Mr Sykes' masterplan

I've been thinking some more about Paul Sykes' announcement that he won't be funding UKIP any more, and realised that he's played a very interesting game with the Tories and UKIP for the past few years, and he's finally getting close to winning. At some point, I'm not sure when, Sykes realised that while his aim was to get Britain out of the EU, he was never going to achieve that with aim with UKIP, but that he could use UKIP to pull the Tories closer to advocating withdrawal through UKIP.

It was only a few weeks ago, after all, that Sykes was talking about withdrawing his funding for UKIP if Kilroy didn't become the leader but now we're told that:

UKIP's would-be leader Robert Kilroy-Silk's declaration he wanted to "kill" the Tories is understood to have been the final straw for Mr Sykes, who has twice left the Conservative Party because of its policy on Europe.

Now, Sykes can probably claim that he didn't expect Kilroy to proclaim his death sentence on the Tories, or that he'd changed his mind, but it seems to me that Sykes very cleverly wound Kilroy up and let him go, giving Sykes a convenient excuse (just when UKIP have given the Tories a solid kicking in Hartlepool) to pull his funding.

Now, of course, he can go back to flirting with the Conservative Party which is - as Michael Brown mentioned yesterday in the Independent - needing to find large sums of cash to fight the next election, and suddenly here's that nice Mr Sykes, having seen the error of the swivel-eyed loon ways, coming back to the fold. The Tories are now scared enough to start moving towards withdrawal, but the big potential threat to them of UKIP has been damaged by having it's financial carpet pulled out from under them. The Tories won't win the next election - and I suspect Sykes doesn't expect them to, whether he gives them money or not - but after it, Howard goes and then Sykes and his money are in a very good position to help the Party choose its next leader...and I suspect he'll be much more willing to talk about withdrawal.