A few days ago John Rees-Evans was invited by Daily Brexit Producer Olly Connelly to be interviewed on his facebook broadcast.
The interview lasted close on an hour and a half and JRE spoke at length about UKIP and his reasons for leaving the party, and also about the aims and future plans of Affinity, the party that he has joined. Many of their core principles are similar to UKIP’s but based of course on a system of Direct Democracy. I recommend a listen.
The innovation and ambition of those plans and ideas is quite breathtaking. But that’s hardly surprising I suppose when John’s aspirations and campaigns for the future of UKIP were always demonstrably groundbreaking and visionary.
The programme of the practical steps for achieving revolutionary changes in the entire political system of the country is impressively outlined. The scale of the envisaged infrastructure needed is vast; and the magnitude of the resources that will be invested in the project is simply immense.
Indeed, how could it be anything else when JRE is talking about a party with intentions of employing 41,000 staff, having 650 permanent constituency offices, producing their own radio and TV content, and the creation of a ‘parallel Parliament’? JRE believes, that at that level, the estimated staffing costs alone will be upwards of £950 million per annum.
Writing as a supporter of JRE, I must emphasise that the purpose of this article is not to re-hash the UKIP leadership election.
JRE recognises that his Direct Democracy platform was the central pillar of his campaign. He had a perfectly fair crack at presenting his ideas to the UKIP membership, for the second time in fact, and that membership chose not to embrace that concept, chose a different leader, and a different path. No complaints at all; that’s straightforward democracy. Good luck to the new leader.
My question is whether that perfectly fair decision now appears to translate into a major missed opportunity for UKIP?
Please bear with me for a moment while I hypothesise on what may have occurred if JRE had won the election:
Apparently, JRE was initially approached with the idea of the Affinity party in late 2016 but those behind Affinity agreed to withhold launching the party in the hope of a potential cooperation with UKIP with JRE as leader. When UKIP rejected the Direct Democracy approach then of course that agreement lapsed and Affinity immediately registered as a new party.
So it seems to me that, had JRE been elected, then what will now become Affinity Direct, Affinity Connect, Affinity Media, Affinity Local, Affinity Affiliate and even Affinity Legal would all have borne the UKIP name.
Also, I assume, the 650 constituency offices, the envisaged ‘parallel surgeries’, would similarly have borne the UKIP name, and would have benefited fully from the radio, TV and other media facilities etc.
Then, in my view, the support of a collaborative Affinity would have been bound to have heralded the birth of a new golden era of opportunity for UKIP.
During his campaign, JRE did mention that he was in discussion with donors, some very substantial. But he was very concerned that money should not be a motivating factor in members voting for him. He was careful therefore to concentrate on his political arguments for becoming leader rather than any financial benefits that might, or might not, become available should he be elected.
Similarly JRE warned that, if the UKIP members chose to reject the Direct Democracy concept, as they subsequently did, then he believed another party, or parties, would soon embrace it and use it to their advantage. Obviously, Affinity will be doing that.
One last thought on ‘what might have been’: I believe that JRE was the only candidate that didn’t criticise any of his opponents during the campaign. In fact he said that he thought that he could work with any of them provided “that they were happy to work with him”.
And I think JRE meant what he said; which could have seen him working with Anne Marie Waters, David Kurten and Henry Bolton in a stronger and more unified UKIP if perhaps, a few people, who should have known better, had been less vocal with their ill-informed opinions.
But back to reality. We are where we are.
The dust is still settling and tempers are certainly still frayed.
Alarm, relief, frustration, satisfaction, suspicion, anger and apathy, all still mingle freely amongst the articles and comments on UKIP Daily. So everything’s normal there then. And life goes on.
Mistakes have been made within UKIP in the past, are no doubt being made now, and will surely continue to be made in the future. But I believe the UKIP membership continues to be a force for good. UKIP continues to stand firmly for national sovereignty and sound, traditional, British core principles. Long may it continue to do so.
As JRE says in his interview with Olly Connelly, any and all mistakes that UKIP make should be forgiven because “UKIP got us the referendum”.
But perhaps a golden opportunity has been missed.
Hmmm… Mr Bav sneers rather arrogantly and unpleasantly at JRE, don’t you think?
He thinks JRE is a ‘time waster’.
That’s the ‘time waster’ then who has over the years regularly produced promotional UKIP videos for, amongst others, Nigel Farage.
That’s the ‘time waster’ then who has built businesses in foreign countries successful enough to allow him to retire in his thirties. That’s not bad going I’d say.
That’s the ‘time waster’ who stood as a candidate for UKIP in the 2015 General Election and also worked very hard to assist several candidates in other constituencies.
That’s the ‘time waster’ who stood for the leadership of the party in 2016 and, in a foreshortened campaign, gained very significant, and I think wise, support.
That’s the ‘time waster’ who in the 2017 General Election produced videos and provided local support for UKIP Candidates David Kurten, Tim Aker, David Allen, Bill Etheridge, Paul Oakley, James Dalton, Liz Wilks, Debbie Caplin, James Bush, Martin Tighe, Chris Gallagher, Kevin Brack, Peter Harris, Nicole Bushill, Sid Pepper, Mick Harold, Ian Rogers, Phil Broughton and Ian Kealey, in 19 constituencies around the country.
Apparently, it would have been more if he hadn’t been denied access to Scottish constituencies by UKIP Scotland.
Mr Bav apparently thinks that’s time wasting.
I think Mr Bav may not know his base from his apex.
Remind me… If his help was so good how come UKIP lost in every single one of those 19 constituencies you mention and the share of vote declined so badly that nearly ALL deposits were lost ?
The public don’t want DD, software salesmen do.
Well it obviously wasn’t because of lack of effort on JRE’s part; that’s for sure.
I keep repeating over and over again, certain well known facts from commerce…
1. It takes 8 repetitions for most people to notice anything.
2. Never give power to a committee
3. 60 % of people get their political decisions from the telly,only 23 % from social media, 16 % from the guardian , and 13% from the daily mail.[ so the best he can hope for from the DD alone is 23%. and most of this will be uninterested in politics, or even notice ( see item 1) , it’s well known that social media followers have a seriously shorter attention span )]
This is what happens when you join a political party in order to try to flog them your duff software. He had no chance, and nor will Affinity.
41,000 staff ?? 650 offices???
Perhaps some asteroid mining and free beer tomorrow might pull in the punters. But not me.
He’s a time waster.
UKIP was and still is a party of individuals. Herding them is difficult and one thing HB will have to do is create a team that promotes a common approach and policies. JRE is obviously a talented person and his skills properly used could have benefitted UKIP. JRE though is an individual and has decided to plough his own furrow. The Brexit message is beginning to get lost with the myriad of parties and lobby groups.
He maybe extremely talented but also extremely stupid. To make a statement that he could chase a badger across a field and kill it with his bare hands is just the sort of thing our opponents just love to pick up on
He did not say it. The interviewer offered a number of very stupid options and he was asked to choose one. All would have made him look silly.
He should have refused to do so but I think he was going with the game, just as he did with the poisoned chalice.
Note:
A badger is not as fast as a fox. People do eat them, badger ham was quite popular amongst country people a long time ago, as were hedgehogs. Yuk but there it is.
I’m not good at chasing mushrooms
Just to be clear Kenneth, it was Henry that talked about badgers not JRE.
I think the concept of Direct Democracy is a good one, and should certainly be explored, I understand that Switzerland already uses such a system.
For many people, democracy is nothing more than voters putting an ‘X’ on a piece of paper once every five years. And then those elected officials just go ahead and do whatever they want, regardless of what the public want.
And then of course we have the occasional referendum, which is then followed by an intense amount of squabbling and fighting, as the elected officials then try to ignore the result and do what they want instead.
What a free democratic country we live in, eh? No wonder so many people don’t even bother to vote.
Did you use the beta DD? If you did then you would have seen the problems. Lack of transparency and timeliness. It needed constant monitoring to follow what was happening. The navigation was very poor and indicated scalability would be problematic. You need to present a model that works well if you want to convince people. His ideas weren’t rejected, it was the practical that was not accepted.
What is to say that if he/affinity are successful in sponsoring a successful DD that UKIP won’t migrate to them? I did have a question about sponsors. Were they sponsoring JRE or Affinity who would come to UKIP if JRE was leader?
There were other issues with it, too. A shame that JRE wasn’t interested in liaising with the tech sub-committee to get it to a state where it could go live ?
When you leave one party and join or start another, in direct competition, you forfeit any claims on your previous colleagues sympathies.
Unless people want to continue with the old two and a bit party system, they have to vote UKIP. The new outfits will achieve nothing, except maybe, for a while, make their members feel a little better.
Probably not.