Gerard Batten with Tommy Robinson (Image - Gerard Batten,Twitter)
UKIP's National Executive Committee (NEC) have blocked Gerard Batten from standing in the UKIP leadership election without giving a good reason and against the wishes of most of the members.
According to Gerard's gofundme page a solicitor has been appointed and an injunction will be issued against the NEC next week. Over £8,500 has been raised so far to fund his legal action.
According to a report on Kipper Central; Tony McIntyre, a former National Chairman of UKIP, has said that Gerard should be allowed to stand. He also said that at a leadership hustings event in the South West on Thursday evening, only about 50 people turned up when normally over one hundred would be expected to attend. Without Batten's name on the ballot paper there seems to be very little interest in the leadership election.
Despite all the good work done by Batten over the past year, there are those on the NEC who are unhappy with UKIP's move to the right and the appointment of Tommy Robinson as UKIP special adviser on Muslim rape gangs.
Batten has earned a lot of respect from the members for the way he has stood up to the mainstream media on controversial issues and should be allowed to stand. If the NEC refuses to reverse their decision, it's likely that UKIP will face mass resignations.
When Batten took over the party in April, 2018 it had less than 18,000 members, membership is now thought to be over 30,000 according to senior UKIP officials.
Most of those 12,000 new members joined because they supported the direction the party is now taking. If the party changes direction under a new leader, there is a risk that most of those new members will resign.
With such a large loss of members, and without new members coming in -- under a less controversial leader, UKIP will be starved of publicity -- it won't be long before UKIP goes bankrupt.
