Tommy Robinson’s decision to join up with Ben Habib’s Advance UK is a moment of crisis for UKIP, which has been betting everything on winning that alliance themselves.
In recent months, UKIP Chairman Ben ‘Rogue Builder’ Walker and Leader Nick Tenconi have allowed the organisation to wither and fall into disrepair, as they ploughed all their efforts into confrontational street activities demanding ‘Mass Deportations’.
This hyperactivity was specifically designed to impress Robinson and persuade him to come good on the promise he seemed to make before he was locked up last year.
Speaking on Tousi TV, the online channel of right-wing commentator Mahyar Tousi, he had been asked what he thought of UKIP and its leader Nick Tenconi. He said:
“UKIP are far stronger than any other political party. I believe that Nick has shown great leadership …
“You need a people’s party that is not going to kick the working class and not going to deem them as racist and far right which Nigel Farage has done multiple times.
“I like UKIP…I messaged Nick, and I messaged Ben Walker, to have a discussion with them.
“I thought let Reform be the political party and us be the cultural movement But I saw Nigel Farage’s cowardice in the week of taking over, saw him select the Muslim who funded him the most money, to be the chairman and I thought ‘Well you’re never going to deal with the Islamisation of this nation’.
“So there does need to be a political party that pushes them so maybe UKIP’s that solution.
“I hope to meet the boys when I get back if I’m not in jail.”
Robinson was locked up shortly afterwards, before any discussion could take place, but UKIP were wetting themselves at the prospect of plugging into Robinson’s prodigious ability to raise funds.
Started to unravel
Tenconi actually went public announcing that he wanted to run Robinson as a parliamentary candidate.
And the link up seemed on the cards when prominent Robinson supporters were co-opted to the UKIP NEC, including Richard Inman, Rikki Doolan and Simon Bean.
But with Robinson in prison, it all began to unravel. The UKIP leaders had plainly not paid sufficient attention to Robinson’s clear desire to hook up with a political party.
Their abysmal showing in the local elections in May severely dented the project, and Tenconi’s increasingly desperate street activities – a mere shadow of those Robinson could mobilise himself – killed it off.
Robinson certainly didn’t need allies in that particular area.
Quit instantly
As soon as Habib announced the launch of Advance UK, the die was cast. Inman quit UKIP to join Habib almost instantly. Doolan also left, though citing personal reasons.
The party may now be facing another blow: Stan Robinson, one half of the Voice of Wales online channel, has disappeared from the UKIP NEC page and as their Wales spokesman from their ‘Spokespeople’ page although, curiously, he is still listed as Wales spokesman on their ‘Leadership’ page. This is almost certainly an oversight, and he will probably disappear entirely in due course.
Robinson (no relation to Tommy Robinson) and his VoW partner, the convicted fraudster Dan Morgan, are passionate Tommy Robinson fanboys, and even travelled to Spain to join up with him while he was on the run last year.
And if Tommy Robinson’s application to join Advance is accepted, it is inevitable that the Voice of Wales duo will do the same, if they haven’t already.
But Stan Robinson also has the hump about what he perceives as the grossly disproportionate amount of work he does for UKIP compared with Chairman Walker; nor is it lost on him that much of his fund-raising efforts merely serve to support the Chairman’s comfortable standard of living.
Decapitate the party
If Stan Robinson’s departure from his leadership positions means that he has left the party entirely, it is serious for UKIP, and effectively decapitates one of its few remaining active branches.
Even before this latest disaster, there was an accelerating attrition of UKIP’s branch network. The party which brought you the Brexit referendum and once boasted over 500 local branches is now reduced to less than a dozen.
The prospect of a tie-up with Robinson brought it a small initial membership boost but these were Robinson supporters, not the sort that will amount to much as party activists on the stump.
And now that Robinson’s followers are being urged to join Advance, it is likely that these will fall away as their memberships expire, and UKIP will suffer another drain on its numbers and its finances.
Organisational chaos
Organisationally, the party is in chaos. There is as yet no talk of an annual conference, which usually takes place in September, and no NEC minutes have been published for months.
By now nominations should also have been opened for NEC elections in October but again, so far, not a sign.
And, to cap it all, Tenconi’s street confrontations – his favoured mode of activity – are being attended by diminishing numbers of the usual suspects and are impressing few on the far right.
UKIP is facing a crisis.
