Arron Banks stands aside in Clacton as part of long-term plan for post-UKIP movement
Posted by admin978 on April 24, 2017 · Leave a Comment
Arron Banks (second left) visiting the U.S. President-Elect at Trump Tower, with Nigel Farage, Raheem Kassam and colleagues from UKIP and Breitbart
Former UKIP donor Arron Banks has announced that he will not after all be standing at the General Election in the Clacton constituency.
Banks had earlier planned to stand against former UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, a bitter factional opponent of Banks and his ally Nigel Farage.
But once Carswell announced his retirement, it was only a matter of time before Banks threw in the towel.
After all, Banks no longer has any real interest in UKIP – and neither does Farage. They will have little or no involvement with the party leadership during what is likely to be a disastrous campaign, but will eschew divisive attacks on the Paul Nuttall regime until after June 8th, and will give support to various constituency-level campaigns.
Then within a day or so of the election results, the Farage faction (bankrolled by Banks) will acknowledge UKIP’s death and announce the creation of a new ‘Patriotic Movement’.
On April 25th Banks issued a Twitter message, very sensibly criticising the UKIP leadership’s anti-Islam obsession
Arron Banks
(@Arron_banks)Not sure campaigning with the national party going in entirely the wrong direction is smart. I don’t approve of the war on Muslim religion https://t.co/BcKQtka2yW
Later that day UKIP’s election campaign became even more chaotic when James Carver (a West Midlands MEP) resigned as the party’s chief foreign affairs spokesman, saying that he “strongly disagreed” with the “misguided policy” of a so-called burqa ban.
