squabble like ferrets in a sack!
Top Ukip backer Arron Banks to focus on new political movement
Published: 09:53, 14 March 2017 | Updated: 11:53, 14 March 2017
Ukip’s biggest financial backer Arron Banks has announced he will now concentrate on a new political movement after claiming his membership of the party was suspended.
Insurance tycoon Mr Banks, who funded the Leave.EU campaign in last year’s Brexit referendum, gave £1 million to Ukip ahead of the 2015 general election.
He has been involved in a public spat with the party’s only MP Douglas Carswell and has been critical of the party’s leader Paul Nuttall.
Arron Banks
Mr Banks said his membership had lapsed and when he tried to reapply he was told he was suspended until an appearance before the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC).
But Ukip dismissed the idea he could have been suspended, as he was no longer a member of the party.
Mr Banks suggested on Twitter that the move was “apparently for saying current leadership couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding” and he has also compared the way the party is run to a squash club.
His row with Mr Carswell, which included suggesting he could stand against the Clacton MP by using a recall petition to trigger a by-election, has also riled elements in the party.
Mr Banks said his membership had lapsed and when he tried to reapply he was told he was suspended until an appearance before the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC).
But Ukip said he chose not to renew his membership despite reminders to do so.
Mr Banks has hinted at setting up a new political movement, building on Leave.EU, to “drain the swamp” of Westminster politics.
A Ukip spokesman said: “We are aware that Mr Banks has suggested on Twitter this morning that he has had his party membership suspended.
“Mr Banks was notified last year that his membership was due for renewal at the start of October but chose not to renew, despite reminders. With this his membership expired on January 1 2017.
“It would not be possible to suspend Mr Banks from something of which he is not a member.”
To consider another viewpoint on the same news but from another media source read on:
UKIP denies donor Arron Banks’ suspension claim
Image copyrightAFP/GettyImage caption Arron Banks (right) is a close ally of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage
The UK Independence Party has rejected claims by one of its biggest donors that he has been suspended from the party membership.
Arron Banks, who funded the Leave EU campaign in last year’s EU referendum, made the allegation via Twitter.
He said the move was “apparently” in response to him saying the party’s current leadership “couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding”.
But a spokesman said his membership had lapsed earlier this year.
Colourful opponents
Mr Banks, who gave £1m to the party ahead of the 2015 general election, has been sceptical about the leadership of Paul Nuttall and has recently spoken of founding a new political movement to “drain the swamp” of Westminster politics.
He also suggested he could stand against Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s only MP, by using a recall petition to trigger a by-election in his Clacton constituency.
But Mr Carswell played down the importance of Mr Banks’ announcement, telling the BBC: “It’s always very sad when one of UKIP’s 40,000 members leaves the party for whatever reason.”
Referencing previous claims that he had prevented former UKIP leader Nigel Farage from being knighted, Mr Carswell added: “I have no more say in NEC decisions at UKIP than I do in who gets a knighthood.”
On Mr Banks’ suggestion that he could stand against Mr Carswell in Clacton at the next general election, the MP said: “Each time I’ve stood there’ve been some wonderfully colourful characters on the ballot paper.
“I even had a chap who changed his name by deed poll to Lord Ha Ha Woof Woof. I’m sure at the next election there’ll be some colourful characters too – the more the merrier.”
Apology to squash clubs
But in a statement, Mr Banks claimed UKIP had “somehow managed to allow my membership to lapse this year despite having given considerably more than the annual membership fee over the past 12 months”.
“On reapplying I was told my membership was suspended pending my appearance at a NEC meeting,” he said.
“Apparently, my comments about the party being run like a squash club committee and Mr Carswell have not gone down well.
“I now realise I was being unfair to squash clubs all over the UK and I apologise to them.
“We will now be concentrating on our new movement.”
However, a UKIP spokesman said Mr Banks was notified last year that his membership was due for renewal at the start of October but he “chose not to renew despite reminders”.
“With this his membership expired on 1st January 2017,” the spokesman said. “It would not be possible to suspend Mr Banks from something of which he is not a member.”
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
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I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
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I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
Emails leaked to Business Insider show long-standing links between Nigel Farage and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.
Farage visited the Ecuadorean Embassy on Thursday but declined to say whether he had met Assange, who lives in exile there.
UKIP has campaigned in the European Parliament on behalf of Assange.
LONDON — There was much confusion Thursday when Nigel Farage was spotted by BuzzFeed leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy in London — the residence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Asked why he was there, Farage replied that he couldn’t remember what he was doing in the building, adding, “I never discuss where I go or who I see.”
Emails leaked to Business Insider, however, reveal that UKIP under Farage’s leadership had long-standing links to Assange.
In February 2011, after a European Arrest Warrant had been issued in a case in which prosecutors sought to question Assange in connection with a sexual-assault allegation, UKIP repeatedly reached out to Assange to see how they could work together. Assange has not been charged in the case.
The office of UKIP MEP Gerard Batten contacted Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens about “the possibility of meeting Mr Julian Assange.”
They added: “So far, UKIP London has been only British political party to openly support Mr Assange fight against EAW and his freedom of speech, and we would very much like to continue doing so.”
Business Insider
Leaked minutes of a subsequent meeting between Batten and Stephens reveal that Batten promised to table a motion in support of the WikiLeaks founder in the European Parliament. The party also offered the opportunity of a joint video press conference in Brussels.
Business Insider
The Farage-led Europe of Freedom and Democracy group subsequently tabled a motion attacking “the possible abuse of the European Arrest Warrant for political purposes.”
Sitting alongside Farage, Batten called for the Parliament to debate Assange’s arrest warrant.
“Is the Assange case about the alleged crimes committed or is it about the desire of America to extradite him from a compliant European country?” Batten asked MEPs.
When the European Parliament denied the chance for a debate on Assange, Batten later called them “contemptible.”
In an appearance on the Russian state broadcaster Russia Today, Batten also labelled the attempts to extradite Assange as a “legalised kidnap.”
A month later, the party organised a House of Lords event on the European Arrest Warrant with Assange’s lawyer as the star guest.
Business Insider
Senior UKIP figures including Farage and Steven Woolfe met with potential UKIP donors and journalists to speak out against the warrant.
One leaked email, sent by Farage’s former assistant Annabelle Fuller, suggests that he spoke with Assange’s lawyer at the event.
Business Insider
The Trump connection
Farage has also advocated on behalf of Assange since WikiLeaks’ involvement in the US presidential election.
Speaking on his LBC radio show in January, Farage repeated Assange’s denial of Russian involvement in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton during the election.
“Julian Assange … is absolutely clear that all the information he has got is not from Russian sources,” Farage said.
The question of Farage’s trip to meet Assange was raised at a White House press conference on Thursday.
The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, was asked whether Farage had visited Assange “on behalf” of Trump. Spicer did not answer the question, saying only that “I don’t keep [Farage’s] schedule. I generally don’t worry about what’s going on across the pond.”
Watch Trump’s spokesman questioned about Farage and Assange.
A representative for Farage was contacted for comment.
To view the original of this article + video CLICK HERE
Protecting the president isn’t easy or cheap, and according to estimates from The Washington Post, the cost to protect President Donald Trump and his family is on track to supersede the cost to protect former President Barack Obama and his family by hundreds of millions of dollars.
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
I do NOT use or bother reading FaceBook
I DO have a Voice Mail Message System
I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
I ONLY GUARANTEE to phone back identifiable UK Land Line Messages
I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
The Ukip donor intends to transform the party into a UK ‘Five Star Movement’ with radical policies from the left and right Getty
Arron Banks is “definitely” going to stand in Ukip’s only seat of Clacton in 2020, but in the meantime, Ukip’s millionaire backer and Farage bromancer-in-chief has other plans to unseat Douglas Carswell, the party’s sole MP.
“One of the things Douglas Carswell was very strong on was recall of MPs,” Mr Banks says. And he’s right. After his defection to Ukip and by-election victory in 2014, Mr Carswell constantly pressured David Cameron to deliver on his 2010 manifesto commitment to allow constituents to kick out their MPs.
“Carswell said that if enough of the constituents voted for it, then their MP should be recalled and they would have to face a second election. So if he’s really going back to the Tories, as people say he is, one of the things I’m looking at is going to the Electoral Reform Society and saying, ‘Let’s have a recall’.
“Even though it’s not legally binding, we might approach the voters of Clacton and say, ‘Look, for these reasons we think Douglas Carswell should be recalled’. And that would be a neat idea, because it would be using his own idea against him.”
Douglas Carswell ‘holds secret talks on defecting to Tories’
The shifting geopolitics of Ukip’s permanent civil war are complex, but one fundamental truth never changes. Mr Carswell and Mr Banks are not on the same side.
But the rumours this week that Mr Carswell is considering re-defecting to the Conservatives – a suggestion the MP denies – has moved it towards what Mr Banks hopes will be some kind of endgame.
A further story, that Mr Carswell personally intervened to prevent Nigel Farage receiving a knighthood, was enough for the party’s national executive committee to put him under investigation.
“I don’t give a stuff about knighthoods, OBEs and all the rest of it,” Mr Banks says. “But we need to be united. There’s a group of two or three people that cause horrendous trouble.
“When it comes to Mr Carswell, bear in mind how much effort we put into the Stoke campaign, and how much effort he put into stopping us. Even when Nigel stood down in Thanet, we know that he provided election data to the Tories. He has been a very disreputable person and I intend to take him on.”
“The problem he’s got is that he can’t resign from Ukip because under the code of the Carswell,” says Mr Banks.
“He has to have a by-election, so I think the suspicion is that he would remain in Ukip up until a convenient time when he’ll switch to the Tories and stand in the election for the Tories.”
Paul Nuttall says Ukip’s time will come after Stoke by-election defeat
The allegations were put to Mr Carswell, but he did not respond.
One problem Banks might face is Carswell’s immense popularity in Clacton, though he dismisses it
“You say he’s popular there, what you’re really saying is he says he’s popular there. He’s not. It’s the most eurosceptic seat in the country. Nigel is like a virtual demi-god down there. When we went there thousands of people came out to see him. I think that whatever popularity Carswell had pertained to Ukip.”
This is not the first time Mr Banks has agreed to an interview with The Independent. On the first occasion, having said yes, at the agreed time he was instead in the pit lane of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, a fact of which I remind him.
“It’s hard work leading a people’s rebellion,” he laughs. This time he’s in his car, on the way to go skiing in Italy, a destination of some relevance as he outlines his plans to transform Ukip into a British Five Star Movement.
Farage call for Ukip’s only MP to be thrown out of the party
Mr Banks, who ploughed more than £7m of his own money into Leave.EU, effectively Ukip’s referendum campaign arm, accepts that victory in that referendum has left Ukip uncertain of its raison d’être. But his mission now is to give it one.
“We are going through a period where we’ll either define what we want to do and get on and do it, or we won’t. People feel Ukip are in the wilderness a bit, thrashing around for what we are.
“So, what we’re going to do is, next month we’re going to put forward a whole range of what we think are quite radical ideas, that are neither from the left or the right, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to ask the people that follow us, that’s more than a million people, we’re going to say, ‘Submit your ideas, get involved in the process’, then we will then put them to a direct democracy, so it’s very much like the Five Star Movement.
“And anyone can join that, they can be Labour, Conservative, Ukip, any political party. And from that you have a list of policies that you want to fight for to implement.”
Douglas Carswell MP speaks to party members and supporters during the UK Independence Party annual conference (Getty)
Though Mr Banks won’t say, the “submit your ideas” stage appears like it’s already happened.
He’s been speaking to “business people” over the past few months, to come up with new policies, which he won’t yet reveal, but he hints they could bear very close relation to his own eclectic political tastes.
And if Ukip is about to enter into the realm of radical new ideas, it is hard to ignore the fact that Nigel Farage is still very much of the view that it is about one radical idea and one alone.
“This question of immigration is still the number one issue in the minds of voters in this country.” he told the BBC this week.
“Ukip must not be squeamish about it. People like Douglas Carswell wrote in The Times last year we should not make immigration synonymous with EU membership. I thought, ‘Crikey, I have spent 10 years trying to do that very thing’.”
Picture: (Getty Images / Christopher Furlong)
Put this to Mr Banks and you get a stern rebuke.
“No, no, no, no, no. It won’t be all about immigration. It might be abolishing the House of Lords, economic stuff like building two million houses. Stuff on inheritance tax.
“It’s wrong that people receive vast sums of money just because their parents are rich. There are utilities that I would renationalise on the basis that they’re equally detrimental in public hands as private hands.
“We’ve seen that with electricity, we’ve seen that with other things. Our view is that the government should do very little but what it does, it should do brilliantly, like the health service and the education system. It’ll be a whole raft of things that are quite radical. But that’s the next stage in our evolution.”
Lofty ideals perhaps, but if Ukip is struggling to evolve, Mr Banks knows it is not merely a lack of new ideas that is rendering it stuck in its Neanderthal phase. After the disappointing result in Stoke-on-Trent Central, Mr Banks wrote to party leader Paul Nuttall demanding to be made chairman.
“It needs to be fit for purpose now. It’s run like a squash club committee and that needs to stop. What I’ve said to Ukip is that if you professionalise yourself, get organised, imagine what you could achieve. It was a plea to get in there, modernise, radicalise.
“You guys in the media make fun of it, say it’s a shambles, but it still got 25 per cent of the vote in Stoke. There were days when if the Lib Dems got 25 per cent at a by-election it would have indicated a seismic change.
Ukip MEP wrongly says hundreds of illegal immigrants arrive each week
“From my point of view as a businessman, and a very successful one, if you actually took hold of this and ran it properly it could really do something, bearing in mind how ramshackle it’s been.”
“Nigel especially wants wants to see Ukip go forward. He’s become very frustrated with the way it’s run, the structures.”
But does Nigel accept any of the blame for it?
“Nigel is partly to blame, yes, he would admit that, but then Ukip grew so quickly, at such a phenomenal pace. We’ve got a very big oak tree but the roots are not as deep as they should be.
“We have to re-engage Nigel positively, in the same way Salmond has been re-engaged with the SNP. He doesn’t have to be leader, he’s still a powerful force.
“But you need to take the administration of it away from the politicians, have it run by a professional group of people. It needs to be professionally run, and I don’t see anyone else showing any inclination to do it. It’s not difficult.
“You only need to look at Nuttall’s campaign – with the stuff on his website and everything. If you were starting a by-election campaign, the first thing you do is check all your stuff.
“One of the strengths of UKip is that it has not had much representation in Westminster but whether you like it or dislike it, it has set the political weather.
“David Cameron only gave the referendum because of intense pressure from Ukip, and we only won the referendum because we decided to focus on immigration when Vote Leave didn’t want to talk about it.”
Though it lost in Stoke, and badly, Mr Banks maintains it set the weather there too.
“None of the Tories voted Ukip. Ukip won the Labour votes they had to win. They got 5,000. But the Tory vote stayed exactly where it was. And what that tells you is that Tory leaning potential Ukip voters don’t like the messages that are put out.
“Look at the Labour leaflets that were put out. They had the cross of St George on the front of it, it even said they would take the money saved from the European Union and spend it on local services. It was a Ukip based leaflet.
“Ukip put out stuff trying to copy the Labour party. They put out stuff about the NHS. But the Ukip Tory type voters will come back if it’s deemed that May doesn’t deliver.
“Listen to David Davis. He made a speech last week saying that he thought it would be a decade before immigration would be under control, and what he was basically saying is that it will be open door immigration for the foreseeable future.
“The problem is you’ve got your Westminster types, you’ve got your media types, but for most people the referendum was about taking back control of the country and controlling our borders, and it’s clear the government has got no intention of doing either right now.
“When it becomes clear that we’re not going to get a clean Brexit, the anger will start to build again.”
“And when that happens, Ukip will have a radical agenda for turning Britain upside down and inside out, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. It won’t just be immigration based. It will be very surprising.”
I suggest that one of Ukip’s major problems is a vanishingly shallow talent pool that has compelled Nigel Farage to be its leader on no fewer than four occasions, but his answer hints at further problems.
Paul Nuttall, is he says, “weak but potentially a good leader”.
“Oh definitely. We’ve got to bring good people through and sometimes because of the incestuous nature of this thing good people have not been brought through or they’ve been killed off because of jealousies and that’s where this thing has gone wrong.
Read more
Arron Banks threatens to pull funding unless he can ‘sort out’ Ukip
“There needs to be a deeper pool of talent from which to pick. Having someone like Neil Hamilton in Wales is a disaster. It’s not a unified party, we know that.
“Carswell too. He has done his level best to cause problems. It’s our feeling that he has to be gone. In the referendum, Vote Leave thought it was rude to talk about immigration, right up until they realised they had to, that it wouldn’t appeal to middle class Tory voters and Carswell falls into that category.
“Ideologically he is for open door immigration. His reasons for the referendum are not our reasons. As a libertarian, he believes in virtually no rules at all.”
Mr Banks compares Ukip’s internal problems to Labour under Corbyn, and also points out that it took that party decades to get any political representation.
“And after the 1945 government, you could argue, what was the point of Labour, when they’d done all the things they wanted to do? But it’s carried on.
“Look at Ukip. It’s there. It’s still got a lot of members. It’s bedded itself in to the national psyche, despite all this bad PR, every poll I see says 13 or 14 per cent for Ukip.
“The people who hate the Conservative Party for what they’ve done will not go back to the Conservative Party, and the same with the Labour Party, so there’s a base there.”
There certainly is. But whatever lies ahead in Mr Banks’s grand Ukip wargaming, it’s clear there’s a battle that must be won first, and that’s for Clacton, against Mr Carswell.
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
I do NOT use or bother reading FaceBook
I DO have a Voice Mail Message System
I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
I ONLY GUARANTEE to phone back identifiable UK Land Line Messages
I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
I note with interest that Hugo Rifkind has chosen to voice the fact that for all the fraud emanating from the Hobbits in the Shires and their pretence to the Gentlemen’s clubs of St. James dressed as Arthur Dalley clones for the event when they are so much more in keeping in their ratting outfits that they believe pass as Country suits for the gentry – they even seem to have all the morality of the game keeper if D.H.Lawrence is the arbitter!
They do so desperately want to be seen as the New Establishment by posing as anti-establishment, just as the Communist Uprising of 1917 overthrough the Czars whilst only putting in place a new and shoddy version of the Czars without the taste, finnesse or aplomb as the money they purloined funded their act as the monkey in silk which is a monkey no less.
When it comes to all this prattle of Knighthoods – would that their fathers had worn them!
May I suggest you read my earlier article on this issue, whilst you ponder just what hypocryts Nigel Farage and his cronies are.
Hugo Rifkind brings these certainties to a yet larger audience!
The real reason Nigel Farage hates Douglas Carswell
It’s not just about a knighthood. It’s about a real anti-establishment man and a fake one
If the British establishment really wants to troll Ukip, then I suppose it ought to give Douglas Carswell a knighthood for blocking Nigel Farage’s knighthood.
He says he didn’t, of course, and I don’t see how he could have done. Farage, though, clearly thinks he did, and his wrath about this is the most fun thing to have happened in British politics for ages. He’s furious. His little demons are furious. Too furious, really. ‘This must be about something else,’ I kept thinking. ‘Deep down, it must be. But what?’
According to the great smoked kipper himself, in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, Carswell has been a thorn in the side of Ukip ever since he had the temerity to join it and then win two Westminster elections on its behalf. It didn’t mention knighthoods once, that article, although I’d like to think Farage winced forlornly at the byline. Instead it raged about Carswell’s closeness to Vote Leave, which, reckons Farage, directly contributed to that group becoming the official Out campaign in the referendum, rather than Ukip’s preferred Leave.eu or Grassroots Out. Remember that? Vaguely? He does.
Meanwhile, the millionaire Arron Banks, who somehow manages to be in Farage’s pocket even though Farage is in his, like some sort of grotesque contortionist act, was sounding off about Carswell in the Daily Express. Possibly you missed this because, well, Daily Express, but it was strident stuff. He did mention the knighthood, accused Carswell of sabotaging it and said he should be kicked out of the party as a result. Banks wants to be made party chairman, whereupon he will kick Carswell out, or else he plans to run against Carswell in his Clacton constituency at the next election in a great Ukip vs Ukip showdown. That’s how cross he is. ‘These dullards aren’t bringing in Tory votes,’ he said. This echoed Farage’s own remarks a few days before, that Nuttall had lost in Stoke because he was too centrist. ‘We failed to get tactical votes from the Conservatives,’ he said.
Now, mere weeks ago, it was Labour voters who were supposed to be ripe for Ukip plucking. This, supposedly, was because they were pro-Brexit, protectionist and anti-immigration, while Labour had become a party only for people who eat muesli and drive electric cars around the North Circular. This was the consensus in Westminster generally and, as far as one can make out, Ukip agreed with it. Just last week, though, the political scientist John Curtice pointed out something which ought to have been obvious for ages, which was that although most Labour constituencies did indeed vote Brexit, the majority of Labour voters in those constituencies did not. Or to put that another way, the whole strategy was bollocks. Whereupon, bang on time, along came the Stoke by-election to prove the point.
But it’s not wholly clear why any of this should have been Douglas Carswell’s fault. Liberal, anti-protectionist and actively pro-immigration, he’d hardly have been the poster boy for those mythical old Labour Brexiteers, even if they had existed, which they didn’t. So it seems to me that Banks and Farage, in seeking to pin the blame for their own massive miscalculation on him, are angry with him about something else altogether.
Which is where we come back to the knighthood. It is also where we come back to their ongoing resentment about not being the official Leave campaign, even though it was almost a year ago, for God’s sake, and they won anyway. And it is also where we should bring in Carswell’s first offence against the Ukip hierarchy, which came about two years ago when he declined the ‘Short money’ that opposition parties get to finance their operations, thereby doing Farage out of the sort of swanky Westminster base that all the other parties enjoy. Essentially, the problem with Carswell is that he truly believes all the anti-establishment stuff. He really does think that Ukip should be a party apart. Whereas the rest of them don’t. They only pretend.
You can see it with Farage in America. There he is, this man who failed seven times to even become an MP, going on talk shows and basking in the vague presumption over there that he’s probably, like, the Limey prime minister or something. At Trump’s elbow, he gets to consider himself a statesman, a potential ambassador. Likewise Banks, a man who was once so piqued when William Hague didn’t remember his name that he immediately gave Ukip a million quid. These people do not want to smash the establishment. They want to be the establishment. This is why they keep fighting the referendum even though the referendum is won, because they bristle with resentment at their lack of recognition, the lack of a ticker-tape parade for having won it. This is also, I suppose, why Paul Nuttall wears tweed, even though it makes him look like a skinhead Rupert Bear.
These people don’t hate the establishment. They only hate the fact that they aren’t quite in it. They want respect. They want to be grandees, with clubs in St James’s, House of Lords stationery and invitations to the royal garden party. They want, damn it, a goddamn knighthood. I bet they thought they’d have all these things by now. And yet somehow still they don’t. Bummer, eh?
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
I do NOT use or bother reading FaceBook
I DO have a Voice Mail Message System
I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
I ONLY GUARANTEE to phone back identifiable UK Land Line Messages
I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
it just shows the damage done to Ukip – not just by the lies of Paul Nuttall, their present totally discredited Leader, but by the incompetent, profligate and low grade leadership it has had for many years. A leadership based on a Marmite personality cult led by a man who fell out with and drove away so many men and women of competence, skill and culture and surrounded himself with low grade dross and self serving ne’re do wells who were too incompetent or too stupid to challenge him!
Now that the days of the One Man Band are over the party is near total collapse with squabbling and back stabbing at every level and absolutely no one of any caliber or competence to lead it forward.
There is good reason and sound evidence that now that we have won the Referendum which Nikki Sinclaire so clearly gained for us, BreXit is now inevitable.
Ukip has no role to play and no future – Even Arron Banks’ political cartoon strip Westmonster has made this clear.
UKIP raises hardly any money, badly needs help
Party’s finances tanking.
by Westmonster
March 2, 2017
The latest financial figures for Britain’s political parties are out and UKIP has raised less even than the Green Party.
UKIP raised just £33,000 in comparison to £30k for the Women’s Equality Party, £46k for the Greens and the Liberal Democrats who raised £2 million in the same period.
Whilst it is amazing that the party has remained steady on the polls with such little money, it badly needs to sort the finances out.
Westmonster and Leave.EU’s Arron Banks recently offered himself up as Chairman for the party on the back of a track record of raising £11 million in 18 months for the Brexit movement.
If UKIP is serious about bringing in big donors and sorting the finances out with someone connected to the big players, they should take him up on the offer.
Hard to see how a skint party can be an effective opposition.
To view the original of this article See: Westmonster – Arron Banks’ newsline!
Regards,
Greg_L-W.
~~~~~~~~~~#########~~~~~~~~~~
Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins
tel: 44 (0)1594 – 528 337
Calls from ‘Number Withheld’ phones Are Blocked
All unanswered messages are recorded.
Leave your name & a UK land line number & I will return your call.
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
I do NOT use or bother reading FaceBook
I DO have a Voice Mail Message System
I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
I ONLY GUARANTEE to phone back identifiable UK Land Line Messages
I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
the Government is making claims of ensuring everyone has high speed connection to broadband – a situation they are seemingly a million miles from achieving, whilst the public, myself included, clamour for workable broadband speeds and reliability in this modern age (which we do not have in this area!).
People can hardly complain when once people get decent connections, particvularly if they are stupid enough to plaster their private details all over the likes of Facebook, Instagram and the like, don’t be surprised if corporations, politicians, government and crooks use that data you have freely given.
We have here the latest version of invasion of privacy which is just as specious and fundamentally dishonest as all those petty nobodies who had their phones hacked and got huge compensation for being too idle or too stupid to change their passwords!
The internet is remarkably simple to control, but the will to do so is not there!
On line obscenity, abuse, pornography can be stopped with one simple control – but the industry and Government seem unwilling to do anything about it.
In the mean time don’t expect anything on the internet to be private – it just isn’t – and for as long as it isn’t don’t be surprised or complain if the information you pump out is used, whether to your advantage or against!
Leave.EU used ‘creepy’ Facebook profiling technology to win Brexit campaign — and now the data watchdog is investigating
Jake Kanter March 2017
View photos
Nigel Farage
PA
Leave.EU admits using “creepy” Facebook tech to scoop up data and target voters with anti-EU messages.
The data firm that helped Donald Trump take office, Cambridge Analytica, distances itself from the Leave.EU project.
Questions over whether Leave.EU broke rules on political donations and if Cambridge Analytica breached data protection laws.
LONDON — The communications director for Leave.EU, the Nigel Farage-backed Brexit campaign group, has admitted using “creepy” Facebook profiling technology to persuade Brits to vote to leave Europe.
Leave.EU communications director Andy Wigmore told The Observer at the weekend that the group — which is bankrolled by UKIP’s biggest donor Aaron Banks — harvested personal data last year and targeted voters on Facebook with anti-EU messaging.
He claimed Leave.EU worked with Cambridge Analytica (CA), the data firm credited with helping Donald Trump win the US election, on an informal basis on the project. CA has denied it worked for the campaign, however.
Now Leave.EU is the subject of a complaint over whether it broke the rules on political donations, and Cambridge Analytica is being investigated by the government’s data protection agency over whether it breached privacy laws, sources tell Business Insider.
Facebook as a propaganda weapon
Wigmore told The Observer that Facebook was a powerful weapon in Leave.EU’s armoury. “Using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert,” he said.
“And you knew there would also be other people in their network who liked what they liked, so you could spread. And then you follow them. The computer never stops learning and it never stops monitoring.”
View photos
A man is silhouetted against a video screen with a Facebook logo as he poses with a Samsung S4 smartphone in this photo illustration taken in the central Bosnian town of Zenica, August 14, 2013. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo
Thomson ReutersHe admitted that the technology’s accuracy is unsettling. Wigmore said: “It’s really creepy! It’s why I’m not on Facebook! I tried it on myself to see what information it had on me and I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ What’s scary is that my kids had put things on Instagram and it picked that up. It knew where my kids went to school.”
The firm has developed a proprietary technique known as “psychographics” to profile individuals and target them with messages, but in a statement to Business Insider, it said it played no part in Leave.EU’s Brexit campaign. “Cambridge Analytica did not carry out any kind of paid or unpaid work for Leave.EU,” a spokesman told us.
Business Insider contacted Leave.EU four times to ask why CA was disputing Wigmore’s version of events and request more information about the data firm’s actual involvement in the social media profiling. Leave.EU did not respond to our emails or phone calls.
Complaint to Electoral Commission and data protection probe
A complaint has been filed with the Electoral Commission over CA’s alleged work for Leave.EU, according to a source who has seen the complaint. Under election rules, political parties must declare donations of £7,500 or more, including services-in-kind.
“My guess is that we are now beginning to see a rather fuller picture of how the Leave vote and the Trump vote really came about,” the source told Business Insider. The source was a supporter of Britain remaining in the European Union but agreed only to talk anonymously in order to avoid any attendant negative publicity.
View photos
Brexit protest
To view the original of this article CLICK HERE
Regards,
Greg_L-W.
~~~~~~~~~~#########~~~~~~~~~~
Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins
tel: 44 (0)1594 – 528 337
Calls from ‘Number Withheld’ phones Are Blocked
All unanswered messages are recorded.
Leave your name & a UK land line number & I will return your call.
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
I do NOT use or bother reading FaceBook
I DO have a Voice Mail Message System
I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
I ONLY GUARANTEE to phone back identifiable UK Land Line Messages
I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
it seems utterly ridiculous to me to believe that Nigel Farage might not want to feature in the establishment’s honours list for at least a Knighthood but much more valuably for him as a Peer with access to one of the best Gentlemen’s clubs in Europe if not the world – a club that would give him not only perceived stature but also a platform to perform.
To pretend this dapper little performer who would cross continents to be filmed either in the company of someone or to have a platform for his performances sees himself as a part of the establishment, with his minor public school background, one hesitates to say education as he did not obtain any qualifications to my knowledge, to claim he is anti-establishment is risible.
This is a man who cajoled a friend to open the way for him to buy himself the nowadays meaningless title of ‘Freeman of The City of London’.
This is a man who colluded with John Ison who set-up Nikki Sinclaire with lies and false evidence to steal her achievement as the individual from whom he stole the rightfull title of earning BreXit. Whilst Nigel Farage was actively campaigning against the petition Nikki Sinclaire and her team worked so hard to build. It is little wonder Stoke was called BreXit central as it was in Stoke that Nikki Sinclaire launched her campaign and to which her petition team returned most regularly.
With mobile office and her ad-vans
A team which contra John Ison’s lies, for which he was censured in court but has as yet not been prosecuted, and Ukip’s propoganda she was shown in Court to have funded from her own income CLICK HERE
That Nikki Sinclaire obtained the 250,000 paper signatures that were delivered to Downing Street
is undeniable and as a direct result of her work, work which Nigel Farage actively set out to sabotage, the very petition which obtained the House of Commons debate in which David Cameron’s coalition experienced its greatest rebellion – the vote which led to the Tory commitment to hold an unequivocal In / Out Referendum – the very Referendum Nigel Farage refused to back.
It is perfectly reasonable to believe, based upon the facts, that without the efforts of Nikki Sinclaire and the team she put together and largely funded there would have been no petition, no debate, no referendum and hence no BreXit & Teresa May would never have become Prime Minister!
Of course Nigel Farage sees himself as an establishment figure as he dresses and acts his way through life as a Tory clone of the Hurray Henries of the City – to pretend, after all his efforts to stuff his overseas tax haven bank accounts such as his Isle of Man account into which he very early on deposited £1/4 Million to launch it and his profligate life style surely only the media and the very gullible are fooled into believing he is anti establishment and would not grasp any kind of preferment on the establishment ladder with open arms.
‘Anti-establishment’ Nigel Farage squirms as he’s asked 6 TIMES about wanting a knighthood
The ex-Ukip leader was put under the spotlight by the BBC in a toe-curling exchange on live radio as his party descends into civil war
‘Anti-establishment’ Nigel Farage squirmed today as he was asked SIX TIMES about wanting a knighthood.
The ex-Ukip leader was put under the spotlight by the BBC in a toe-curling exchange on live radio as his party descends into a new civil war.
Mr Farage has launched a brutal vendetta against Ukip’s only MP Douglas Carswell, saying he tried to “sabotage” him and is really a Tory.
But interviewer John Humphrys thought there just might be a link to reports Mr Carswell was against the pint-swigging right-winger getting a knighthood.
As the Radio 4 Today presenter grilled Mr Farage he initially ducked the question, turning his fire back on Mr Carswell.
Scroll down for the full transcript
Nigel Farage was questioned about his desire for a knighthood again and again (Photo: Getty)
Eventually he said he didn’t “particularly” want a knighthood – but then added tantalisingly: “If something came along I might accept it.”
Mr Farage gave a similar response yesterday, when he ignored a question about whether he was so anti-establishment he wouldn’t take a gong.
Mr Farage fumed: “He will do anything he can to damage leading figures in Ukip. He’s working for the Conservatives, it’s plain for all to see.”
Former Farage aide Michael Heaver compared Mr Carswell to a Soviet spy.
“Forget U-K-I-P, it was more KGB,” he told the BBC. “This is not conspiracy. This is fact.”
Douglas Carswell has been compared by enemies to a KGB spy… (Photo: Reuters)
Making the row even more absurd, Ukip donor Arron Banks is now planning to run against only MP Mr Carswell at the next election.
Millionaire Banks’ spokesman said the knighthood row was the “final straw”.
Ukip had formally demanded a knighthood for Mr Farage in January claiming he was a “figure of international significance”.
… and donor Arron Banks is planning to stand against him at the next election (Photo: PA)
But in an e-mail leaked to the Telegraph Mr Carswell – who was responsible for pushing the bid for a knighthood in Westminster – suggested Mr Farage could be handed an OBE “for services to headline-writing”.
That suggested Mr Carswell did not want Mr Farage, who he has fought in the past, to be knighted.
The MP denied this, saying: “I made every effort to make sure Ukip got its fair share of peerages and honours.”
But he did tweet “knight night” as the story broke.
That toe-curling exchange in full
FARAGE: The time has now come to have a clean break to make sure we don’t have influences like [Douglas] Carswell.
BBC INTERVIEWER: This isn’t because you rather dislike him because he stopped you getting a knighthood? It’s not sour grapes is it?
I dislike him because he damaged me, Ukip and the Leave campaign…
Stopped you getting a knighthood?
…no, back in December 2015. And I said then to the party’s ruling body we’ve got to get rid of this guy, they didn’t listen to me, he did his best, all through the referendum, to undermine me. He wasn’t able to do so, I’m pleased to say. Paul Nuttall needs to be given a clear run at this.
And it’s got nothing to do with your knighthood at all then?
No I’ve been campaigning to get rid of him for a very long time.
But it’s got nothing to do with your knighthood, is the question?
Well, no, erm, whether I would have ever got one or not I have no idea, but the point, the point is, is he will do anything he can to damage leading figures in Ukip. He’s working for the Conservatives, it’s plain for all to see.
What about you, would you like a knighthood?
Er, I’d like to see Britain leave the European Union.
Would you like a knighthood?
Not particularly.
Oh! Well that solves it then in that case, you don’t want one, they won’t offer one. What about a peerage then?
Nope, wouldn’t want one at all.
So you don’t want anything?
I would not want a peerage. If something else came along I might accept it.
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
I do NOT use or bother reading FaceBook
I DO have a Voice Mail Message System
I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
I ONLY GUARANTEE to phone back identifiable UK Land Line Messages
I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
~~~~~~~~~~#########~~~~~~~~~~
Ukip-vs-EUkip 