Until now, UKIP have been the boys who cried wolf while somehow maintaining the whole of a nation in a state of all too credulous suspense. Culturally and financially, as the only group who provide a net contribution to the economy, EU migrants overwhelmingly benefit Britain, and six years of building towards a referendum would have been an almighty waste of time had wave after wave of xenophobic campaigning not wrought such appalling results.
The case against the European Union, at least as UKIP portray it, has been constructed on a lie. European migrants to Britain should be warmly embraced, and neither now nor in the conceivable future does the freedom of movement amount to a threat. But while the pound reels in the face of the prospective onset of Brexit, UKIP is discovering that without scaremongering, it has nothing left. And forced to turn inwards, compelled to bear rather than cast an accusatory glance, UKIP is finally squirming in the steadfast grip of what seems like the truth.
Because it is hard, when after a confrontation someone is left unconscious, to suggest that the whole thing occurred without a shove or a punch. When a meeting of UKIP MEPs at the European Parliament in Strasbourg turned agitated earlier this month, Steven Woolfe and Mike Hookem stepped outside to settle their differences, with Woolfe soon tumbling headlong back into the room. He later collapsed and was rushed to hospital, suffering two seizures and partial paralysis and remaining in care for several days.
Woolfe claims that he was struck by Hookem, and that he experienced bruising consistent with a blow to the face. Hookem instead contends that Woolfe simply ‘fell over his own feet’. Woolfe subsequently left UKIP in the middle of their ongoing leadership struggle, claiming that the party is in a ‘death spiral’, although his detractors have blamed his mooted defection to the Tories for starting the whole sorry affair. Nigel Farage captured the mood within the party by lamenting ‘You see third world parliaments where this sort of thing happens’, while continuing to deny any evidence of a punch.
UKIP’s internal report into the incident, published by party chairman Paul Oakden this week, opted to issue Hookem with a formal warning rather than a suspension. It concluded that as it was Woolfe who suggested he and Hookem sort things out ‘man to man’, Hookem had been ‘foolish’ but not ‘principally responsible’ for whatever followed, which disparate testimonies and a dearth of witnesses proved unable to confirm. Woolfe was effectively blamed for the hostile nature of the meeting, with the report supposing ‘Had Mr Woolfe not collapsed later that day, we may never have known that the altercation took place at all’.
Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, appears to prefer Woolfe’s version of events, citing medical evaluations as he opted on Wednesday to refer the matter to the French police. Meanwhile UKIP’s second leadership race of the year rumbles on, following Diane James’s resignation after just eighteen days in charge. Struggling with a party beset by infighting, experiencing abuse in the street, James was also reportedly marginalised on a recent visit to the European Parliament, when Farage gathered a group of MEP’s about him, leaving James alone in her lunch seat.
The current frontrunners for next UKIP leader are Paul Nuttall, who wants to lead the party on a march across the working-class north, and Suzanne Evans, the ostensibly moderate former deputy party chairwoman and an ally of Douglas Carswell, who remains UKIP’s only MP. Evans was suspended by the party for six months earlier this year charged with disloyalty, and her candidacy has already been firmly denounced by Farage.
Other contenders include Peter Whittle, UKIP’s former London mayoral nominee; Raheem Kassam, who has been criticised as a Farage stooge, accused of wishing to take the party too far to the right; and John Rees-Evans, who has spent the past week busily defending himself, after comments resurfaced in which he claimed that a ‘homosexual donkey’ had tried to rape his horse. Of course Farage himself remains the interim party leader, sliding into his old role on a technicality, although he audaciously accused his fellow members of dragging him back mid-escape.
