Farage stays on as UKIP leader
Discussion
tangerine_sedge said:
eharding said:
Farage said:
No – if I fail to win South Thanet, it is curtains for me. I will have to step down.
"Curtains for me". Well, he changed his mind - such is his prerogative, but in doing so he looks - at least to those not looking through 'kipper-tinted lenses - very much like a weasel for doing so.The spectacle of the local 'kipper sycophants tying themselves in knots trying to put a positive spin on this is reminiscent of the same crew trying to justify Bloom's "Bongo Bongo" comments.
They would be far better off admitting, even if just to themselves, that Curtains' Hokey-Cokey leadership shenanigans over the past week at best looks rather bungled, and leaves a nasty whiff in the air. It won't be the end of Farage, but the whole thing does him no credit at all.
Regardless of what UKIP supports and non supports think - this will come back to haunt him.
Idiotic to say his resignation wasn;t accepted - like they can force him to stay or something. Ife he really wnated to come back then he should have waited til September - even that would seemingly gone against the principle of resigning and letting someone new in.
Idiotic to say his resignation wasn;t accepted - like they can force him to stay or something. Ife he really wnated to come back then he should have waited til September - even that would seemingly gone against the principle of resigning and letting someone new in.
MGJohn said:
Terminator X said:
Tbf if I resigned from my job and my boss said no I'd simply tell him to Foxtrot Oscar!
TX.
A word in your shell like.TX.
Study the wording of your contract before so doing. Could be costly not to do so.
TX.
Mojooo said:
Regardless of what UKIP supports and non supports think - this will come back to haunt him.
Idiotic to say his resignation wasn;t accepted - like they can force him to stay or something. Ife he really wnated to come back then he should have waited til September - even that would seemingly gone against the principle of resigning and letting someone new in.
It might be that he took the view that if he generally were to stand down, the mayhem and chaos that would ensue within UKIP - even just until the Autumn conference - would resemble the scenes in Gremlins 2 after the inevitable get-wet / fed-after-midnight scenario, and whilst his resign/un-resign muppetry will undoubtedly cause him an on-going major pain in the arse, actually following through and making good on his promise to stand-down and then trying to deal with the multi-dimensional cluster-fruck that his party would become over the summer was by far the worst option.Idiotic to say his resignation wasn;t accepted - like they can force him to stay or something. Ife he really wnated to come back then he should have waited til September - even that would seemingly gone against the principle of resigning and letting someone new in.
Mojooo said:
Regardless of what UKIP supports and non supports think - this will come back to haunt him.
Idiotic to say his resignation wasn;t accepted - like they can force him to stay or something. Ife he really wnated to come back then he should have waited til September - even that would seemingly gone against the principle of resigning and letting someone new in.
Back by popular and immediate demand. Some obviously including much of the media don't like it up 'em... Idiotic to say his resignation wasn;t accepted - like they can force him to stay or something. Ife he really wnated to come back then he should have waited til September - even that would seemingly gone against the principle of resigning and letting someone new in.
No doubt our oh so clever media in all its forms will ensure your "haunting" will continue. However, his shoulders can take the huge strain of that ..
However, unlike Nigel, they will tire long before he does. Then it will be ....Moving swiftly on .... up next ... look at the size of these etc...
Terminator X said:
MGJohn said:
Terminator X said:
Tbf if I resigned from my job and my boss said no I'd simply tell him to Foxtrot Oscar!
TX.
A word in your shell like.TX.
Study the wording of your contract before so doing. Could be costly not to do so.
TX.
MGJohn said:
el stovey said:
They had to really, he's UKIP all on his own. There's nobody else approaching his popularity in the party.
Or Westminster come to that. Love the way our media luvvies tried in vain to score points off him and time and again failed miserably to do so.For someone "all on his own", those four million votes obviously count for nowt in the thicko mindsets of some. Even the now Desperate Dave has had no alternative but to take that into account now at the top of his EU agenda on an increasingly timely basis. Too right and long overdue. Boy will he have to work hard to get a result that pleases not simply UKIP voters, but the back benchers who also have strong views on our current relationship within the EU whilst at the same time satisfying the Tory Party Paymasters who will always call the tune. Not to mention the many folks I know who voted Tory whilst hoping the salient features within UKIP's policies will also come to pass.
Just because rather more than UKIP's four million voted Tory, does not automatically mean Tory voters reject all of UKIP's policy.
Zod said:
MGJohn said:
el stovey said:
They had to really, he's UKIP all on his own. There's nobody else approaching his popularity in the party.
Or Westminster come to that. Love the way our media luvvies tried in vain to score points off him and time and again failed miserably to do so.For someone "all on his own", those four million votes obviously count for nowt in the thicko mindsets of some. Even the now Desperate Dave has had no alternative but to take that into account now at the top of his EU agenda on an increasingly timely basis. Too right and long overdue. Boy will he have to work hard to get a result that pleases not simply UKIP voters, but the back benchers who also have strong views on our current relationship within the EU whilst at the same time satisfying the Tory Party Paymasters who will always call the tune. Not to mention the many folks I know who voted Tory whilst hoping the salient features within UKIP's policies will also come to pass.
Just because rather more than UKIP's four million voted Tory, does not automatically mean Tory voters reject all of UKIP's policy.
Give it time.
k do you know? Funkycoldribena said:
Anything that rattles your cage is a good thing.
My cage is stable and nicely damped.More accurately I'm chuckling to myself at the disciples being ever more willing to worship Jesus Farage, for he has risen again to save us from the evil of, erm, the EU.
A man so popular he didn't get the seat in parliament (yet again, how many times has he tried in how many places?) but his colleagues won the council.
My name is Farage, I have principles and, if you don't like them, I have others.
jjlynn27 said:
Why do you feel qualified to speak for most people?
Offer to do something and doing something are two very different things. If he actually wanted to resign, them not accepting his resignation would count for very little. Man of his word would say 'Sorry chaps, I gave my word, of to a summer of fun, see you at re-election, where we all know I'll win anyhow'.
Saying 'it's not credible for me to lead the party if I don't win ST' should mean just that. That should preclude him from leading until next GE, and only IF he wins that seat or any other seat he picks as a target.
I have sufficient life experience to know that I am correct.Offer to do something and doing something are two very different things. If he actually wanted to resign, them not accepting his resignation would count for very little. Man of his word would say 'Sorry chaps, I gave my word, of to a summer of fun, see you at re-election, where we all know I'll win anyhow'.
Saying 'it's not credible for me to lead the party if I don't win ST' should mean just that. That should preclude him from leading until next GE, and only IF he wins that seat or any other seat he picks as a target.
His situation is no different to the many people who hand in their resignation at work and are persuaded to stay. In his case I happen to agree with what you say but given the context in which the terminology is commonly used I don't think it makes another poster on this thread a liar.
The comparison with Clegg and Miliband is absurd. Clegg presided over what must be the biggest collapse in vote of any major party in living memory (?) with a bigger swing away from him than the Tories in 1997. Miliband saw his party wiped out in Scotland where after 13 years of government and a major recession they had still remained the largest party in 2010, and losing seats in Labour heartlands after 5 years in opposition and a period of so called austerity. It was an absolute catastrophe for both parties.
UKIP attracted an extraordinary number of voters, with a swing of nearly 10% to the party. They had 120 second places, and many of them at the expense of Labour, showing that the party has a much broader appeal than simply disgruntled working class Tories in areas of high immigration
Farage is a strong, recognisable character, he is a focal point for the party and potentially for the Out campaign in any EU referendum. The NEC presumably thought similar and persuaded him to stay, giving him a renewed mandate to lead the party.
I personally thought a party wide leadership election would be a better way of getting this mandate, but in the circumstances it seems more likely to have split the party rather than united it.
Labour and the Lib Dems are in a totally different situation because the party leadership has utterly failed on any measure and plenty of seasoned politicians in both organisations will have strong opinions as to why. UKIP have enjoyed phenomenal growth and huge, national support and their challenge in the next 5 years is to translate that into winning actual seats. To jettison the principal architect of this growth doesn't make much sense.
UKIP attracted an extraordinary number of voters, with a swing of nearly 10% to the party. They had 120 second places, and many of them at the expense of Labour, showing that the party has a much broader appeal than simply disgruntled working class Tories in areas of high immigration
Farage is a strong, recognisable character, he is a focal point for the party and potentially for the Out campaign in any EU referendum. The NEC presumably thought similar and persuaded him to stay, giving him a renewed mandate to lead the party.
I personally thought a party wide leadership election would be a better way of getting this mandate, but in the circumstances it seems more likely to have split the party rather than united it.
Labour and the Lib Dems are in a totally different situation because the party leadership has utterly failed on any measure and plenty of seasoned politicians in both organisations will have strong opinions as to why. UKIP have enjoyed phenomenal growth and huge, national support and their challenge in the next 5 years is to translate that into winning actual seats. To jettison the principal architect of this growth doesn't make much sense.
AJS- said:
The comparison with Clegg and Miliband is absurd. Clegg presided over what must be the biggest collapse in vote of any major party in living memory (?) with a bigger swing away from him than the Tories in 1997. Miliband saw his party wiped out in Scotland where after 13 years of government and a major recession they had still remained the largest party in 2010, and losing seats in Labour heartlands after 5 years in opposition and a period of so called austerity. It was an absolute catastrophe for both parties.
UKIP attracted an extraordinary number of voters, with a swing of nearly 10% to the party. They had 120 second places, and many of them at the expense of Labour, showing that the party has a much broader appeal than simply disgruntled working class Tories in areas of high immigration
Farage is a strong, recognisable character, he is a focal point for the party and potentially for the Out campaign in any EU referendum. The NEC presumably thought similar and persuaded him to stay, giving him a renewed mandate to lead the party.
I personally thought a party wide leadership election would be a better way of getting this mandate, but in the circumstances it seems more likely to have split the party rather than united it.
Labour and the Lib Dems are in a totally different situation because the party leadership has utterly failed on any measure and plenty of seasoned politicians in both organisations will have strong opinions as to why. UKIP have enjoyed phenomenal growth and huge, national support and their challenge in the next 5 years is to translate that into winning actual seats. To jettison the principal architect of this growth doesn't make much sense.
I agree that the performance of Labour and the Lib Dems relative to 2010 was far worse whilst Ukip showed significant improvement. However, I honestly think that this is as good as it's ever going to get for them. They are effectively a one-issue party and that issue is going to get addressed directly by the electorate in a referendum. UKIP attracted an extraordinary number of voters, with a swing of nearly 10% to the party. They had 120 second places, and many of them at the expense of Labour, showing that the party has a much broader appeal than simply disgruntled working class Tories in areas of high immigration
Farage is a strong, recognisable character, he is a focal point for the party and potentially for the Out campaign in any EU referendum. The NEC presumably thought similar and persuaded him to stay, giving him a renewed mandate to lead the party.
I personally thought a party wide leadership election would be a better way of getting this mandate, but in the circumstances it seems more likely to have split the party rather than united it.
Labour and the Lib Dems are in a totally different situation because the party leadership has utterly failed on any measure and plenty of seasoned politicians in both organisations will have strong opinions as to why. UKIP have enjoyed phenomenal growth and huge, national support and their challenge in the next 5 years is to translate that into winning actual seats. To jettison the principal architect of this growth doesn't make much sense.
So where does that leave them? They have one MP (and you can say what you like about the number of second places or the overall share of the vote, the party and their supporters have to consider that a pretty disasterous result) and they are about to have their whole raison d'être undermined.
On that basis, I can see why Farage would have thought resignation was the right thing to do even if he hadn't already promised to do it if he didn't win his seat. And we can argue all day about the semantics of whether he actually resigned, the fact remains that he said he would not have the credibility to lead his party without a seat.
So either he has now changed his mind and has decided that what he said before was rubbish and actually he does still have the necessary credibility. Or he doesn't and actually this whole resignation circus is just undermining what little he might have had left. I'm inclined to go with the latter.
I saw this coming from a mile off. Just expected him to make it look a bit more convincing.
Driving out to the cliffs to resign in front of the cameras? The man and his party are like a bloody stage show!
He is the best man to lead ukip though. Have you seen the rest of em? If there was another person worth his salt, they'd cut him loose in an instant. People talking like the party are not stabbing him in the back! They all looked at each other and came to the sensible conclusion that the rest of the party is useless.
Could you imagine if we did have the PR system in place? Who the hell would ukip have put in all them seats??? I dread to think!
Driving out to the cliffs to resign in front of the cameras? The man and his party are like a bloody stage show!
He is the best man to lead ukip though. Have you seen the rest of em? If there was another person worth his salt, they'd cut him loose in an instant. People talking like the party are not stabbing him in the back! They all looked at each other and came to the sensible conclusion that the rest of the party is useless.
Could you imagine if we did have the PR system in place? Who the hell would ukip have put in all them seats??? I dread to think!
ash
What principles is he forfeiting?
lauda
I think the votes they got despite Cameron's promise of a referendum, and without apparently harming the Conservatives (who are the most hostile of the major parties to the EU project in the public eye) shows that they are definitely not a single issue pressure group.
Sounds to me like he did change his mind at the insistence of the NEC. Nothing wrong with changing your mind if the facts change.
What principles is he forfeiting?
lauda
I think the votes they got despite Cameron's promise of a referendum, and without apparently harming the Conservatives (who are the most hostile of the major parties to the EU project in the public eye) shows that they are definitely not a single issue pressure group.
Sounds to me like he did change his mind at the insistence of the NEC. Nothing wrong with changing your mind if the facts change.
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