If your party is one person, how do you lose that person and keep up the pretence of having a party? That is the quandary facing UKIP as it searches for a new leader to replace the outgoing, and already bitterly divisive, Nigel Farage.
Never more than a single-issue undertaking, a solitary soapbox with an inflammatory slogan scrawled on the front, post-Farage and with the EU referendum result having swung in their favour, UKIP seems at a loose end. Actual policies are too much like hard work. And now that their usual game of kick-the-immigrant has been co-opted quite literally by large swathes of the British public, those who remain in UKIP have determined to throw stones at each other instead.
Steven Woolfe hardly boasts an impressive CV. From the time of his appointment as UKIP economics spokesperson in 2010, party policy on the economy proved utterly incoherent. A key pledge on a flat income tax of 31% was suddenly dropped, while the party avowed a smaller state at the same time as it advocated vast increases in government spending. Prior to the 2015 general election, UKIP even admitted it had not bothered to cost its tax policies, as Woolfe was gradually shifted to the migration brief.
Yet Woolfe was still the firm favourite to replace his fallen – or rather vapidly disinterested – leader until Wednesday, when the UKIP National Executive Committee declared him ineligible and shunted him out of the race. Woolfe had pledged to abolish the executive once in a position of power, and as several of his allies resigned from the NEC, there were complaints that the governing body ‘is no longer fit for purpose’.
UKIP of course has never been fit for the purpose of serious politics, but that hasn’t stopped millions voting for it or the Conservatives using the party to advance a duplicitous national agenda. With the damage already done, it would be no surprise to see UKIP now unravel. At least until it can bemoan the terms of EU withdrawal, it is left to fiddle on the margins while lamenting readily-apparent nonsense like independence days and the colour of passports.
On the other hand when the party already lacks substance but has a clear sense of who to attack, even after prolonged infighting it is likely to retain a core of support. Of those remaining in the leadership race, Diane James is the new favourite, a former healthcare consultant who is composed in front of the cameras and quietly adores Vladimir Putin. Jonathan Arnott wants the party to focus on the north, Phillip Broughton likes wrestling at weekends, Lisa Duffy desires a total ban on Muslim schools, Elizabeth Jones as an agitated Londoner is probably out of touch, and Bill Etheridge is fond of alcohol, cigarettes, golliwogs, and Adolf Hitler.
