One man who will be hoping desperately that Tommy Robinson wins his appeal against sentence and gets out of jail soon, is UKIP’s so-called ‘leader’ Nick Tenconi.
We say ‘so-called’ because at the moment he is performing not so much as a leader as a complete clown. This matters because, before he was banged up, Robinson said he admired Tenconi’s leadership and was looking forward to discussing joint work with UKIP when he got out. He was looking for an alliance between a political party and his own ‘cultural movement’.
And, for their part, UKIP were hoping that Robinson would bring to the table a swathe of new recruits – and his formidable cash-raising abilities.
Packed with Robinson supporters
So, in his enforced absence, the UKIP NEC has been packed with Robinson supporters in preparation for the day of the great Tommy/ Nick consummation.
But now it’s looking a little more uncertain. Tenconi’s increasingly buffoonish antics at tiny demo after miniscule rally must be giving Robinson pause for thought. Is this really the ‘important’ political party that Robinson could see running in tandem with his ‘cultural movement’?
UKIP’s latest Tenconi-inspired fiasco too place in Bournemouth at the weekend. No more than a hundred or so supporters, marching up with crosses as though they were some kind of Christian pilgrimage, little UKIP signage in sight other than the purple livery used as the background for their banners.
Party chairman Ben ‘Rogue Builder’ Walker turned up but looked distinctly unimpressed by the quasi-religious babbling of Tenconi and co. After two attempts to march were denied by Dorset Constabulary, Tenconi threw a hissy fit, delivering an ill-tempered speech before sending his troop on their way.
A few days earlier he had turned up with a handful of supporters at a school in Hampshire where a head teacher’s announcement that Easter would be marked differently to previous years was twisted into a claim that the Christian festival was being ‘replaced with Ramadan’. Again, no UKIP signage was apparent, only crucifixes and far-right Christian banners.
Parents outside the school, however, were quick in putting Tenconi’s hate-filled gaggle right.
But what is perhaps more significant is this: in the forthcoming local elections, with several thousand council seats in play, UKIP have managed to scrape together enough candidates to contest only 13 seats across the whole country. An additional four seats are being fought where there are local council by-elections.
That is a fall from 18 last year, and only five of this year’s crop of candidates appear to have any kind of campaigning experience worth speaking of.
Destructive changes
This is symptomatic of the destructive changes that Tenconi’s madcap ‘Christ is King’ far-right posturing has wrought on the party. While he has been cuddling up to Tommy Robinson’s street gangs, the more traditional membership has been evaporating, and the party’s national branch structure has effectively disappeared.
So while Robinson may not be unduly concerned at Tenconi’s inability to turn out troops on the street – that, after all, would be his role in the grand alliance, and something he is skilled at – it may be dawning on him that what he thought was a bona fide political party with which he could form an alliance, is no longer any such thing, having been reduced by Tenconi’s increasingly bizarre antics to a mere shadow of its former muscular self.
What was a bona fide political party with which he could form an alliance is no longer any such thing, having been reduced by Tenconi’s increasingly bizarre antics to a mere shadow of its former muscular self.
It was, of course, in a spiral of decline before Tenconi’s elevation to the leadership but there is no doubt that he has accelerated the process, which is being only partly masked by the recruitment of a number of Robinson supporters. These, however, are more suited to noisy street events and will be of little help when it comes to actual political party activity. They may even prove a liability.
Interestingly, none of the Robinson-supporting NEC members who were parachuted in to fill the places of departing, longstanding activists were to be seen on Tenconi’s little demo. The only NEC member present, apart from Walker, was the hapless Roger Quilliam whose role appeared to be, quite literally, as Tenconi’s bag carrier, humping around the amplifier for the speaker public address.
The resignation recently of longstaanding NEC member John Poynton, who published his scathing resignation letter online – was prompted in large part by exactly these concerns.
Bellowing though his megaphone
And, of course, you might think that with the elections only a few weeks away, the party leader would be out in those seats that they are contesting canvassing for votes – but you’d be sadly mistaken. He plainly has no appetite for the kind of party activities that involve face to face conversations with voters – as opposed to bellowing through his megaphone – and that again might give Robinson cause for concern if he is set on an alliance with an actual, functioning political party.
Because under Tenconi’s leadership, UKIP is definitely not that.
