No need for toxic alliance

MULTIMILLIONAIRE Arron Banks has demanded that Ukip appoint him chair of that party or else he will take his cash elsewhere.

He appears to have caught a nasty dose of “Trumpitis,” presumably from his pal Nigel Farage, former Ukip leader and the US president’s dining companion.

This disease afflicts very rich business people who imagine that their stupendous wealth entitles them to have whatever political post they happen to covet.

They also believe, with some reason, that capitalist democracy is the finest that money can buy.

Following the flop of current Ukip leader Paul Nuttall’s bid to become the new MP for Stoke Central last week, Mr Banks has newly discovered that the party is “run like a jumble sale.”

The remedy for such a shambles, apparently, is that he takes control of the ramshackle bandwagon and fits it with a new wheel or two.

In particular, he wants the party’s anti-immigration message to be even more prejudiced, divisive and destructive than it is already. Many Ukippers would go along with that, of course, although his nasty obsession should bring a blush of shame to some other beneficiaries of his anti-EU largesse.

His lurch further to the right validates the stance of those left-wing anti-EU forces in the Labour and Communist parties and trade unions who refused to collaborate with Banks, Ukip and the Tories during the referendum campaign.

The defeat of Nuttall and Ukip in Stoke-on-Trent and the party’s failure to make any headway in Copeland was one of last Thursday’s brighter spots.

But it needs to be turned into a wider offensive to sweep away the party’s footholds in working-class areas.

This will not be done by some kind of “progressive alliance” between elements of the Labour Party, the Greens, the Lib Dems and the far left.