When press officers from Ukip enticed journalists along to a press conference at the end of the summer by promising that it would definitely be worth their while, they showed they weren’t exaggerating. That press conference was where Douglas Carswell defected. So today when Ukip told hacks that it would definitely be worth their while travelling from the final day of the Tory conference to a Gloucestershire country home for a 5pm press conference, everyone assumed there would be another defection.
5pm came, and up popped Nigel Farage and Arron Banks, a Tory donor who defected to Ukip earlier this week. Banks was increasing his donation to the party from £100,000 to £1 million, partly because William Hague had this morning said he’d never heard of the guy ‘so we’re not going to get too upset’ about his defection.
And that was that.
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