THE FUTURE LOOKING GOOD FOR UKIP

Nigel Farage MEP, the leader of UKIP speaking at the Birmingham conference.



It’s all UKIP’s fault, the UKIP conference in Birmingham over the last weekend was so good all my time has been spent sorting conference matters out since leaving no time to blog here. I took 800 photos of the conference over the three days from Thursday 20th to Saturday 22nd September, which has left me with the massive task of sorting them out for distribution.

While spending hours late into the night in my little Walsall home, looking and sorting those photos, you can see why it was such a brilliant conference and why everyone left impressed. The Birmingham Town Hall is an impressive structure in the heart of Birmingham City centre, the speakers were great, and as always, Nigel Farage gave his usual barnstorming performance at the end of Friday morning.

With some really big and powerful political names now coming to UKIP, such as Stuart Wheeler, Tim Congdon and in recent times Lord Hesketh and Lord Stevens, also Mike Read the well known radio presenter, UKIP is really beginning to make the news – good news too.

At one time UKIP used to be wrongly portrayed as a party of ‘Little Englanders’, ‘anti-Europeans’ and, as we all know too well, ‘Gadfly’s’ and ‘Fruitcakes’. Those days are now gone and our Birmingham conference really laid those unfair opinions to rest.

Evan Davies, the BBC Radio Four presenter who attended the conference, gave a very fair and substantial report of the UKIP conference on the Today Programme on Saturday morning, there was also news reports that UKIP is now outpolling the Liberal Democrats. For those of us who have given many years to UKIP to, at last, see the party being treated with the respect and seriousness it now deserves make the nineteen years of hard work since the launch of the party well worth it.

Conferences are always a good time to meet friends from other parts of the country and chat to people. The problem is sometimes there is such a lot to do and so many people to speak to there is never enough time for a good chat. Some of those I saw and know are not yet members of UKIP, however, after this conference I am sure they soon will be including a follower of this blog from Milton Keynes.

There were some great speakers at the conference, such as Tim Akers, who always gives a good talk, UKIP Councillors were present, Mike Nattrass MEP made the delegates laugh when he related the true tale of an EU Committee he sat in who seriously wanted to know how much wine went in a wine gum. Mike nearly said: ‘There is no wine in a wine gum’ then thought better of it in case wine gum manufacturers found the EU bans them from using the name because of a mis-description. This can only happen in the EU. It was good to see Christopher Gill selling copies of his latest book there too.

UKIP can now step forward to what looks to be a changing future where it is seen as a political force in the land. With elections coming up such as the Corby by-election and the Police and Crime Commissioner elections this November, as well as the County Council elections next year then the European elections in 2014 where UKIP is being predicted to come first. The future is looking good for UKIP.