Major UKIP donor describes Douglas Carswell as 'borderline autistic with mental illness wrapped in'

[LeftishBrit]

...Arron Banks, a multi-millionaire businessman who defected to Ukip from the Tories last year, has bank-rolled Ukip ever since.

Mr Farage announced on Friday that Ukip would be joining Leave.eu, the campaign being run and funded by Mr Banks.

But civil war broke out in the party at its annual conference in Doncaster after Mr Carswell said he did not agree that Leave.eu should be awarded the official 'Out' status in the EU referendum campaign.

Mr Carswell accused Mr Banks of threatening to de-select him as MP for Clacton unless he backed the Leave.eu campaign...



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/major-ukip-donor-describes-mp-douglas-carswell-as-borderline-autistic-10517188.html



Typical classy UKIP behaviour, using psychiatric terms to discredit opponents. But also interesting that the party manages to have a big political split despite having only one MP. And while I disagree with Carswell on just about everything, he is probably the only UKIP politician who is neither a raving conspiraloon (I do NOT consider this as a psychiatric term!) nor an unprincipled panderer.

Good to have a circular firing squad in the British tea party!

[T_i_B]

1. One huge reason why UKIP still have an MP...

...is that for all his many faults, Carswell is still very well regarded as a consituency MP. Carswell has too many faults to care to mention, but by rights it should be him and not Nigel Farage leading UKIP right now.

[Bad Dog]

3. Carswell is still very well regarded as a consituency MP.

In a constituency that includes Frinton on Sea. I lived there for a year, and it's aesthetically very pleasing with beautiful sandy beaches, but the people are something else. For a start even though there are two primary schools the average age is well over 70. It's incredibly godsquad with an evangelical C of E and an incredibly influential (at least locally) Frinton Free Church.

There's also an incredible snobbishness about living "inside the gates" which is one side of a level crossing. There's a sense of decaying gentility, (Frinton once had it's own branch of Harrods, not any more.) There was a real stink kicked up when a discount shop opened up in an as was derelict shop. There were mutterings about it being "not right for Frinton."

The aging population means that there's no point opening up another Harrods because there's no economic argument, but they won't have it. Frintonians are overwhelmingly religious, xenophobic, class conscious little Englanders who hate anyone who doesn't go to Church or wear a tie 24/7. Of course Carswell is well regarded, he's one of their own.

[T_i_B]

4. I was last there 6 months ago

I still have friends living around Frinton. Essentially what you have on the Tendring peninsula is Clacton (dying), Harwich (dead) and Frinton (the undead!)

I usually make a point of wearing my Sheffield Wednesday or Rotherham Titans shirts in Frinton, as the locals think that golf is the only sport that should be allowed. Frinton is probably most well known for only getting a chippy in 1992 and a pub in 1998.

Most of the Tendring Hundreds are retirement areas, where people move to live out their years by the seaside grumbling about whatever the Daily Fail tells them to grumble about. The result is local politics that increasingly resemble a right wing version of the "people's front of Judea" scene in Life Of Brian.

It's especially exasperating when you consider that what the area really needs is a new hospital in Clacton, not endless moaning about immigrants who don't live within 30 miles of the Tendring coast.

[Bad Dog]

5. Frinton

I've not been there for about fifteen years but I've still got friends in Clacton. I think you're right about the Hundreds. There's something about peninsulas that makes people insular and parochial. I've worked in Gosport and that was similar in some ways.

People forget that Essex was the home of Mary Whitehouse who though her judgemental self-righteous brand of Christianity gave her the right to tell the rest of us what we could watch. My daughter went from being a goody two shoes to being a troublemaker the minute she went to school in Frinton, and she didn't change at all.

I used to get called in for stuff that no normal school would take seriously. Once I had to see the headteacher because she'd been singing "I'm smarter than the devil" in the playground after hearing Homer Simpson sing it when he sold his soul for a doughnut. I couldn't, (still can't) take it seriously, but it was a really big deal for them, even though accusations of racism weren't.

[T_i_B]

6. The big exacerbating factor on the Tendring coast...

....is the fact that the area is heavily dependent on people retiring to the area. Add into that the snob value you've got anyway in Frinton and it's not a healthy mix. It's certainly more insular and parochial than the Dengie peninsular for instance.

You mention Mary Whitehouse (who actually lived in Colchester rather than Frinton according to Wikipedia, which is something that Colchester folk keep quiet) but if truth be told, I wouldn't be half as rude about Essex right wingery if it were more like Mrs Whitehouse's views. The main things you get in Essex right wingery are never ending bashing of immigrants and travellers.

As for accusations of racism not being taken seriously, if the school were to take that seriously most of Frinton would be on the naughty step. I'm struggling to think of any place I've been in this country more racist than Frinton-On-Sea.

[T_i_B]

2. UKIP's MP Douglas Carswell calls for Nigel Farage to quit as leader

You'd have thought that Carswell was aware of UKIP being heavily focused on immigrant bashing and negativity before he defected....

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/18/douglas-carswell-ukip-mp-calls-for-nigel-farage-quit?CMP=share_btn_fb

Douglas Carswell, the Ukip MP, has called on Nigel Farage to step down as leader to help the party draw a line under its unpleasant and socially illiberal image.

He has ruled out running for the leadership himself but said the party needed a fresh face. Although he praised Farage’s achievement in growing the party, he said sometimes a startup “needs to change gear and to change its management if it’s to go the next level”.

In an interview with BBC Essex as part of a documentary, Carswell also criticised Farage for suggesting Ukip’s failure to challenge Labour in the Oldham byelection was linked to fraudulent postal votes.

Farage, meanwhile, said Carswell should challenge him for the leadership if he really thinks Ukip needs a change. There has been tension between the two for a while, and it bubbled over during the summer in a row about party funding, Carswell’s criticism of Farage’s comments about migrants with HIV and again at Ukip’s conference over the party’s decision to back rival anti-EU campaigns.

[T_i_B]

7. UKIP's only MP Douglas Carswell in secret talks to rejoin Tories

The feud between Douglas Carswell and the other numpties in UKIP's leadership is getting more and more personalised and farcical by the day.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/28/ukips-mp-douglas-carswell-secret-talks-rejoin-tories/

UKIP’s sole MP Douglas Carswell has held secret talks about rejoining the Conservatives to fight the 2020 general election, it emerged last night, as his party considers expelling him in a row over a knighthood for Nigel Farage.

The Daily Telegraph understands that Mr Carswell, who defected from the Tories in 2014, spoke to Conservative MPs to sound out whether he would be welcomed back by his old party. The idea is said to have been given a positive reception by several Tory MPs.

Mr Carswell’s future is in doubt after Mr Farage and other senior UKIP figures called on him to quit over his alleged attempts to deny Mr Farage a knighthood, and faces a formal investigation into whether he did so that could end in his membership of the party being cancelled. Among his fiercest critics was Arron Banks, the businessman and Ukip donor, who announced his intention to stand against Mr Carswell in his Clacton seat as part of an extraordinary row on Twitter.

Mr Carswell is understood to be keen to avoid a by-election, which would be likely if he rejoined the Tories before a general election, but believes going back after the UK leaves the EU will allow him to explain his time in UKIP as part of a plan to secure Brexit.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Ukip leader Paul Nuttall is weak, says party's largest donor

Business tycoon Arron Banks said Paul Nuttall was “weak but potentially a good leader”, adding pressure on the successor to Nigel Farage, who has already faced questions on his continued leadership of the party.
...
Banks said he would definitely stand against Ukip’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, and claimed the party was run like a squash club.

He suggested he could try to force Carswell, who has denied claims he wants to rejoin the Tories, to face a byelection before the expected 2020 general election.

“One of the things Douglas Carswell was very strong on was recall of MPs. Carswell said that if enough of the constituents voted for it, then their MP should be recalled and they would have to face a second election,” he told the Independent.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/04/ukip-leader-paul-nuttall-is-weak-says-partys-largest-donor

I don't understand why not thinking Farage deserved a knighthood is grounds for expelling Carswell. This even seems to have happened on Dec 31st 2016, after Farage has stopped being leader. I doubt the party rules have things like "all honours for party members must be supported with full enthusiasm". UKIP existed to get the UK out of the EU, and Carswell supported that, and arguably did more than most, by getting elected twice to Westminster. I don't see that he has to join the cult of the Everlasting Supreme Leader.

The more the UKIP leaders throw tantrums about Farage's non-knighthood, the worse they look. Long may it continue.