KASSAM: UKIP’s Establishment Has Its Knives Out, This Time for Anne Marie Waters

Remember when I ran for UKIP leader? Seems like half a decade ago now. It was made abundantly clear to me at the time that the party’s internal establishment would do everything it could to stop me. And it basically did.

The election process was dodgy, the MEPs rallied around someone who had no big ideas, party staff balked at the idea of a boss who might actually want them in the office instead of down the pub at lunchtime.

So they smeared me, encouraged the media to target me, lied about me, performed all manner of background briefings, and indeed stitched up the whole process.

Now, the same people are doing the same thing. This time to Anne Marie Waters, one of the few people in the party who understands the extent to which Britain is at war with radical Islam.

Writing in the Telegraph today, Bill Etheridge, a Member of the European Parliament declares “Neo-fascist entryists want to take over Ukip”.

A strange tactic perhaps, given Mr. Etheridge’s primary accomplishments in life appear to be the collecting of Golliwogs, telling young UKIPers to be like Hitler, and cheating on his disabled (ex) wife.

Never mind all that though, Mr. Etheridge has a beautiful straw man slapped right into the middle of his op-ed: “I do not believe that every Muslim in the UK is a terrorist”.

Right. And nor does Anne Marie Waters. But nice smear tactic anyway.

He doubles down with the intellectually vacuous Nazi rhetoric, implying those who want to tackle the issue of radical Islam in the United Kingdom “should be consigned to 1930s Germany”.

Indeed Anne Marie has been blocked a number of times for standing for UKIP in multiple positions. In reality, it was UKIP’s establishment using tyrannical tactics to squash debate.

And I’ll go even further to show how I actually don’t have a dog in this fight: I don’t believe Anne Marie should be leader of UKIP. She’s a great leader on the issue, and someone who should have a senior position, but having watched Farage tour the country, slipping between donor meetings, pub lunches, rallies, Excel spreadsheets, by-election strategy meetings, and a thousand other utterly boring things, I don’t think it’s for her.

I could be wrong of course. But I’ll tell you who really is: Bill Etheridge and his UKIP establishment cronies.