Day two of the Ukip conference, and the placid mood continues. Delegates seem very content with the speeches that they’ve heard from Douglas Carswell, Patricia Culligan, Janice Atkinson and Diane James. They wee particularly entertained by Atkinson, who spent a great deal of her speech talking about Harriet Harman, and criticising the other parties’ policies for women. They were very happy when Culligan described reforms to Ofsted that will mean children will be allowed to celebrate nativity plays (something that might have come as a surprise to a number of parents). And Diane James delivered a speech better than the sort of stuff you’d expect from many a junior minister.
It is quite striking that Carswell didn’t attend yesterday’s conference, only coming down to speak today because he had to be elsewhere. Farage spoke yesterday, Carswell spoke today. The Clacton MP, who has become the leader of the parliamentary Ukip party, may be doing this as a relay with Farage, but his absence didn’t seem to have gone down well with all his colleagues last night, possibly because they thought he should be here, or possibly because they were worried his absence would be interpreted in the media as another sign of a ‘split’ in the party. In truth, the party isn’t big enough for a split, and Carswell and Farage are naturally quite distinctive characters currently doing different jobs. Given Ukip’s immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe yesterday gave a speech that echoed quite clearly Carswell’s own thoughts on immigration, it is also unfair to say the MP is necessarily on his own wing of the party. But then again, given Farage spent a fair bit of his speech yesterday shoring up his own leadership, the party is clearly sufficiently worried about the appearance of tensions to feel they need to be addressed.
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