The year 2017 is going to be critical for the survival of UKIP. The identity and procedures of the Party are to be reviewed and determined. The coming months may well prove decisive.
On Monday the 27th March 2017, the Telegraph on-line reported a press conference given by Party Leader Paul Nuttall and attended by former Party leader, Nigel Farage. The report stated:
Mr Nuttall told The Telegraph: “We are going to rebrand the post-Brexit Ukip and it will all be launched at the annual conference in Torquay in September.”
The party’s pound sign logo might disappear as well as its familiar yellow and purple colours. Mr Nuttall said: “Everything is up for debate.”
Plans for the overhaul were due to be discussed at a meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee this afternoon.
Behind the scenes, Constitutional change has been on the agenda for two years, with little actual progress. Clearly now, a change in the Constitution is envisaged and the existing Constitution requires any amendment to be put to the full membership of the Party in a postal vote. [Article 13.1.2 of the Party Constitution under which, and according to which, Rules are made – Article 14.2].
Ideas and proposals will undoubtedly be discussed at the highest levels of the Party over the coming weeks and months. While I am sure that those with an authoritarian agenda have already got their ideas worked out, I strongly suspect that what actually does emerge at the Party conference in September is yet to be properly thought through and decided.
The stance this campaign takes about the Party’s future has been made clear in posts and pages on this blog, and it is to be summed up in the campaign’s motto, a grass roots campaign for integrity and democracy in the UK Independence Party.
I would like to think that come September the need for this campaign will have disappeared because the proposed changes announced yesterday will have met our concerns.
We will see.
One thing I do know now, however, is that all this is going to depend on the leader, Paul Nuttall.
Paul has before him a monumental and historic challenge.
Get it right, and he will go down in the history books as the man who led the Party through the crisis, and on to success.
Get it wrong – and that is all too easy – and UKIP will disappear, despite the open goal and despite the historic moment in British politics when there is still no viable Opposition Party to the Conservatives.
That UKIP is at a cross roads is clear from the Stoke Central and Copeland by election results last month.
What is also clear is that UKIP came second in Stoke and that the UKIP vote is holding steady around the 12% level reached in the General Election of 2015 nearly two years ago.
The May local elections are likely to be disastrous for UKIP – but it won’t be the end of the world.
What will be the end of the world is if Paul Nuttall makes the wrong choices for the Party’s future over this summer.
Paul Nuttall is going to need a two thirds majority of those members voting to get his proposed changes implemented. If he fails, then we are left with the status quo which those who are alive to the significance of such technical matters know, is quite unsatisfactory.
To have confidence in such a vote, it will need to be run independently of the Party hierarchy. And a reforming leader should not be afraid of that.
But a reforming leader will have to ensure that the changes he brings forward are beyond reasonable criticism, and that they will enjoy widespread support. It is absolutely essential at this critical juncture in our fortunes that the membership at large can have confidence in the changes, and that members can at last be assured of a meaningful engagement in party decision making be that on policy or on party performance.
The Party now needs to engage members in much more than leafleting and fundraising.
If the party is to expand and become a viable main Opposition party, then it must enthuse and engage members. And it must so engage them that they learn the craft of how to become responsible and effective holders of public office because they learned it within the Party first.
That is going to mean a major overhaul of the party apparatus and culture.
The one criteria that the framers of the Constitutional reforms should keep in mind as the KEY reference point for their proposal is this:
Will these reforms reflect our patriotic, democratic, libertarian standpoint by bringing in procedures which enable members to learn the craft of responsible democratic politics in order to become effective and trustworthy candidates for elected public office ?
Personally, I do not see how such a criterion cannot be applied at such a critical moment as this.
Paul Nuttall and the NEC have before them the opportunity to make this Party an exemplary democratic Party – something the electorate is crying out to see.
Will they take it, or will they be content with the way politics in UKIP has been done and let an historic opportunity slip away ?
And the UK Independence Party with it …
We’ll see.
Critical issues we must get right with such radical change in prospect:
https://therightwaycampaign.wordpress.com/reject-on-line-voting
https://therightwaycampaign.wordpress.com/democracy-demagogy-et-alia
and for the all important question of what we stand for as a Party:
https://therightwaycampaign.wordpress.com/independence
Ray Catlin
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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