GERARD BATTEN: Richard Braine & UKIP Members Must Stand Up To The NECby Gerard Batten · 10:59 pm, August 25, 2019
UKIP is going through one of its periodic crises. This one could be fatal if it isn’t resolved soon. The heart of the current problem is that the NEC is out of touch with the membership and it is putting itself in opposition to Richard Braine who was elected on a clear mandate.
The Chairman and the NEC are preventing Richard installing his choice of Chairman, Liz Phillips. He has also been prevented from appointing me as his Deputy Leader.
Let me say, I have no personal desire to be Deputy Leader and agreed to Richard’s invitation in order to concentrate on membership recruitment, raising funds, and developing policy, three things at least I was good at as Leader.
You all know that the NEC prevented me from standing in the Leadership contest. I was prepared to run again to save the Party from what looked like its rapid decline.
However, the NEC declared that I had brought the Party into “disrepute” and that I am a member “not in good standing”. This is a gross and grievous insult. Without my efforts over sixteen months there would have been no Party, and all my political decisions were made in good faith. If I had ‘brought the Party into disrepute’ why did the NEC approve me as the lead candidate in London in the Euro elections?
The NEC are either showing phenomenal incompetence or their strings are being pulled from outside by those who want to see UKIP disappear. There are no prizes for guessing whose fingerprints are all over this.
If UKIP disappears then there will be no radical opposition to the Westminster parties. If Boris achieves Brexit, even a cosmetic one, the Brexit Party ‘supporters’ will flood back to the Tory party, and it will disappear. Neither they nor Mr Farage want a real radical political movement. They are all old Tories at heart.
...more at linkhttps://kippercentral.com/2019/08/25/ge ... o-the-nec/