Ukip’s internal warfare continues today with interventions from both sides. Suzanne Evans, the party’s deputy chairman, appeared on the Andrew Marr Show this morning to play down the tensions. She told Andrew Marr that the situation has been overegged:
‘I don’t think anyone hates anyone, I genuinely don’t. I think we’ve had some problems with some advisers around Nigel who very much kept him in their pocket if you like and he’s had too much influence from them. But they’ve gone.’
She singled out Raheem Kassam, Farage’s ex-senior advisor, who she happily noted has left the party and returned to work for Breitbart, a ‘far right, Tea Party, American style shock-and-awe publication’ where she thinks ‘he’ll be right at home’. Although Evans repeatedly said Ukip ‘can really move on from this’, does she think Nigel Farage needs to take a break?
‘Yes, and Douglas Carswell has said that he does hope that he still takes a break. Let me be clear: I have spoken to Douglas and people have been reading too much into that statement.’
And is a ‘break’ coded language for stepping down as leader?
‘Absolutely not, nobody wants Nigel to go, he’s a fantastic leader, a great political communicator. Look at where he’s got us to in the last five years’
Evans suggested that the briefing war this week has been the result of ‘an awful lot of testosterone .’ But not everyone has received that message. Kassam himself has popped up on the Telegraph’s website, suggesting that the plotters are hoping to ‘erase’ Farage from the political stage and they need to publicly apologise for their actions:
‘So Mr Carswell and Mr O’Flynn should take a step back from representing the party publicly, and focus instead on their constituencies.
‘If they had done this throughout the election campaign, instead of plotting to decapitate the leader and his staff, they may have achieved better results.
‘If they apologise in public to Nigel for the way they have behaved this week, there may be a way back for them, in time. If they fail to do so, however, they should resign the party whip.’
Evans, who was mentioned by Guido as one of the plotters against Farage, said ‘Nigel is the last person who wants Ukip to be a one man band’ but still found time to mention her own leadership credentials — particularly over her role in writing the party’s general election manifesto. ‘Nigel called it the best manifesto ever written, which was a feather in my cap’.
Many kippers watching this interview will be thinking that Evans’ more consensual, polished and less abrasive style is just what the party needs right now. But at present, there doesn’t appear to be a vacancy.
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