UKIP

[KateLMead]

As a future UKIP voter, I was anything but happy when Carswell ex Conservative supposedly dumped Cameron and joined UKIP.. I stated at the time his doing so was a ploy and he was not to be trusted..I still feel the same about this individual, in spite of the fact he has supposedly fallen out with both Cameron and now Farage.

[TheOstrich]

Yes, I'm not sure about Carswell either, Kate, but I'd rather have 1 UKIP MP at Westminster than none at all .......

[Suff]

It's the job of the party to deal with Carswell. The UKIP is only just beginning to get a strong enough executive to deal with that. They voted Farage back in with a landslide. Carswell should have learned from that.

I'm sure Carswell thought he could keep his seat and take the leadership of the UKIP. What he, perhaps, failed to recognise, was that the UKIP are not so much a bunch of professional politicians as a bunch of people who believe that leaving the EU is not just something worth doing but is also something which Must be done.

As such the UKIP will not allow Carswell to play the kind of politics he wants to. Hopefully, as the EU referendum becomes closer, there can be some by elections which build on the Labour disaffection and we can have some more UKIP MP's to balance Carswell out.

I'm with Ossie. Today he is a necessary evil. But in the next 2 years he may find himself with an ultimatum. Behave or get out.

[Workingman]

I do not think it matters any more. Carswell is only temporary.

As I said in the other thread, the vote will be to leave the EU. Once that happens UKIP's main raison d'etre will cease to be. It will become an anti-immigration party, and not much else.

[medsec222]

I hope that UKIP will not become a spent force. They have committed to shared parenting in their manifesto and are the only party to have done so. They also want the tax threshold to be raised to £15,000, which is the level at least the Conservative Party should aspire to before cutting the tax credits of working families on low incomes.