Breitbart’s Kassam Lays Out ‘Ground Rules’ For Renegade MP Douglas Carswell

United Kingdom Independence Party leadership candidate Raheem Kassam has addressed the issue of UKIP’s Member of Parliament Douglas Carswell and laid out steps he believes Mr. Carswell must follow to remain in the party.

In a live stream on Sunday night, Breitbart London editor-in-chief and candidate for leadership of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Raheem Kassam, laid out the case against controversial MP Douglas Carswell. Mr. Kassam talked about how Carswell has isolated himself from much of the rest of the regular membership of the party and his multiple instances of criticizing his own party leadership and its members.

Kassam set down some ground rules in order for the MP to stay in the party saying that Mr. Carswell “behaved very badly now for several years,”  and spoke directly to the MP saying, “You don’t appear to have had the party’s interests at heart. Your local branch is falling apart.”

One tweet from Mr Carswell in particular caught the ire of Kassam. Carswell tweeted that the U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump had gone “Thanet South,” an allusion to the last British general election. Then UKIP leader Nigel Farage had run in the constituency of South Thanet, and did not win, though there were several reports of dubious activities after the result.

It's all going a bit South Thanet for the US Republicans, I see? https://t.co/dYER2GLCAI

— Douglas Carswell (@DouglasCarswell) August 24, 2016

One of the biggest problems for Kassam is the control Carswell has over the “short money” – tax payer funding which Carswell receives for being a member of parliament in an opposition party. According to Kassam the money would be better spent by giving it over to the central party who could then employ their own researchers in London and helping branches across the country, rather than Carswell monopolizing it and using his own research team.

The composition of Carswell’s research team is also a hot issue for Kassam who accuses Carswell of using Conservative Party members in his team, rather than solely researchers from UKIP.

The next ground rule laid down by Kassam was the need for Carswell to publicly apologise for his treatment of members of UKIP including the leadership and the supporters. Carswell has been a constant critic of the UKIP leadership of Nigel Farage and speculation has led some to believe that his actions were part of a plot to “neutralise” the growing popularity of Mr. Farage.

The final rule mentioned by Kassam was a contract that Carswell must sign indicating that he was never to engage in negativity toward his own political party or its members, supporters and officials ever again. “And if you break the contract, Douglas… bye bye,” Kassam said.

Many live stream followers indicated that Mr. Carswell was unlikely to do any of these things, a point which Kassam stressed would therefore be grounds enough for his explusion.

The ground rules follow on the comments by Kassam last week on CNN in which he said that it was time for UKIP to “grow up” as a party. He described the propositions to solve the problem with Carswell by saying he was only, “putting in basic ground rules like grown ups do.”

Breitbart editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam announced after the sudden resignation of UKIP leader Diane James that he would run for the leadership of the party under the slogan “Make UKIP great again.” Kassam wants to see more direct democracy within the party who he says need to take over the opposition spot from the Labour Party who are losing much of their traditional working class voter base in the aftermath of Brexit.