Kilroy-Silk withdraws from UKIP whip
Robert Kilroy-Silk has confirmed that he is withdrawing from the UKIP whip in the European Parliament.
The move means that Mr Kilroy-Silk will be under no obligation to vote with, or work in general with, other members of the party in the Parliament. He will also most likely lose all access to the party’s organisational and administrative structure.
Mr Kilroy-Silk insists though that he will continue to be an independent member of UKIP, and reiterated his leadership ambitions for the party.
The move to leave the whip came after a meeting of fellow UKIP MEPs in the Parliament – which Mr Kilroy-Silk did not attend – to discuss the possibility of disciplining the former Labour MP over his outspoken desire to fight for the UKIP leadership.
There have been repeated suggestions in the press that the MEPs were poised to withdraw the UKIP whip from Mr Kilroy-Silk after he refused to back down over his leadership ambitions.
Last week, UKIP’s leader, Roger Knapman, organised a telephone poll of branch chairmen that he claims showed a 70 per cent backing for his leadership. However, Mr Kilroy-Silk branded the poll as “farcical” arguing that people had been placed under emotional pressure to offer support for the existing leadership.
Speaking from Strasbourg, Mr Kilroy-Silk told the BBC that UKIP realised that they had no power to withdraw the whip from him as he had broken no disciplinary rules and had been given no written warning, meaning that any attempt to do so would lay them open to legal challenge.
He branded the current leadership as “incompetent” and said: “I will not work with the parliamentary party in Strasbourg again.
“We now not only have an invisible leader but we have incompetence on a large scale”
Asked about loyalty, Mr Kilroy-Silk said that he could continue to be “loyal to the cause of Britain out of the EU” and compared with that “everything else is unimportant”.
In a statement, the other MEPs said that they “very much regret” Mr Kilroy-Silk’s decision.
A spokesman for UKIP’s central office told politics.co.uk that they were “very disappointed” at the news, which they view as a “vexation and a distraction from the real issues”.
