According to the BBC and confirmed on the UKIP website, Nigel Farage is stepping down as leader of UKIP to concentrate on his election campaign against the Speaker, John Berscow.
Farage already has the backing of many Tories who would rather see a UKIP MP in Buckingham rather than Berscow and stands a real chance of unseating Berscow as Tories will be able to publically support and campaign on behalf of Farage without breaking the strict rules on Tory Party members supporting a candidate that isn't a Tory because the Speaker doesn't stand as a member of a party.
UKIP without Farage at the helm will be different, that's for sure. It will be a challenge to find someone as media-friendly and confident a speaker as Farage to front the party but UKIP is full of good people and I'm confident that we can find someone to lead us into a historic general election next year from which UKIP will emerge as a serious Westminster power.
Rather than write a leadership obituary (I'll leave that to the newspapers) we will instead kick off the speculation on who will replace Farage as leader. Here is my list of the top five contenders, in no particular order:
David Campbell-Bannerman
Paul Nuttall
Tim Aker
John Arnott
Chris Gill
Nobody has declared an interest yet so I could be way off the mark but I reckon it'll be one of the above.
Friday, 4 September 2009
Breaking News: Farage stepping down as leader
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About the author:
Stuart Parr is a UKIP parish councillor for the Brookside ward in Telford & Wrekin and the founder and administrator of Bloggers4UKIP.
Stuart writes a personal blog Wonko's World and tweets as @wonkotsane.
Stuart Parr is a UKIP parish councillor for the Brookside ward in Telford & Wrekin and the founder and administrator of Bloggers4UKIP.Stuart writes a personal blog Wonko's World and tweets as @wonkotsane.
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5 comments:
This will be a disaster for the party. There is no one who can handle the press as well as he can. Frankly this puts a whole different complexion on where UKIP goes from here.
It seems odd that only a couple of days ago we were talking about the SKY debate.
The anti UKIP sites will have a field day, can you imagine what will be said about gravy trains etc. What a way to derail the conference, what little media attention we get will focus on Nigel not our policies going into the locals and GE.
Frankly I am shocked.
I think this is the starting point for our first elected UKIP MP. He's done a great job as Leader and now it is on to his next challenge. Great news.
On a strategic level this is a master-stroke and lets face it, Nigel can't be doing everything all at once can he?
How about 'Godders' Godfrey Bloom? He came to speak to us locally in a pub that is fighting the smoking ban and was very impressive. I have the video but was advised to pull it from Youtube.
I agree, Nigel needs to concentrate on leading the EU wing of the party and his by-election campaign. The UK wing of the party needs a leader of its own. We are not a one man party!
Yin, I did think about Godfrey but I don't think he'll stand.
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