Steven Woolfe resigns from UKIP, won't "honour the responsibility in his pledge to UKIP members to represent them"

Steven Woolfe has "reluctantly" resigned from UKIP and will sit as an independent MEP.

Woolfe openly admitted to having talks with the Tories about defecting when he missed the deadline for standing for leader of the party but had decided against it. Presumably the Tories decided they didn't want him after all.

Back in January last year when Amjid Bashir defected to the Tories after being suspended over allegations of financial misconduct and interfering with candidate selections, Woolfe said:

I am deeply disappointed with Mr Bashir, for not honouring the responsibility in his pledge to UKIP members to represent them.

So Woolfe will be resigning and letting the next person on the UKIP list take on the responsibility of representing UKIP members? No? Only applies to other people presumably.

Hope not Hate troll Steven Woolfe in his hospital bed and fail

Poor Hope not Hate, they've got more money than they can spend thanks to the Jo Cox memorial fund but they're still an amateurish bunch of propaganda merchants.

Just to confirm: UKIP's Stephen Woolfe is receiving free healthcare in France due to him being an EU citizen.

— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) October 6, 2016

Steven Woolfe (they could at least spell his name correctly if they're trying to exploit his misfortune for propaganda purposes) is being treated under a reciprocal health care agreement with the EU. The NHS also has reciprocal health care agreements with Anguilla, Australia, Bosnia, British Virgin Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Iceland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Montenegro, Montserrat, New Zealand, Norway, St Helena, Serbia, Switzerland, and Turks & Caicos.

In fact, if he was from Algeria, Andorra, Benin, Bosnia, Cape Verde, French Polynesia, Gabon, Iceland, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Mali, Morocco, Monaco, Montenegro, Niger, New Caledonia, Quebec,Serbia, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia or Turkey he would also be receiving free healthcare in France without being an EU citizen.

Steven Woolfe is doing ok but why are our MEPs fighting?

At a meeting of UKIP MEPs this morning in Strasbourg an altercation between Steven Woolfe and another UKIP MEP (rumoured to be Mike Hookem) ended with Woolfe being punched, banging his head on a metal bar and later requiring hospital treatment after collapsing in the EU Parliament.

Steven is staying overnight in hospital as a precaution but he's sitting up in bed, talking and sending emails. CT scans have shown that he doesn't have a bleed on the brain as rumoured earlier today but he does have numbness down one side of his face.

It's great news that it wasn't anything serious but extremely disappointing that our MEPs are doing bloody stupid things like fighting when the party is going through the upheaval of losing our new leader after just 18 days in post and desperately needing direction. In the absence of a leader and an NEC that seems devoid of common sense our MEPs should be taking the lead and keeping the momentum that built up during the referendum campaign, not fighting with each other.

Barring Steven Woolfe from standing for leader is the last straw

Steven Woolfe has been ruled out of the party leadership election after computer problems prevented him from submitting his application on time.

Woolfe paid his £5,000 deposit well before the deadline and but was unable to submit his application until after the deadline had passed due to computer problems. He provided evidence before the deadline to someone in the party that he was trying to submit his application and that it wasn't working but the NEC have ruled that he is ineligible to stand.

If the NEC had ruled him out for failing to declare a conviction for drink driving a decade ago then that would be understandable but it is clear that Woolfe submitted his application before the deadline and technical problems prevented it from being processed. In the absence of any evidence to prove that the fault lay on either side he should have been given the benefit of the doubt and his application allowed.

Attempts were made to bar Steven Woolfe, Jonathan Arnott and Bill Etheridge from standing last week which appear to have proven fruitless. Meanwhile, Nathan Gill has been threatened with expulsion from the party if he doesn't resign as either an MEP or Welsh Assembly Member despite there being no ban in law or the party rule book for holding both offices at the same time.

Three members of the NEC - Ray Finch, Victoria Ayling and Mike McGough - have resigned from the NEC in protest, accusing the remaining NEC members of jealousy and megalomania. Three resignations aren't enough, we need to sweep out the current NEC members and hold fresh elections. Most members don't bother voting in NEC elections and this is the result - a group of politicians and hangers on more interested in furthering their own ambitions than what's right for the party.

Branches that feel strongly that the NEC is damaging the party may wish to forward a motion of no confidence in the NEC, forcing an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) at which they can be sacked. According to the party rules an EGM can be called to debate a motion of no confidence in the NEC if 20% of branches and constituency associations drawn from at least 4 regions forward a motion to the party chairman, accompanied by a payment of £100 toward the cost of holding the meeting. At the EGM 250 members must attend for the meeting to be quorate. It's too late to affect this leadership election but by purging the NEC and starting again we can at least point the party back in the right direction.

Confirmed leadership candidates so far

The deadline for nominations for the leadership of UKIP will be closing soon and six candidates have confirmed their intention to stand so far.

Candidate
Jonathan Arnott MEP
Cllr Lisa Duffy
Bill Etheridge MEP
Elizabeth Jones
Steven Woolfe MEP

Jonathan Arnott is UKIP MEP for the north east of England and served as UKIP General Secretary for 6 years. Arnott is a mathematician and continued as head of maths at Handsworth Christian School until he was elected MEP in 2014. He is officially UKIP's most rebellious MEP but also has the highest voting record of UKIP's MEPs.

Lisa Duffy is a councillor and leader of the UKIP group on Huntingdonshire District Council and a town councillor on Ramsey Town Council, the first UKIP-controlled council in the country which she was also mayor of. Duffy is leader of the UKIP group on Huntingdonshire District and Chief of Staff to Patrick O'Flynn MEP. She has been endorsed by Suzanne Evans.

Bill Etheridge is one of the UKIP MEPs for the West Midlands and councillor on Dudley MBC. Bill is a member of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, CAMRA and is an Associate of the American Legislative Exchange Council. He sits on the EU Regional Development Committee and is being backed for leader by his ex-wife, UKIP disabilities spokesman Star Anderton.

Elizabeth Jones is a member of UKIP's National Executive Council and Deputy Chairman of Lambeth UKIP. Elizabeth has contested 11 elections for UKIP and was a key member of UKIP's election campaign.

Steven Woolfe is one of the UKIP MEPs for the north west of England and a practising barrister. Woolfe is UKIP's financial affairs and City of London spokesman and head of UKIP's Black & Minority Ethnic Association. He has the support of Nathan Gill AM and is currently favourite to succeed Nigel Farage and become the first BME leader of a mainstream political party in the UK.

Life after Nigel: Nuttall or Woolfe?

When the dust settles on Nigel Farage's resignation the big question will be who will take his place as leader of the UK's third largest party.

With Suzanne Evans currently serving a suspension she is unable to stand which leaves it as a two horse race between Paul Nuttall and Steven Woolfe.

Paul Nuttall is the current deputy leader and leader of the UKIP delegation in the EU Parliament. The working class boy from Bootle has done well for himself, working his way up through the ranks to be Party Chairman, Deputy Leader and getting elected as MEP for the north west of England. Paul is from an old Labour background, supports an English Parliament and campaigns for stronger ties with the Commonwealth.

Steven Woolfe is UKIP's economics spokesman and a criminal law barrister. Steven was born in the notorious Moss Side estate in Manchester and brought up not far away in Burnage. He was introduced to the party by Lord Pearson in 2010 and was quickly appointed economics spokesman by Nigel Farage. Steven is UKIP's highest ranking ethnic minority official and a campaigner for an ethical immigration policy based on merit.

Whoever takes over will have big shoes to fill. Nigel Farage took a single issue protest party and turned it into the UK's third largest party with elected representatives at all levels of government, the largest group of UK MEPs and made an EU referendum a reality.

Germany received more illegal immigrants in 2015 than officials say entered the continent

According to the International Organisation for Migration, just over 1m illegal immigrants came to Europe last year. Of those 1m illegal immigrants, 1.5m went to Germany and 200k went to Sweden. If two countries have taken 170% of the official number of illegal immigrants, either the public are being deliberately misled or those responsible for tracking them are incompetent.

Cameron wants to fill up prisons with illegal immigrants

David Cameron has a plan for dealing with illegal immigrants and asylum seekers illegally working in the UK - put them in prison.

With 1.8m people already living here fit for work but out of a job, 2m EU citizens working in the UK and net immigration of over a quarter of a million people a year there is a massive over-supply of unskilled, unneeded labour and a chronic shortage of jobs. But putting illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who are working illegally into prison isn't going to solve that because the problem is with legal immigrants. Restricting economic immigration to the numbers we need with the skills we need will solve the unemployment problem and the huge cut to the social security bill will give the economy a welcome boost.1

Putting illegal workers into prison is only going to create jobs for human rights lawyers and prison staff. There would be legal challenges, the British government would lose them and a dangerous precedent would be set. Illegal immigrants are breaking the law by living here, let alone working and can be deported immediately. Asylum seekers can't get here to claim asylum legally so they can be deported to the first safe country they entered. We don't need any more unskilled immigrant labour; illegal immigrants and illegal asylum seekers need to be deported not banged up in prisons that are already too full to deal with our own criminals, at the taxpayers' expense.

UKIP MEP and immigration spokesman, Steven Woolfe MEP, said:

This must be the week that the net migration numbers come out since this announcement has to be one of the most stupid ideas yet from a Government utterly bereft of a clue on how to deal with the migration crisis. It’s an idea dreamed up the Conservative Party’s PR department to camouflage Thursday’s ONS immigration statistics which will show that yet gain the government has lost control of Britain’s borders.