What about UKIP?
I can’t start answering this question, which relates to the political future of UKIP, without mentioning the legal Latin expression “Functus Officio”.
Functus Officio means a duty completely finished, or to quote from Black’s Legal Dictionary:-
“Latin: Having fulfilled the function, discharged the office, or accomplished the purpose, and therefore of no further force or authority. Applied to an officer whose term has expired, and who has consequently no further official authority; and also to an instrument, power, agency, etc. which has fulfilled the purpose of its creation, and is therefore of no further virtue or effect.”
The words of the second verse of that great Victorian funeral hymn “Abide with Me” also seems very suitable too. Here they are:-
“Swift to its close, ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”
It is however fair that I also mention Nigel Farage’s and UKIP’s highly significant role in getting David Cameron to make what for Dave was the greatest political mistake of his life. That role was in bluffing him into calling a referendum on our continued membership of the EU.
Andrew Marr writing in the New Statesman on 1st July reported that:-
“According to one of those involved, this all started at a pizza restaurant at Chicago O’Hare Airport at the time of a Nato conference in 2012, when David Cameron and his closest political allies decided that the only way of scuppering Ukip and the Euro-hostile Right of the Conservative Party was to give the British people a referendum.”
We English People, and our Nation, will always owe a debt of gratitude to UKIP and its role in getting us the opportunity to democratically vote to Leave the EU.
But perhaps, rather like an effective catalyst in causing a chemical reaction, in doing all this UKIP may have caused its own destruction.
Of course at this stage it is not clear for sure what the outcome of UKIP’s leadership election is going to be, nor what will be left of their Party once they have finished fighting over its constitutional structure at the emergency EGM which Arron Banks is organising.