Paul Nuttall elected as UKIP leader

[Bad Dog]

From the BBC.

Paul Nuttall has been elected leader of the UK Independence Party, replacing Nigel Farage.

The 39-year-old Member of the European Parliament, who served as UKIP's deputy leader for six years, won 62.6% of support among party members.

He promised to "put the great back into Britain" and force the government to "give us a real Brexit".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38125432

Nutter, as he will now be known, is even more unhinged than Farage. Hopefully UKIP will now fade into obscurity.

[rurallib]

1. he has the name to lead a party like UKIP

[LeftishBrit]

2. 'Put the great back in Britain' - ugh!

Can't stand that cliché.

UKIP people do seem to have remarkably suitable names: Nutter (well, nearly); Hookem; (Big Bad) Woolfe. Farage is not far off farrago - a confused mish-mash or hodgepodge, often used for combinations of silly ideas.

[Denzil_DC]

3. "62.6% of support among party members"

Peak UKIP membership, as of December 2015: 34,250

UKIP membership, November 2016: 17,320

Leadership election results:

Paul Nuttall 9,622

Suzanne Evans 2,973

John Rees-Evans 2,775

Nice mandate you got there, you bad Bootle meff.

Even more of a rump than they ever were.

The extreme right-wing views of new Ukip leader Paul Nuttall

* Favours NHS privatisation

* Wants abortion limited to first 12 weeks

* Wants Burqa banned in public buildings

* Opposes banning discrimination against gay people

* Defends sexist comments

* Climate change denier who spreads conspiracy theories

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/11/28/the-extreme-right-wing-views-of-new-ukip-leader-paul-nuttall

And that's just the tip of it. Is there a lab somewhere where they cobble these arseholes together?

[Bad Dog]

4. That's not enough votes to win a Westminster seat.

Hopefully they will become an irrelevance. Nutter is like Gregg Wallace without the good bits, he doesn't like anything.

[Denzil_DC]

5. Well, party membership doesn't equal votes, unfortunately.

I think our best hope is for the UKIP infighting to continue, and that people no longer see them as a valid protest vote. They've had some council election successes, but even Farage has failed repeatedly (eight times, I think) to win a parliamentary seat.

Ironically, their real power base is in the European Parliament, despite their appalling attendance record and scant regard for serving their constituencies, and that's where the bulk of their non-donor (a.k.a. fat cat) funding comes from.

Not that there haven't been glitches there, either:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?num=20&q=ukip+expenses

EU set to ask Ukip group to repay almost £150,000 in 'misspent funds'

Ukip is likely to be asked to repay tens of thousands of euros by European parliament finance chiefs who have accused the party of misspending EU funds on party workers and Nigel Farage’s failed bid to win a seat in Westminster.

The Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE), a Ukip-dominated political vehicle, will be asked to repay €173,000 (£148,000) in misspent funds and denied a further €501,000 in EU grants for breaking European rules that ban spending EU money on national election campaigns and referendums.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/17/eu-set-to-ask-ukip-group-to-repay-almost-150000-in-misspent-funds

[Bad Dog]

6. They also lose a lot of MEPs. Some defect, others end up in court.

This is what happened to some of them.

http://www.richardcorbett.org.uk/defected-arrested-suspended-convicted/

[T_i_B]

7. I cannot fathom why they don't make Carswell their leader

He is their only MP after all.

I expect UKIP to concentrate now on white working class areas, especially in the north of England. The Tories seem to have stolen their thunder down South but they will still see an opportunity where they are up against Labour right now.

Sadly, the way they are likely to go about this is by being even more overly racist than before. And what's worse is that such an approach is a big vote winner in this day and age.

[LeftishBrit]

8. Because Carswell, hard-right as he may seem to us...

is a dangerous lefty by the standards of much of UKIP. He is a right-libertarian; many of them are neo-fascists

[T_i_B]

9. "Libertarian" doesn't really mean anything these days

At best it's a bandy word for people who like to bandy words about. Socialism has suffered the same fate.

Carswell is fanatical about leaving the EU at any cost, but he isn't an obsessively bigoted anti-immigrant type, which is an issue in the party of obsessive anti-immigrant bigots he's chosen to throw his lot in with.