Former UKIP candidate Anthony Butcher has started a forum for discussions of the UKIP leadership here. I think the best candidate, if she decides to stand, would be Marta Andreasen. As UKIP leader, she would immediately floor several negative perceptions of UKIP before she even began to talk. Little Englanders? Not with a Spanish/Argentinian leader. Reactionary old farts? Not with a woman as leader. And nobody has greater moral authority to criticise the EU than its former auditor.
First of all: is she a withdrawalist eurosceptic or not? I don’t know whether she’s a reformist or a withdrawalist. This is important, I believe, as UKIP’s major policy was always for the UK to leave the European Union – not fart about reforming it from the inside.
Second: language skills. Last time I saw her on Question Time her accented English still wasn’t fluent enough to be easily understood. Needs more work on that, I’m afraid.
Though personally I would like Nigel Farage to become leader for the second time.
Nigel Farage who made himself and his Party look ridiculous on more than one occasion? Who was so crass (or perhaps sufficiently, er, post-prandially relaxed) as to attack the EU president for his physical appearance and compare him with an unsuccessful bank clerk? Who’s a smug, self-satisfied git lacking any sign of the gifts of humour and humility?
I wouldn’t yield easily to anyone when it comes to having a loathing for the EU and all its works, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t vote for a UKIP with Farage in charge. I would vote for Marta Andreasen-led UKIP, though.
Shame Daniel Hannan would be unlikely to swap horses….
There’s a danger in being an ultra – insisting that nothing less than full withdrawal will do probably leads to the achievement of nothing. There’s a way to go, in my view. Abrogation from certain obligations might be a good start. Diluting the EU to a free trade zone would be fine. The art of the possible.