kicking the smallest boy in the playground

Am a little bit sick of all these 'UKIP finance' stories, but I thought this timeline in The Times today was rather illustrative of the motivations here:

Peaks and troughs

1993 The United Kingdom Independence Party is founded by Alan Sked and other members of the AntiFederalist League

1997 The party fails to win any seats in the general election. Mr Sked resigns as leader and leaves the party

1999 UKIP wins three seats in the European Parliament with 7 per cent of the vote

2000 Michael Holmes is ousted as leader in a power struggle and leaves the party

2002 The former Conservative minister Roger Knapman is elected leader

2004 Robert Kilroy-Silk joins UKIP. The party wins 12 seats in the European election with 16.8 per cent of vote

2005 Mr Kilroy-Silk resigns after failing to become leader

2006 Nigel Farage MEP is elected as leader

2007 UKIP gets its first foothold in Parliament when two peers defect

2007 The Electoral Commission demands the return of £367,697 donations

Translation: Oh, fuck; they're in Westminster. We never thought they'd do that.I know, we'll close them down! That way we can keep this wonderful status quo of useless, traitor politicians.

And for those of you who weren't aware of the other delight handed out by the Electoral Commission to UKIP:

The UK Independence Party's plight deepened yesterday when election watchdogs signalled that they would veto its plans to rebrand itself.

Which is odd, because when it was bounced around as an idea, lots of people seemed to think it was a rather good one. Someone who wrote such an article (which I am not going to link to as I am rather keen on keeping my contacts) said that he had had four calls from CCHQ asking why he wrote such a positive article on the name change, as it was the biggest fear of the Tory party that UKIP do that.

Well, they can't. But I hope that they will have a new logo, though, and get a better website and engage with the new media because I personally think that it's vital in the 21st century.

The reason why they weren't allowed to change the name? Because some people might get confused between The Independence Party and an Independent candidate.

The Electoral Commission: Bolstering rock bottom standards in education since 2000.

Stop the world, I want to get off.