Guido quotes ex-UKIPer Douglas Carswell, who is stepping down as an MP, and who will, he says, be voting Conservative in the general election:
It is sometimes said that all political careers end in failure. It doesn’t feel like that to me today. I have stood for Parliament five times, won four times, and helped win the referendum last June. Job done. I’m delighted.
Lucky man.
Unless: Carswell’s political career has not, despite his present protestations, actually ended, and his actual political career is yet to end. In failure.
Guido’s early commenters say that the Conservatives wouldn’t let Carswell back in, i.e. let him fight a seat for them, and that the UKIPpers are all fed up with him, in short that his career is even now ending in the very failure that he says he does not feel. But I think it altogether likely that Carswell is telling the truth. Carswell switched to UKIP at just the moment when UKIP itself was migrating towards being a slightly nicer National Front. Remember when UKIP used to be rather libertarian? The way Carswell still is? I do.
But I also agree with Carswell that getting out of the EU was far more important than whatever other policies UKIP says it has. A rat, say those commenters, leaving a sinking ship. I partly agree. UKIP is indeed sinking. It had just one important policy and that is now happening. UKIP agrees with itself about nothing else, and is already disintegrating. You would only vote UKIP now to make quite sure that Britain does indeed leave the EU. But once Britain really has left the EU, UKIP will become a mere echo of a very remarkable but now passing moment in British political history. Oh, the remains of UKIP will stagger on for a few years. Political parties in decline always take for ever to vanish completely. But already, British voters are asking: What is UKIP now for? What does voting UKIP now mean? And they are getting about twenty different answers, depending on which UKIPer they ask, which is the functional equivalent of no answer at all.
LATER: I just listened to that entire conversation, linked to above (here it is again), between Carswell and Mark Littlewood of the IEA. The biggest news in it, for me, is that, following Brexit, Carswell’s next target is the fiat money banking system. I wish him well. I hope that effort does not end in failure. A man of his talent and his connections could make a big difference.
“Political parties in decline always take for ever to vanish completely.”
I give you – the LibDems . . .
The Jannie
I’ll raise you ‘The Liberal Party‘.
From their website:
Gosh that’s a weird mix of libertarian, Green, trans-nat Utopian, PC, Georgist and a smattering of other nonsense.
Kill It with fire, before it lays eggs.
Yes Alisa – Mr Ed has managed to find something more vile than the Lib Dems. Both of us were always rather good at finding evil – although that is not an unmixed blessing as an ability.
As for Douglas Carswell.
I like him – yes he left the Conservative Party (an arch sin in political life – at least for a Kettering Tory like me), but I still like him.
If only they’d stopped at the word ‘security’. 😕
I’d have stopped at “property”.
I’d have stopped at “liberty” since unfortunately some people will only have property if it is given to them – which invariably means it has been taken by the state from somebody else.
Can you imagine being on the committee which assembled that bizarre collection of words? I’d bet that a significant percentage didn’t survive the ordeal, but slit their own wrists in despair. (Of course, it might have been computer-generated, using an algorithm like this mission statement generator. It does have that sort of a feel.)
I considered suggesting they should have stopped at both ‘liberty’ and ‘property’ but I was feeling generous.
One can hope…
It still is in many ways.
I see they are going for a liberal use of the word ‘Liberal’. Here in Australia, the pro-business party calls itself the Liberal Party, and it is Australia’s right-wing party. Any other uses of ‘Liberal’?
Well the reality is two strands; economically liberal and socially liberal, most are one or the other (and call themselves “liberal”), few are both.
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Going back to Carswell, it must be remembered that his defection to UKIP, and that of Mark Reckless, where among the things that pressed Cameron into offering the referendum. The rest is history; well, not quite yet.
Count me in, the other rob.
Hmm, it appears the Liberal Party (UK version, which appears to try and get as many contradictory meanings of the word liberal into its statement as it can) may be serving an important purpose: it is driving forward the development of space travel for the masses (I am less sure driving forward the possession of individual nuclear weapons is such a good idea, although I note it is compatible with pure libertarianism…) through the existence of its mission statement alone…
PeterT makes a very important point, those who say that Messrs. Carswell (and/or Reckless) were out to destroy UKIP from the inside as Conservative ‘plants’ seem far from reality. Cameron’s fear of his hoped-for majority draining away to UKIP was what led him to the Referendum, a chance to lance the boil ended up boiling the lance.
Now that we are Brexiting, Carswell doesn’t have to pander to political biases. Seeing him on question time supporting things that deep down I’m sure he is against was disheartening. I expect he is relishing the freedom now.
Fighting fiat money. About fricking time. Good luck to him.
Good riddance, Carswell – dead loss in every way.
“…a chance to lance the boil ended up boiling the lance.”
Brilliant!