Nigel Farage has had a torrid few days – exactly as he’d planned. He had all six of his fellow contestants in the TV debate ganging up on him over immigration, just as he’d hoped. He’s provoked the Liberal Metropolitan Elite into attacking him over his comments about health tourism and HIV, just as he’d hoped. And today, to cap it all, he’s claiming a Tory defection.
Mike Whitehead had been the Conservative candidate in Hull West and Hessle, standing against Alan Johnson in the Labour safe seat. The Tories came third here in 2010.
Farage said this morning:
‘I am delighted to be welcoming Mike to the party at this exciting time. His move to UKIP just underlines that today, the real party of opposition to Labour in the North is UKIP. It is another hammer blow to Tory pretensions in the north of England.’
A hammerblow indeed to Tory pretensions to come third in a safe Labour seat. Whitehead’s quotes seem to focus largely on his frustrations with the council, which he also sits on:
‘I believe as a member of UKIP, I will be able to speak up for the residents and represent their views on the Council. I also hope that with the election of other UKIP Councillors, I can help open this secretive Council up and make it more transparent and work better for the residents rather than to the benefit of the few.’
As seems to be the pattern, though, with Ukip defections, it turns out that the defector had earlier been cut loose.
That Tory –> Ukip defector was fired last week after attempting to run for council as an independent, emails show: pic.twitter.com/0W39Bt911I
— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) April 6, 2015
Update, 11.20am: The Tories are now saying it is factuakly inaccurate to say Whitehead was a Tory candidate. This is what a party spokesman had to say:
‘This man is not our candidate for Hull West & Hessle. He was sacked last week.
‘He refused to support the local Conservative council candidate – and so we wrote to him last week to say that his position was untenable and could not stand for us at the General Election. We were already selecting a new candidate for this constituency.
‘This is typical UKIP – cynical, misleading and utterly calculating to try and score political points.’
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