Many of us have recurring nightmares. I used to have one that I’d woken up in the Big Brother house, and found myself on 24-hour TV with no earthly idea how I got there and no means of escape. So I find it impossible not to feel a twinge of sympathy for Clacton’s MP, Douglas Carswell, whose existence is a real-life recurring nightmare.
Every morning Douglas must wake up in a cold sweat and think: “Oh my God, I had this horrific dream that I’d defected to Ukip. They were even weirder on the inside, and then it was the general election and Nigel said all this grim stuff about foreign HIV liggers, despite the fact my own dad diagnosed the first cases of HIV, and then he unresigned. All in all it was the most regret-strewn defection since Guy Burgess discovered Soviet Russia wasn’t 1980s Mykonos.”
If only, like Pam Ewing, Douglas could stir and find it had all been a dream. There in the shower would be his standard-issue Conservative facecloth, and he’d know that the whole ghastly business was just an unfounded night terror.
And so to the Ukip panto, an annual confection that – despite the party’s strong support among washed-up comedians – tends to cast party bigwigs and whichever eyecatching misfit happens to be blowing through. Last year’s production, you may recall, was a hilarious tale involving a prospective Ukip candidate for South Basildon and East Thurrock named Natasha Bolter, and the party’s general secretary, who was literally called Roger Bird. And did he? Not for want of trying, claimed Natasha – but then, Natasha claimed a lot of things, most of which turned out to be total cobblers. Owing to some tear in the Ukip-panto continuum, Act Two saw Neil and Christine Hamilton – erstwhile stars of Cinderella in Kettering – make their debut in South Basildon, only for a subplot involving Neil’s expenses to see them sweep offstage muttering about dirty tricks.
This year the curtain has gone up on the Ukip panto with Douglas Carswell’s pointed statement that Ukip doesn’t have just one principal boy. As the party’s sole MP went on to declare: “A lot of people recognise there are a lot of talented people in the party.” There are certainly a lot of talented racists, as the bimonthly spectacle of “one bad apple” being gingerly tonged from the Ukip barrel continually attests. But the sense that it is long and strong in even adequate statesmen and women has traditionally proved a harder sell. The Oldham byelection result, where Ukip trailed an unexpectedly distant second to Labour, was clearly a disappointment – and consequently, says Carswell, it said to him “very clearly, that I think we need a fresh face”.
Ooh! I hope he’s not implying Nigel, 51, must have had a hard paper round. He’s certainly implying that Nigel is given to whingeing about the electoral referee after Farage’s intemperate attack on the returning officer in Oldham, in which he fumed that the result was “bent”. “I don’t want to wake up the morning after the European election,” explained Douglas, “and hear it was the postal votes.”
Well, quite. Though Douglas again stresses he doesn’t want the job of Ukip leader. Then who? If only there were some recently unemployed narcissist with a tendency to blame other people for failures available to be parachuted in … If you hear of anyone who might suit the position, do let Ukip know.
Obviously, it should be stressed that those aren’t the job requirements as sketched out by Carswell. He says Ukip should be an “optimistic, smiley, socially liberal, unapologetically free-market party”. And I should be Queen of Siam. But, unfortunately, there’s no accounting for taste. As it is, I’m a member of the lamestream media, which – and let me save the party’s supporters the trouble of pointing it out to me – obviously doesn’t understand Ukip. However, I’m not sure you have to be able to understand things to enjoy them. I always have a hoot at the Olympic wrestling, for instance, and would never dream of ruining it for myself by trying to understand the rules.
And anyway, there can hardly be any shame in not understanding Ukip when so many senior Ukippers make it plain they don’t either. Take the hardcore Christian and massage parlour frequenter Roger Helmer MEP, who reacted to Carswell’s intervention thusly: “I wish Ukip’s Westminster parliamentary party would focus on the big issue of #Brexit, not navel-gazing about internal party issues.” Do note that “Ukip’s Westminster parliamentary party”, which is the amusing collective noun for Douglas Carswell.
As far as Carswell’s comic timing goes, though, you can’t help feeling Roger has a point. A single-issue party, given an open goal by David Cameron’s Brussels backtracking, opts instead to shoot for a leadership row. And it’s a leadership row in which there will only be one winner. As party insiders are frequently at pains to point out, the golden rule of Ukip is that Nigel always wins. Except at elections to parliament. (Hey – maybe next time.)
But, difficult as Carswell may find it to stomach, that doesn’t matter a whole lot to Farage or his supporters at this stage in their campaign. “No party is defined by any one person,” is Carswell’s rather plaintive assertion, suggesting he finds it equally unpalatable to consider that he has defected to what amounts to a cult of personality built around the personality of Nigel Farage. Oh dear. We can only imagine his Christmas list amounts to one item: a pair of ruby slippers. There’s no place like home – and this really is no place like home for Douglas.
