Patrick O’Flynn has surfaced to explain his remarks about Nigel Farage and the team around him. On Sky News, O’Flynn denied he was gunning for Farage’s position, describing him as ‘my political hero’, but blamed a ‘couple of people in his inner circle’ who he said are ‘wrong ‘uns’:
‘The advisers he’s got around him have got an awful lot to account for… some people around him who would like to take Ukip in the direction of some hard right ultra-aggressive American Tea Party-type movement.
‘Ukip will prosper and has prospered when it positions itself in the common sense centre of British politics, as we did with our excellent election manifesto, and when Nigerl Farage leads it from the centre of the party, or perhaps just to the right of centre of the party. People who want to get rid of the National Health Service or liberalise gun laws or whatever other US imports they want to peddle for their own agendas should go and set up a party to push that line and see how they get on, because I predict it won’t be well.’
Those on Team Farage aren’t very happy with his, with one source commenting ‘is this behaviour truly befitting of an elected MEP?’ But it looks like O’Flynn might get his way: the party’s secretary Matt Richardson has offered his resignation, according to Guido. The briefing war is getting more personal too: someone on Team Farage has given this quote to Mark Wallace over at ConHome:
‘O’Flynn is a totally inexperienced campaign director and a candidate who struggled to retain his deposit, getting just 5.2%. A scribbler with a single tier education he struggled as Economics spokesman , trying to impose envy taxes and was keen on Red Ken Livingstone’s idea of a turnover tax on companies.’
O’Flynn certainly isn’t some kind of simpleton, as Team Farage is making out — he has an economics degree from Cambridge. On the other side, one of the party’s biggest donors Stuart Wheeler has told the World at One it’s time for Farage to step aside and ‘now time for something quieter’. Even if O’Flynn is successful is getting his two scalps, this briefing war looks as if it will go on and on. The interventions from two of the biggest donors — first Arron Banks, now Wheeler — shows there are tensions at all levels of Ukip about its future direction.
Oddly, some of the advisers O’Flynn is gunning for were already due to leave Ukip at the end of the month. But Farage’s decision to stay on as leader may have changed that. From my understanding, this briefing war is less about personalities but more about the future direction of the party — those who want to win an EU referendum vs. others who want to use the referendum to advance Ukip’s cause.
Although O’Flynn was strong in his support for Farage, he may have been a little disingenuous about his insistence that he should stay on as leader. I understand that before the un-resignation, he was preparing to back Suzanne Evans for leader. Now that isn’t an option, O’Flynn appears keen to have a public debate about the party’s future.
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