Ukip

Coffee Shots: Friends reunited

What a difference a day makes. Only yesterday it seemed that the Ukip civil war was still rattling on, with Nigel Farage’s former senior advisor Raheem Kassam writing a feisty article for the Telegraph criticising Douglas Carswell, who had in turn criticised Farage. Happily relations between Carswell and Farage seem amiable for now. They were joined by rumoured Ukip leadership hopeful Suzanne Evans for a selfie outside Number 10. The trio met with members of the Green party and Plaid Cymru as they called for David Cameron to organise fairer voting system than first past the post. Not that this cause stopped Carswell from focussing on Ukip matters at the meet. Is this a photo of the future Ukip leadership?

Ukip’s Suzanne Evans: ‘nobody wants Nigel to leave’

Ukip’s internal warfare continues today with interventions from both sides. Suzanne Evans, the party’s deputy chairman, appeared on the Andrew Marr Show this morning to play down the tensions. She told Andrew Marr that the situation has been overegged: ‘I don’t think anyone hates anyone, I genuinely don’t. I think we’ve had some problems with some advisers around Nigel who very much kept him in their pocket if you like and he’s had too much influence from them. But they’ve gone.’ She singled out Raheem Kassam, Farage’s ex-senior advisor, who she happily noted has left the party and returned to work for Breitbart, a ‘far right, Tea Party, American style shock-and-awe publication’ where she

Douglas Carswell breaks cover and says Farage ‘needs to take a break now’

Nigel Farage said today his critics need to put up or shut up and Douglas Carswell has chosen the former. Confirming that he is the ‘senior figure’ Farage mentioned earlier, the Clacton MP has written an op-ed in the Times tomorrow calling for a change in direction. He says that ‘Ukip has arrived — and Ukip is here to stay’ but calls for Farage to step aside as leader, temporarily or permanently: ‘On Monday, Ukip’s national executive committee made a decision to reinstate Nigel as party leader. Yet even leaders need to take a break. Nigel needs to take a break now.’ But in classic Carswell style, he denies that he

Paul Lambert out as Ukip’s head of communications

The Ukip wars have taken another casualty: the party’s head of communications Paul ‘Gobby’ Lambert. Guido reports that the ‘press office has declared war on the leader’ and it appears Lambert is a casualty of the fighting. Lambert was brought in from the BBC last year to run the party’s media operation but there have been concerns from those around Farage about his performance in the role. Others in the party suggest he wanted to leave anyway after a long and exhausting campaign. From my understanding, Lambert decided he’d had enough and had no desire to renew his contract after the election. As with Raheem Kassam yesterday, it’s not entirely clear if he has been

Podcast special: can Nigel Farage survive the Ukip wars?

In this View from 22 special podcast, Fraser Nelson and Sebastian Payne discuss the ongoing Ukip wars with Laura Pitel from The Times. Can Nigel Farage survive as leader? Is there still a conflict between Team Farage and other tribes within the party? And what role has Douglas Carswell played, if any, in the briefing wars? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer or iPhone every week, or you can use the player below:

Lloyd Evans

Will anything go right for Nigel Farage?

Anxious viewers tuned into Question Time last night to watch live coverage of the ongoing Nigel Farage crisis. Quite a week for the Ukip leader. Up and down. In and out. And back in again. His pitch for a Westminster power-base imploded on election day. And he promptly quit, as promised. But his resignation fared no better than his parliamentary campaign. His withdrawal was rejected. Won’t anything go right for him? He explained to a glum audience in Uxbridge that after losing South Thanet he retreated to ‘a darkened room’ to examine his future. ‘I was going to walk out of there a free man but they dragged me back!’ This

Nigel Farage tells mystery ‘senior figure’ to put up or shut up

Nigel Farage’s fight back has continued with an interview on Sky News this morning. Following on from his appearance on Question Time, the Ukip leader described an ‘astonishing’ level of support for him within the party. But he admitted that there is someone high up within the party trying to cause trouble or oust him as leader: ‘I mean, I’ve never had support like it. There is one senior figure in UKIP briefing every single day, consistently, and he’s now moved on to “there must be a leadership election”. ‘That individual must make his mind up whether his future is with UKIP or not. What is clear is that the sheer level of

Have Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell reached détente over Ukip’s Short money?

The row over what to do with its Short money was the tinderbox for Ukip’s internal tensions. Although the war between Team Farage and Team O’Flynn has been bubbling away for months, the question of what to do with the £650,000 of public funds, combined with Nigel Farage’s un-resignation, kicked off a briefing war that brought these fights into the public domain. But we may have détente between Douglas Carswell and Nigel Farage on state funding. On last night’s Question Time, the Ukip leader — who put in a solid, if not particularly inspiring performance — took the radical step of promising not to take any public funds, which includes the Short money: ‘I’m going

Portrait of the week | 14 May 2015

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, soon got used to the surprise of the Conservatives being returned in the general election with a majority of 12. He retained George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer and made him First Secretary of State too. Theresa May, Philip Hammond, Michael Fallon and Iain Duncan Smith also stayed put, but Chris Grayling replaced William Hague, who had left the Commons, as Leader of the House, to be replaced as justice secretary by Michael Gove, who was replaced as chief whip by Mark Harper. Amber Rudd became Energy Secretary. John Whittingdale became Culture Secretary in place of Sajid Javid, who became Business Secretary. Boris

Cameron’s new mission

As David Cameron lined up beside Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband at the Cenotaph on the day after the general election, he said that he had thought he would be the one writing a resignation statement that day. He may also have imagined how history would have judged him: as a so-so Tory leader who didn’t quite manage to win an election against the reviled Gordon Brown and was booted out after one term. A leader who was good at balancing a coalition but who didn’t stand for (or achieve) very much himself. It would have been a miserable legacy. Luckily he now has the chance to reshape it. The

The ‘save Nigel Farage’ operation is underway, but is it too late?

It is touch and go whether Nigel Farage can survive as Ukip leader. With key figures such as former leader Roger Knapman, donor Stuart Wheeler and treasurer Hugh Williams saying it’s time for a change, the operation to ‘save’ Farage has begun in haste. Ukip’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall, who is seen as Farage’s anointed successor, has released an ambiguous statement of support, which doesn’t mention Farage by name, nor explicitly endorse him as leader: ‘The general election was a great success delivering 4 millions votes in the bag. The 2020 vision is on course. UKIP have the best communicator in British politics leading this party and who will play a vital

Raheem Kassam un-sacked as Nigel Farage’s senior adviser

Raheem Kassam, senior adviser to Nigel Farage, has not been ‘sacked’ from Ukip after all. It was reported earlier this afternoon that he had left the party today — as Patrick O’Flynn appeared to be asking for. But the party is being careful with its language. The party’s press office are simply saying: ‘Raheem Kassam is no longer working for Ukip’ This is technically correct: he is not ‘working’ for Ukip as he is currently on holiday in New York. Kassam has released his own statement, pointing out that he was only employed for the election campaign and his contract was due to finish at the end of the month: ‘I was GE2015 staff. My

Exclusive: Team Farage suggests O’Flynn has had ‘personal problems’

The briefing war inside Ukip continues with the Nigel Farage camp hitting back at Patrick O’Flynn, after his remarks in the Times today. The battle is between two sides: those who are close to and work for Nigel Farage, and others in the party who are concerned about who the Ukip leader is listening to. Team Farage believe the battle is about power and influence with the leader. But the attacks are getting personal: one source close to the Ukip leader suggests that O’Flynn has had ‘personal problems and this may be the manifestation of them’. Although Team Farage failed to deliver a victory in South Thanet, those who worked on his campaign are

Ukip wars, part 389: Patrick O’Flynn declares war on Nigel Farage

Ukip is doing a very good job of convincing voters it is not a serious party. After days of shadowboxing over the use of Short money to fund the party in Westminster, its economic spokesman Patrick O”Flynn has broken cover to attack Nigel Farage — and he certainly isn’t holding back. In today’s Times, O’Flynn says the Ukip leader has become ‘snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive’, instead of a ‘cheerful, ebullient, cheeky, daring’ politician. He goes on to describe the week of turmoil since Farage quit as leader, before withdrawing his resignation four days later: ‘What’s happened since Thursday night, Friday morning has certainly laid us open to the charge that this looks like an

Rod Liddle

Labour must estrange its awful voters

And so now we have to suffer the epic delusions, temper tantrums and hissy fits of the metro-left. They simply cannot believe how you scumbags could have got it so wrong last Thursday, you morons. You vindictive, selfish morons. That has been the general response from all of the people, the liberal middle-class lefties, who have cheerfully contributed towards making the once great Labour party effectively unelectable. You lot voted Tory out of fear — because you are stupid, stupid people. The Conservatives ran a ‘negative’ campaign and, because you are either simply horrible human beings, or just thick, you fell for it. That’s been the subtext of most of the

James Forsyth

Making Labour work

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thelastdaysofmiliband/media.mp3″ title=”Dan Hodges and Andrew Harrop discuss the final days of Miliband” startat=34] Listen [/audioplayer]The Labour party is in a worse position today than after its defeat in 1992. Then, the electorate sent Labour a clear and simple message: move to the centre, don’t say you’ll put taxes up and select a more prime ministerial leader. This time, the voters have sent the party a series of messages, several of which are contradictory. The reasons Labour failed to win Swindon South are very different from why it lost Morley and Outwood and the reasons for that defeat are different again in Scotland, where almost all seats fell to the

Time for the pundits to keep their word

There were some dangerous pledges made in the heat of the election battle from both politicians and pundits. Paddy Ashdown promised to eat his hat should the exit poll prediction bear out. It did, and he has not consumed his hat, though he did go halfway and consume a hat-shaped cake. A similarly rash exit poll reaction was had by radio’s Iain Dale back in 2010, though he has not yet come good on his promise to streak. Unlike, it seems, the Telegraph’s Dan Hodges who promised to run naked down Whitehall singing ‘Land of Hope of Glory’ if Ukip polled over 6 per cent of the vote: They did, and Hodges is standing by his

Rod Liddle

It’s Labour’s loss if they don’t take Ukip voters seriously

Almost four million people voted for Ukip on 7 May. That, in itself, is an astonishing achievement for a party which is a) newish and b) endured more vilification than even Ed Miliband had to put up with, from both the press and of course the BBC. It would be nice to think that at some point we will get over our obsession with the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon – and start taking Ukip as seriously as we do the Nats. Or, almost three times more seriously, if we wish to be properly democratic. Ukip was crucial to the Conservative victory, taking enormous numbers of votes from Labour supporters north of Watford. Labour