Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Row in Ukip over EU referendum campaign ‘stitch up’

Ukip’s announcement this afternoon that it will be backing Grassroots Out in its bid for designation as the official ‘Leave’ campaign in the EU referendum has caused consternation in its ranks. The party put out a press release saying that the National Executive Committee, MEPs and its Local Councillors Association are backing GO, which was set up by Peter Bone and is supported by Leave.EU.

But I understand that there was no formal NEC meeting about this, and that the last meeting that discussed the designation was a few months ago. When I asked the party how the NEC was consulted, I was told that there was a telephone discussion about the matter this morning. Some were contacted by text message. Party figures are unhappy, claiming that this is a ‘stitch-up’ aimed at bouncing the party into supporting the designation when two thirds of its councillors support rival campaign Vote Leave.

There is also the glaring problem of the Ukip parliamentary party, which is not mentioned at all in the press release. Party sources said they were still working on persuading Douglas Carswell to back their stance, but that no-one would be disciplined for supporting Vote Leave.

Carswell sent out an email to Ukip councillors this afternoon, arguing that Vote Leave was the cross-party organisation with the ‘right strategy in order to win this referendum’. The email, which was passed to Coffee House by one of the recipients, says:

‘Dear UKIP Councillor,

‘Thank you for all the hard work you are doing in the EU referendum campaign! Without you, it simply would not have been possible to have held so many campaign days/street stalls, as we have done over the past few weeks.

‘As a fellow elected representative of UKIP, I know you will appreciate how important it is that we work together cross-party, as we cannot win this campaign on our own.

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