Trouble at t'mill

It's been a disappointing couple of days for UKIP with Mike Nattrass MEP resigning from UKIP in protest at failing the selection process for the EU elections in 2014 and Cllr Chris Pain forming a new group on Lincolnshire County Council with two other UKIP councillors.

↑ Trouble ↑

Mike's motives are pretty transparent and unavoidable really without overruling the decision of the independent panel of head hunters and recruitment consultants as to who made the shortlist.  Chris Pain's decision is undoubtedly in response to him being suspended from the party despite the police dropping a racism case against him without charge.

No reason was given for Mike failing the MEP selection process but the decision was made by independent consultants and Mike's claims of cronyism and rule breaking just don't stand up to scrutiny. Nigel Farage had no part in the selection process because he's a candidate and had to go through the same selection process as everyone else.

The reason for the suspension of Chris Pain has also not been made public but is likely to be in response to an email that was distributed a week or so ago trying to stir up rebellion amongst the membership over the selection process that he was also unsuccessful in.

Whether the decisions were right or not is a moot point - nobody knows enough about what's happened to know whether they were or not - but both cases could undoubtedly have been handled better.  In both cases the membership are getting one side of the story from the aggrieved party and their supporters (who are also only getting one side of the story) because there is virtual silence from the party. This will have all blown over in a couple of weeks but someone needs to do some damage limitation now before it gets out of hand.