Good Luck to Professor Tim Congdon & That L ETTER + Departure!
Good Luck to Professor Tim Congdon
- I believe he offers UKIP members their best hopes for the future.
Tim Congdon is an economist, educated at Oxford University, with a long record of commenting on public policy issues, including writing sympathetically about the monetarist approach to macroeconomic policy. He has considerable experience working in the City of London and was the founder of the macroeconomic forecasting consultancy Lombard Street Research. He has also held a variety of academic appointments. Between 1993 and 1997 he was a member of the Treasury Panel that advised the Conservative government on economic policy[1]. In recent years, he has expressed considerable skepticism about the direction the European Union has been moving in.Congdon has been a prominent defender of the UK Government's action to lend to Northern Rock claiming that it made money for the government.[2] He is also a small shareholder in Northern Rock, a fact that he has scrupulously disclosed publicly when writing on this issue.[3]
Since May 2008, he has been the economic correspondent for Standpoint magazine.[4]
Professor Congdon was the unsuccessful UKIP candidate for the Forest of Dean constituency in the 2010 General Election, obtaining 5.2% of the votes cast.
UKIP members consider Tim Congdon to be the only noticeable intellect in the Party Leadership and seen as having an interest as a reformist candidate, who would try to clean up the party, you can well imagine the forces ranged against him who would welcome him with all the joy of a pig in a Mosque.
You may recall his statement in late 2009 when he sided with some of the honest members of the senior members of UKIP, whose letter is below! There was a general level of disappointment in the realisation as to just how much the MEPs and their parasites 'had been 'captured' no longer seeing that their job was in Britain for Britain, not in Brussels for themselves'
Here is the letter he signed in opposition to the changes Farage tried to force on The Party. Changes to the constitution which were designed to give dictatorial powers to the Party Chairman. Farage has never forgiven any of the signators for this challenge to his personal fiefdom and his very personal control of his 'Milch Cow'.
Unfortunately despite his high level of academic economics and his consumate ability at critique of economics for worthy journals and the media Tim Congdon has one very big drawback as a leader - he is not a good speaker and suffers from quite surprising nerves which he has a tendency to calm before hand and at times excessively calm afterwards! Sadly despite his experience he is rather uncharismatic, typifying the accountant, mathematician, statistican, economist stereotype of a boring bean counter!Dear UKIP member,
We are writing this letter more in sorrow than in anger. At a time when every effort should be directed to our June election campaign, the NEC is wasting time and money on divisive and controversial changes to the UKIP constitution. It is now holding a members' referendum on this.
What is worse, the purpose seems to be to make it easier to get rid of members at a time when we should be concentrating on the reverse - expanding our membership. The changes will stifle freedom of expression within the party and reduce and weaken the power of members:
Amendments 6 and 19 (VOTE 2) The changes abolish the annual business meeting. Members will be deprived of their current absolute right to vote annual on the Party's accounts at a meeting of all members and to receive annual reports from all national officers. Yet the Party should belong to its members and the leadership should be accountable to them.
Amendments to 14 (VOTE 4) the changes will abolish the democratic right of members to elect a Disciplinary Committee at the annual business meeting. Instead a Disciplinary Panel of three will be selected arbitrarily by the unelected Party Secretary from a "pool" of about 55 people, themselves appointed by regional committees. Further changes will give the unelected Party Chairman (appointed by the Leader) arbitrary powers to suspend temporarily any member for any reason without a hearing.
These changes are worthy of the EU itself - reducing accountability and democracy.
Given that the leadership launched this attack on members' rights and is now asking your view, we feel it right to present the case against. We ask you to vote AGAINST all changes but particularly Vote 2 and Vote 4. The other changes are simply needless.
In less than six months voters will be choosing their MEPs. UKIP should be campaigning now for a major breakthrough. Yet it is low on the opinion polls and short of campaign funds.
The NEC discussed the coming campaign for the first time only a few days ago. Meanwhile it has been wasting energy on feuding and squabbles. It then launched a witchhunt for imagined enemies within. Two NEC members elected by the members were summarily kicked off the NEC; their crime apparently being to express their own opinions (and absolutely nothing to do with the BNP as some have tried to imply). The deputy treasurer was similarly removed. Ordinary members have been thrown out without being given the right to any hearing.
We condemn this navel-gazing and misdirection of effort. It must stop. We call on the leadership to accept that any democratic party is bound to have a spread of views; that intellectual debate can be healthy and that, amazingly, the Leader, the Chairman and the NEC may not always be right.
As prominent UKIP members we call on the Party to unite, dispose of this distraction quickly by voting against these unneeded changes and concentrate on the proper task in hand.
Yours sincerely
Sir Richard Body, was MP for 39 yearsTim Congdon CBE, leading economistRoger Knapman MEP, former Party Leader and MPDr. Eric Edmond, elected NEC memberPiers Merchant, former UKIP Chief Executive and MPBruce Lawson FCA, former UKIP TreasurerMartin Haslam FCA, former UKIP deputy treasurerDel Young, elected NEC memberDr. David Abbott, elected NEC member
The inability to communicate with ease leads some of this propensity to explosive temper tantrums but perhaps the calming of nerves before hand may explain why this is apparent - some may remember Tommy Cooper whose nerves eventually led to full blown alcoholism and vodka on his cornflakes!
Tommy Cooper was by far a better commedian but as an economist of some repute I would assume Tim Congdon would count his shots and ensure he kept his powder dry ;-)
That said it would be a pleasant change to have an honest man in office who had an interest in Britain, the Party has survived to date without ever having a competent leader but there is at least every reason to believe Tim Congdon could be trusted.
If for no other reason than this report in:
The Telegraph in May 2009
"Meanwhile, one of its most distinguished former supporters, the economist Tim Congdon, has left Ukip, claiming that it has been "captured by the European institutions" and neglects its British Eurosceptic supporters."
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