The Brexit Party appears to be falling apart in Scotland, which is good news for those of us who have decided that Boris' way is pretty much the only way to get Brexit done.
Nigel Farage pulled all his senior people out of Scotland a week ago, including the National Organiser. Louis Stedman-Bryce, the party's sole MEP in Scotland was then appointed as the new National Organiser, but given no support or help whatsoever. He was due to stand as the candidate in Glasgow North but resigned using Farage's decision to pull over 300 candidates from the line as his excuse. Actually, I suspect he realised that he would be left carrying the can for the looming catastrophe and decided to get our sharpish.
Edinburgh West had a candidate named Michael Boyd, a man I wrote to yesterday to urge him not to stay with the Brexit Party's sinking ship. Just today, I got an email from an old friend telling me that he had been asked to stand in this division, so it looks as if Michael Boyd took my advice.
I answered my old friend's email and pleaded with him not to take this poisoned chalice, and I am pleased to report that he will not now be standing for The Brexit Party.
This afternoon, a meeting was called at the Marriot Hotel in Edinburgh's Old Town and pretty much all the attendees were begged to stand in next month's elections, so it looks as if Boyd and Stedman-Bryce are not the only people who have called it a day. By the way, that meeting was only called yesterday, which suggests to me that bowels are liquifying nicely in what is left of the senior reaches of The Brexit Party.
Finally, people are getting text messages begging them to stay at home tomorrow to receive visitors who will ask them to sign candidates' nomination forms. Given that these forms have to be in by 4.00 pm on the dot, and that ten signatures are needed for each one, I think this is a bit of a forlorn hope but never mind. As I understand it one woman who was asked to waste a day indoors told the caller that she was going to the hairdresser's and would be out of touch all day.
What is going on? Basically, Farage is brilliant as the leader of a pressure group and appalling as a party political leader. He only trusts his close friends and anyone who is not a mate of Nigel is kept out of the inner-sanctum.
The sensible thing for Farage to do would be to pull all his candidates and give Boris a clear run to the Brexit prize, but his ego will not allow him to do that. He must know that candidates that have been chosen the day before nominations close have no chance of even saving their deposits - deposits that they have to find themselves, by the way - but he needs 300 of them to ensure that he gets a free television party election address. Besides that, he has announced that he will have 300 candidates, and his ego means that wants that number.
I do not know what is happening in the rest of the country but in Scotland, The Brexit Party is pretty much finished as a serious political force.
The field is now wide open for Boris and his gang!
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