Overnight there was a mini-reshuffle over in the ranks of the People’s Army™. Some of the news is unremarkable – Nathan Gill MEP apparently gets the International Development brief, a job that he has in fact held since at least February.
But two announcements do stand out. Mark Reckless, already UKIP’s Director of Policy, is their new Economic Spokesman, and Christopher Mills, the party’s Deputy Treasurer, becomes their Business Spokesman.
No doubt each knows a lot about his brief, but isn’t it rather odd to appoint unelected spokesmen on two crucial policy areas? Ever since UKIP started racking up decent numbers of MEPs they have tended to give these roles to them, given that they actually represent voters. The party has always made a lot of its love of democracy, too, so this is doubly odd.
Is it that Farage doesn’t believe any of his MEPs have sufficient knowledge and experience to speak on economics or business? Or might it be that after getting his fingers burned in the falling out with Patrick O’Flynn, the UKIP Generalissimo would prefer to have the roles held by party officials he can sack and chuck out without any internal consequences should history repeat itself?