UKIP and North Korea
I have just been reading this leaked UKIP memo on Guido Fawkes' blog
following the sacking of Suzanne Evans as a UKIP spokesperson.
Assuming that this email is genuine - and although it is a good idea never to take anything on absolute trust, Paul Staines (Guide's real name) has published a lot of leaked emails before which turned out to be genuine - it really does read as if UKIP is run like North Korea.
I can see why her remarks on "The Daily Politics" about who might lead the "No" campaign might be seen as unhelpful, although they were not that far out of line with what Nigel Farage himself had said.
In Margaret Thatcher's era Sir Bernard Ingham might have briefed the press that someone making such a remark was "semi-detatched" while Blair would have had Alistair Campbell tell them off the record that she was mentally unstable. In Brown's day Damian MacBride would perhaps have planted emails suggesting she had done unspeakable things with wombats.
In UKIP the instruction appears to have gone out that
"no one employed by the UKIP press office is to have any further contact with SE"
that
"she is not to be offered as an official UKIP spokesman"
and no one is to brief or advise her on any issue.
It all seems a bit 1984 ...
POSTSCRIPT
UKIP tweeted this afternoon that "Suzanne Evans has not been sacked as a UKIP spokesman. the email seen by the BBC was issued without proper authority"
That sounds to me like code for "Nigel has realised it looks dreadful and has decided to disavow it."
Assuming that this email is genuine - and although it is a good idea never to take anything on absolute trust, Paul Staines (Guide's real name) has published a lot of leaked emails before which turned out to be genuine - it really does read as if UKIP is run like North Korea.
I can see why her remarks on "The Daily Politics" about who might lead the "No" campaign might be seen as unhelpful, although they were not that far out of line with what Nigel Farage himself had said.
In Margaret Thatcher's era Sir Bernard Ingham might have briefed the press that someone making such a remark was "semi-detatched" while Blair would have had Alistair Campbell tell them off the record that she was mentally unstable. In Brown's day Damian MacBride would perhaps have planted emails suggesting she had done unspeakable things with wombats.
In UKIP the instruction appears to have gone out that
"no one employed by the UKIP press office is to have any further contact with SE"
that
"she is not to be offered as an official UKIP spokesman"
and no one is to brief or advise her on any issue.
It all seems a bit 1984 ...
POSTSCRIPT
UKIP tweeted this afternoon that "Suzanne Evans has not been sacked as a UKIP spokesman. the email seen by the BBC was issued without proper authority"
That sounds to me like code for "Nigel has realised it looks dreadful and has decided to disavow it."
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