In the cases listed above, there is clear evidence of significant rule breaches by the party’s leadership. In all of those cases, allegations of wrong-doing by the leadership have not been adequately pursued.
Interestingly, my own local branch chairman has refused in writing to allow the subject to be discussed.
2. UKIP has shifted noticeably to the right. However attractive the proposition of having a handful of converted Tory MPs, allowing UKIP to become a refuge for the Tories in exile is alienating UKIP voters, particularly north of the Watford Gap. In my own region, the lurch to the right leaves Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Rutland without any MEP candidate representation within UKIP’s candidate list. The situation in the East Midlands reflects the general trend across the country in that UKIP MEP candidates do not represent the politics of the vast majority of UKIP members and voters in the region.
Aligned to that shift to the right has been an evidenced intent to play to the populist gallery whilst concealing the real agenda.
Increasingly, UKIP public appearances are becoming a sound bite driven public relations exercise, lacking in both substance and depth.
At best, there is a mismatch between the leadership and much of the voting public. At worst, it’s a cynical manipulation of populist opinion to meet the agenda of yet another
crony elite.
Whilst I doubt that it was your intention to model your public persona on Lord Percy, UKIP is beginning to resemble an episode of Blackadder, with candidates presenting as an
association of Elizabethan dandies.
Throw in a pomander and a trailing kerchief and the picture will be complete.
3. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a core faction associated with the party that is being used as a ‘Black Ops’ dirty tricks team against targets that include party members.
I believe that your own deep insecurity and paranoia have played a significant part in the
party’s Night of the Long Knives.
Much of the recent press coverage of alleged hacked social media sites has been deliberately misleading. There is increasing evidence that points to UKIP members close to the party’s headquarters being involved in the creation of cloned Facebook pages which have featured damaging fake posts falsely attributed to UKIP members. Screen grabs of these posts have been fed to the press, third hand, in an attempt to smear the targeted individuals and as a precursor to removing them from the party.
These are potentially criminal acts.
The involved young party activists claim a close association with the party Chairman.
Disturbingly, documentary evidence demonstrates that the Chief Executive Officer, Will Gilpin, was removed from post by the Chairman a matter of days after committing in writing to party members to investigate these allegations.
The evidence that I and others have collated has now been passed to the police who tell me that a Special Branch investigation is underway.
4. For nearly two years, I have been raising the issue of the lack of scrutiny and governance within the party’s management. The common error is to look at a relatively small head office and staff and assume that the party is a small organisation.
That is not the case.
It is clear that UKIP’s professional officers are devoid of the skills and experience required to run a complex, networked national organisation, including the delivery of
scrutiny and governance over both operational and political policies and strategy.
One of the starkest examples of this lack of governance has been the tolerance of the
party’s continued association with a convicted paedophile who, whilst no longer being a member, has continued to attend party functions and provide strategic UKIP documentation from his personal website.
Party members with children, who have been asked for lifts to UKIP events by the paedophile, have been left unaware of the background of an individual who is on the sex offenders register for life.
When warned about this individual, Chairman Steve Crowther has quite extraordinarily
contrived means to remove the reporting individuals from the party.
Through its lack of risk mitigating processes and actions, the party has knowingly exposed its members to undue risk.
My own efforts to raise the alarm have been ignored by the leadership, it being left to me to contact branches to alert them to the potential risks to members and to have photographs of the paedophile campaigning for UKIP removed from branch websites.
More recently, I have gathered evidence that I understand has previously been in Steve
Crowther’s possession that demonstrates the paedophile grooming a vulnerable young
UKIP member on Twitter, in violation of his probationary licence, yet Crowther has encouraged the individual to maintain his party activism.
If this is UKIP’s response, how many more paedophiles remain within the membership?
On the first couple of points, I am mindful that my written offers to provide you with professional management skills have been ignored. The candidate list’s swing to the right is a betrayal of the membership and our voters.
On the third item, conclusions around alleged criminality within the party must await the outcome of ongoing police investigations.
On the fourth item, the issue of the party leadership’s response to the activities of a convicted paedophile within its midst is not something that I can overlook. My work as Interim Chief Executive for Kids for Cash UK leaves me no room for association with a party that cannot deliver the requisite level of organisational rigour and competence required to protect its brand and its members.
I am left with no alternative but to resign my membership of UKIP forthwith. I remain
deeply respectful of the many genuine grass roots members who aspire to something better for our country but I feel that UKIP’s leadership is deceiving them. The focus is
clearly on leveraging the goodwill of the membership and the British people in pursuit of
a narrowly focussed personal agenda.
I wish the membership all the best.
Yours sincerely
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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