26/01/2015
"Bashir represents everything Ukip stands for", wrote
Raheen Kassam last year. That he has now played both Mr Farage and Mr Cameron suggests that Kassam was possibly right â unprincipled, opportunistic and self-centred. Small wonder that Ukip is now munching on
sour grapes, as it confronts the loss of one of its star MEPs.
Another person not doing so well out of this, though, is Dan Hannan. Apparently, he was the man who brokered the deal that got Bashir his place in the sun, the Conservatives having taken young Hannan's assurances that the man was kosher â so to speak.
Nevertheless, while the Tories have Hannan's egg on their faces, even Dellers
is lamenting UKIP's behaviour on this. He states that if: "a Pakistani Muslim Bashir was given special treatment and that a blind eye was deliberately turned to his flaws, then this really is dispiriting". First, says Dellers, it sits ill with what many rank-and-file members would like to believe of UKIP: that it is a party which believes in meritocracy and shuns politicking and sleaze.
Second, it's an opportunity missed. UKIP needs its ethnic minority candidates, of that there's little doubt and every effort should be made to reach out and recruit them. But unless they're any good, there really is no point â as the Conservatives discovered with Baroness "never buy the first pony you see" Warsi, and as they're about to discover yet again with the dismal Amjad Bashir.
Actually, we've been there before. In the
2001 general election, we put up an Asian candidate by the name of Imran Hussain, but only after we had gone to enormous lengths to consult the community and check him out.
There was nothing to discover, then. But leave it to the current bunch of amateurs, and anything goes. Their propensity to create train wrecks is never-ending. And, in that sense, Bashir does represent everything Ukip stands for.
