After Camilla Long claimed on last Friday’s Have I Got News for You that she had spent more time in South Thanet than Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader failed to see the funny side. In fact such offence was taken by party members that one of his team took the unusual step of calling in Kent Police. The police have since rejected the complaint and word now reaches Steerpike that fractions are forming in the party over whether it was wise to report the incident in the first place.
‘We didn’t report her,’ insists a source close to the leader. Instead they say that they merely ‘reported the incident, which is her comments plus the BBC airing them’. Meanwhile the party’s legal team declined to comment on the failed attempt, while a Ukip source sarcastically says: ‘If a private citizen believes a crime has been committed, they probably have a duty to report it to the police. If they see fit.’ No doubt, not everyone would have seen this ‘crime’ fit to report.
This is not the first time Long and Farage have come to blows. In 2010 the pair fell out after the Sunday Times journalist claimed in an article that she was relieved that Farage had lost a testicle to cancer:
‘I’m quite relieved that Nigel Farage MEP has only one testicle. When the former leader of the UK Independence party had the other removed in 1987 because of cancer, the doctors offered him an artificial replacement to give him “greater social confidence”. But to watch him screaming at Herman Van Rompuy as he did last month, saying the European council president had the “charisma of a damp rag”, tearing around with a loudhailer on his campaign to oust John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, from his Buckingham seat, working “100-hour weeks”, inhaling whole packs of Rothmans and choffing down hundreds and hundreds of pints, I dread to think what he would be like with … two.’
Meanwhile Mr S wonders what happened to the Nigel Farage who once spoke passionately about the importance of a free press:
‘The UK has a free press. It might not be a pretty press, it might not write stories which politicians approve of or the chattering classes in Islington think are “worthy” but it is unhindered by excessive political influence. And it covers the news from the international to the local, serious to celebrity, thought-provoking to ire-inducing.
The move by the establishment to throw chains around our press goes against all that is good and true in our tradition. We have, for centuries, been a beacon of freedom, of liberty, for the world.’
If found please return him to his previous state of mind.
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