Useful info for supporters of UKIP and the Leave campaign generally

I was very pleased to get this email from Arron Banks as it answered many questions I have been nursing. He was interviewed on the BBC's Today programme on 2 November 2016 at very approximately 7am. It's worth listening to. What will happen to UKIP? They certainly have some problems to get over. I think one lesson we can all learn is: Be very careful who you let into your organisation!

Dear Supporter,

Set shortly after the war in 1950s rural Italy, The Little World of Don Camillo is a book about a catholic priest who speaks to Jesus on the cross and breaks all the rules. The eponymous Don Camillo is deeply flawed, but Jesus forgives him because he does everything for the right reasons, and with all his heart. At a pivotal moment in the book, Don Camillo finds himself alone.

“I feel as if I’m in the middle of a desert” he confided to Jesus, “and it’s no different when I have a hundred people around me because, although they’re right there, only half a yard from me, there’s a sheet of glass half a yard thick between them and me.

“I can hear their voices, but they seem to be coming from another world”.

"It’s fear” answered Jesus. “They are afraid of you”.

“Of me?”

“Of you Don Camillo. And they hate you. They were living warmly and peacefully in the cocoon of their cowardice. They knew the truth, but nobody could compel them to recognise it because nobody had proclaimed it publicly. You have forced them to face the truth.”

Reading these words reminds me of why Nigel Farage is seen by many in the media as divisive, and why UKIP is so hated.

They feared the truth would turn their cosy political consensus upside-down. It took many years to crack that half-yard thick sheet of glass and then shatter it so brilliantly on the 23^rd of June 2016.

The electoral fears of the Conservative party following the 2014 European Election led our then Prime Minister to offer the In/Out referendum and the rest is history!

I am eternally grateful to everyone who backed our incredible referendum campaign, which ended in a huge victory for ordinary voters over the political class as well as the European establishment.

It is thanks to the thirty million leaflets you delivered along with the messages we spread to as many as fifteen million people a week on social media that we were able to change history.

Nearly one million people, voters of all parties, follow Leave.EU every week on social media, an achievement no political party or campaigning group has come close to matching.

The political classes are fighting back. Now more than ever we need a strong UKIP to keep the Conservatives feet to the fire, so I thought I would spend a little time on the UKIP leadership race.

I have been asked many times over the last few weeks for my opinion on the internal strife within UKIP. Having watched a series of incredible events unfold from the centre with Nigel, I hold some strong views!

One of the most distasteful things I found about the referendum campaign, and with politics in general, was the sheer duplicity of most politicians we met along the way.

Little did we expect to find that the worst type of career politicians, the kind UKIP supporters dislike so much, causing so much trouble within our own party.

It is now well known that Douglas Carswell infiltrated UKIP in 2014 with the purpose of “neutralising” Nigel Farage because a group of Conservatives led by Dan Hannan arrogantly believed that the party and Nigel were toxic and would cost us the referendum.

The revelations made in the book "The Brexit Club" have not been disputed by Douglas. Indeed at every opportunity he took the chance to run down Nigel and UKIP supporters in the media.

Shortly after joining he recruited the ambitious Suzanne Evans, the pair then worked tirelessly with their old friends in the Tory Party to marginalise and undermine Nigel during the referendum.

We know first-hand how the UKIP NEC was taken over and controlled by these people rendering the party almost impossible to govern.

Nigel, who campaigned relentlessly for "Brexit' all over the country, found this cancer within the party draining and dispiriting.

Over the last year this fifth column, comprising chiefly of Neil Hamilton, Suzanne Evans and Douglas Carswell, have made Nigel’s life a misery.

It looks increasingly likely that Paul Nuttall will win the leadership race and while I like Paul on a personal basis I cannot support rewarding people who have effectively forced Nigel from the party.

I believe his decision to quit politics altogether was triggered by his disillusionment over the in-fighting and the way he was undermined by these people.
Nigel is a once in a lifetime politician, a statesman who put country before party with career lying far-off in the distance, if at all.

Perhaps in some ways he wasn’t ruthless enough as party leader. In Paul’s call for unity we see a pathway emerging for these gutless career politicians to win.

It’s a sad day for UKIP and perhaps the end, for this was a party meant to stand against everything that was dishonest in the political system.

Kind Regards,

Arron Banks
Leave.EU Chairman