Sitting in a pub with a beer in front of him, UKIP Leader Nick ‘The Kick’ Tenconi makes an offer to Reform UK’s dissident and suspended MP, Rupert Lowe.  ‘When you’re ready to get serious and jump on the team for the big win, my line and my door is open, for talks. Call me.’

Well, you would have thought that an appeal from the lounge bar, all to reminiscent of the bloke-in-the pub-persona cultivated by Lowe’s now-bitter enemy Nigel Farage, is not the pitch best geared to getting Rupert to sign up and become UKIP’s third MP (the previous two also having come from defections though before Tenconi’s particular brand of far-right lunacy infected the party).

But the latest developments in UKIP would seem guaranteed to put paid to any faint hopes that Tenconi might be harbouring that Lowe could be tempted to swap Reform for the outer fringes occupied by UKIP.

Lowe, of course, has been suspended from Reform following allegations of bullying and inappropriate behaviour, but it all happened suspiciously quickly after he publicly attacked Nigel Farage for exercising complete control over Reform which, said Lowe, is not serious, but merely a ‘protest party led by a messiah’.

Well, listen to this: this is from the resignation statement of the latest defector from the UKIP NEC, party stalwart John Poynton, which was posted only two days ago:

“I have this week resigned from UKIP and its NEC. The final straw came last week when the NEC were given just two days by Ben Walker, our Chairman, to approve by email a new and radically different manifesto. I have no idea who actually wrote it.

“Without sufficient time to assess or discuss it in open session I voted against it, but replied that I would submit a short list of recommended changes within seven days. I got no reply, and now see it has been published without change just five days later…

“…Ben Walker has displayed a habit of bulldozing his decisions through the NEC in this way for a long time, treating us as little more than a rubber stamp. It is highly disrespectful to us as an elected group representing our members, and this latest incident to me personally. I have confronted him many times about this but he takes absolutely no notice”.

If Lowe was unhappy with Farage’s modus operandi, he is not unlikely to subject himself to the even more dictatorial methods of Ben ‘Rogue Builder’ Walker. Tenconi’s appeal is little more than an invitation to leap from the Reform frying pan into the Ukip fire. And he’s unlikely to hook up with a party led by Walker and Tenconi, both convicted criminals.

But there’s more. Poynton alleges (with some justification) that the new UKIP manifesto defies the party constitution.

“As it happens this new manifesto is unconstitutional. It introduces positive cultural discrimination in favour of the Christian religion and makes no mention of libertarian values. Now I could live with that if it were in accordance with our constitution, but it is not. Our constitution under Clause 2.4 explicitly declares we are a libertarian party that opposes all forms of discrimination and upholds the principle of equality under the law. This makes it easy to combat loony lefty charges of racism. The constitution can only be changed by a majority vote of the members. I could have stayed to argue this point out of loyalty to the party and its members, but experience tells me I would be wasting my time”.

This is his statement in full:

Poynton joined UKIP in 2014 and was an election candidate in Southall, West London in 2015 and 2017 and in Old Bexley and Sidcup in 2021.  Last year he contested the Holborn and St Pancras constituency against Sir Kier Starmer, polling a mighty 75 votes, or 0.2% of the vote.

The new manifesto, UKIP’s ‘Living Manifesto 2025’, which bears all the hallmarks of having been drafted – at least in part – by Tenconi himself, embraces the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, rails against ‘globalists’ and ‘communist inspired corporatism’ and proclaims that UKIP is ‘the party of mass deportations; placing Christianity back into the heart of government; removing communists and socialists from public sector jobs; ending woke and the politicisation of law enforcement and public sector funded institutions.’

One extraordinary clause states that: ‘Groups such as The Muslim Brotherhood, ANTIFA, Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Socialist Worker Party, Just Stop Oil, and Extinction Rebellion will be met with extreme prejudice’ a phrase usually take to mean the use of lethal force.

It sets the party up for a final break with the dwindling band of UKIP traditionalists (like Poynton) who have hung on in there, and establishes a firm, racist political basis for an alliance with ‘Tommy Robinson’ (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) when he is released from prison. The NEC from which Poynton has resigned has been steadily stuffed with Yaxley- Lennon supporters in recent months in anticipation of such a link up. Ponyton’s departure will almost certainly lead to another being inserted.

The question that Poynton fails to answer, and which has been posed by a number of respondents to his online resignation post, is why it has taken him so long to realise that Walker has been bulldozing decisions through the NEC. The most notable, of course, was the decision relating to the Trust that now controls UKIP and over which only one man – Walker himself – exercises control.

Poynton, it has to be said, does himself no favours with the absurdly pompous proposal that should Reform form a government under Nigel Farage, he would be willing to serve as Chancellor, but from a seat in the House of Lords.