As we have reported elsewhere, UKIP is running the princely total of nine candidates in England (or ten, if you count the ‘independent’ who, it seems, couldn’t get his UKIP nomination papers in on time).
In Scotland, however, it’s a slightly different story, and and Leader Nick Tenconi recently put in a rare apperance north of the border to film a campaign video outside Holyrood in Edinburgh in support of the fifteen candidates the party is fielding in elections for the Scottish Parliament.
Heavy lifting
But “Scottish”, in this context, is doing a certain amount of heavy lifting.
Of those fifteen, only four appear to have any meaningful connection to Scotland, including the party’s Scottish leader, Donald Mackay, and his wife, NEC member Janice Mackay.
The other eleven form a sort of travelling roadshow of English carpetbaggers, featuring geriatrics drafted in from elsewhere, including party treasurer Ian ‘Gullible’ Garbutt and long-standing Brighton activist Colin Sullivan, alongside a Tamworth-based husband-and-wife pairing with a formidable record of electoral defeat.
The husband is Robert Bilcliff who, in 2014, was ‘investigated’ by UKIP for posting homophobic remarks online. Needless to say, he survived.
The Glasgow list includes Donald Mackay alongside candidates brought in from over 300 miles away, including Garbutt and Laurence ‘Smelly’ Keeley, a former butcher whose past notoriety once extended well beyond the ballot box.
He was jailed for 31 days in 2003 after burning pigs’ heads, cows’ lungs and spinal cords at a beauty spot, and then dumping the remains.
He told the Brighton Argus that he was not ashamed; he could not afford to pay the £3000 fine the court had imposed so a month behind bars was a “bargain”.
Slate of interlopers
Mr Keeley is the ‘Independent’ refererred to above who it seems didn’t get the appropriate paperwork submitted on time in Wealden East, East Sussex, where he is contesting a local council seat.
South Scotland offers a similarly eclectic mix, with Janice Mackay the only locally connected candidate of the five UKIP contestants, who include Bilcliff, Sullivan, and Coventry-based Laurie Steele.
Elsewhere, things do not markedly improve.
In Central Scotland and the Lothians, one candidate is Steve Hollis, a Parish Councillor from South Staffordshire, best remembered for being the last elected UKIP councillor before the party’s effective disappearance from local government representation.
West Scotland, meanwhile, features a slate of interlopers which includes Bristol-based UKIP party Chairman Ben ‘Rogue Builder’ Walker, the man who till recently held the record for the lowest vote (five) ever polled by a UKIP candidate.
Risks humiliation
At least it can be said of him that he is prepared to put his head above the parapet and risk humiliation at the hands of the voters.
Unlike, of course, his ‘Leader’ Taco Tenconi.
Despite pledging, when he was (s)elected as Leader two years ago that he would personally contest elections, so far the mouthy Duce has kept his head well down and let others rack up records for lowest UKIP votes ever achieved.
Humiliating
Fielding only nine candidates in England is a humiliating electoral nadir for the party which once forced the Brext referendum, a humiliation for which the venal Walker and cretinous Tenconi are entrely responsible.
We are looking at Britain’s fastest shrinking political party, now more a pensioners’ outing with a donation button attached.
And a leader too frit to stand.
Peak UKIP.
