Show Hide image The Staggers 21 November 2016 Diane James quits Ukip seven weeks after quitting the leadership too The (briefly) former Ukip leader is leaving the party. Print HTML Diane James, who was Ukip leader for 18 days, has now left the party altogether. Her departure comes hot on the heels of the departure of another prominent Ukip politician, Steven Woolfe. Speaking at a YouGov conference on Friday, James said she had resigned from the leadership because she wanted to give someone else an opportunity. In a statement on Monday, she expanded: "The President of the Parliament Martin Schulz has accepted my request and will announce this in his opening speech to the Parliamentary Session in Strasbourg on Monday 21 November. "At a high profile public event in Cambridge last week, I was asked why I had not completed the process to become leader of Ukip? I had little option, but to give the truthful response that, although nominated leader by popular vote in the membership, I found that I had no support within the executive and thus no ability to carry forward the policies on which I had campaigned. "My decision to retire from the election process and not complete it was very difficult personally and professionally, given that Ukip has dominated my life and all my efforts for over five years. In recent weeks, my relationship with the party has been increasingly difficult and I feel it is now time to move on. I wish the party well for the future under new leadership." Statement from Diane James on becoming an Independent Member of the European Parliament. pic.twitter.com/VavCHx28AM — Diane James (@DianeJamesMEP) November 21, 2016 But her decision to quit Ukip altogether means that two of Ukip's original 22 MEPs are now independents. At the YouGov conference, she had said in answer to a question: "I walked away from the leadership, as you correctly put it, because I decided I was not the right person to lead Ukip. Very simply, I'm a management consultant by background, and an analyst. I campaigned on a whole platform, a whole series of areas, and within let's say 17-18 days, I realised I couldn't do those and I couldn't deliver them within the timeframe I felt the party had to address. "That to me is honesty from a politician. Recognising that having achieved 40 per cent of the membership vote, actually got them to come behind me and understand and appreciate and buy into what I was putting forward, I couldn't deliver within, as you will have seen, 100 days. I couldn't deliver those in 100 days. "I believe I did the honourable thing and decided to allow somebody else who could come in and campaign and win with a different mandate, a different platform." Of course, some will say they sensed a lack of enthusiasm from the beginning of James's leadership... › Theresa May just scrapped her own brilliant pro-business idea Julia Rampen is the editor of The Staggers, The New Statesman's online rolling politics blog. She was previously deputy editor at Mirror Money Online and has worked as a financial journalist for several trade magazines. More Related articles Don't believe the letting agents - banning fees is good for renters Hey, Philip Hammond, where's that £350m for the NHS? When the Autumn Statement shows the Tories are vulnerable, why can’t Labour hurt them?
Show Hide image The Staggers 23 November 2016 Philip Hammond's modest break with George Osborne could become more radical The new Chancellor softened, rather than abandoned, austerity. But Brexit could change his course. Print HTML The age of the imperial Chancellor is over. Gordon Brown and George Osborne relished in the theatricality of the Autumn Statement, springing policy surprises and roaming across departments. Philip Hammond today drew the curtain on this era. As he paid tribute to a watching Osborne, he added: "My style will, of course, be different from his." He would "prove no more adept at pulling rabbits from hats" than "[the] Foreign Secretary has been at retrieving balls from the back of scrums" (a jibe which visibly unsettled Boris Johnson). The new Chancellor was true to his word. His only surprise announcement was an anti-rabbit: the abolition of the Autumn Statement. Hammond has ended what was a second Budget in all but name. The effect was slightly undermined by the announcement of a Spring Statement (responding to the OBR's forecasts). But the change in style was unmistakeable. Hammond promised to avoid "a long list of individual projects being supported", casting himself as the nation's accountant, rather than an aspirant prime minister. But what of the substance? Osborne vowed in 2015 to deliver a budget surplus by the end of this parliament. Since then, as Hammond understatedly remarked, "times have moved on." The Leave vote, and the £59bn hit anticipated from Brexit, has ended what little hope there was of eliminating the deficit. The dry Hammond is no Keynesian but he recognises that the facts have changed. The ambition of a surplus has been postponed until the next parliament, with cyclically-adjusted borrowing only required to fall below 2 per cent by the end of this one (a looser target than Labour's). The national debt, which will peak at 90.2 per cent in 2017-18, is similarly not due to decline until 2020. In an age of uncertainty, Hammond has insured himself against economic calamity. But he deployed little of his potential firepower today. Though he explicitly borrowed to invest (as Ed Balls, rather than Osborne, proposed in 2015), he did so modestly: £23bn over five years. Austerity, Hammond made clear, has been modified, rather than abandoned. The departmental spending cuts announced last autumn remain in place and planned welfare reducations were softened, not scrapped. There was no new money for the NHS despite an ever-greater funding crisis. Osborne is gone, but Osbornomics endures. At Prime Minister's Questions, immediately before the Autumn Statement, Theresa May declared: "Austerity is about us living within our means". Yet Brexit, and all that could follow from it, could force its abandonment. If the "just managing" can manage no more, it would take a brave government to impose further deprivation. The sober Hammond is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. George Eaton is political editor of the New Statesman. More Related articles Theresa May's government will do well to do more than just manage Don't believe the letting agents - banning fees is good for renters Hey, Philip Hammond, where's that £350m for the NHS?
