It is 1992 and Neil Kinnock look set to put the Conservative government out of its misery in the General Election. The Tories are still reeling from the loss of Margaret Thatcher two years earlier and Labour is on the march.
But if you remember, Neil Kinnock did not win the election. He lost it all at the last minute because of the crippling stupidity of the people he had trusted to deliver the last few days of the campaign.
Party bosses decided to hold a totally over the top and embarrassing rally in Sheffield. In doing so they crushed Kinnock days before his moment of glory.
Fast forward 22 years and voters in Croydon today were left asking themselves if the Croydon North UKIP candidate Winston McKenzie had just delivered Nigel Farage his ‘Sheffield Rally’ moment.
Unbelievably with two days to go until UKIP walked the Euros and Farage walked into the history books, Mr McKenzie decided to organise a diversity carnival in the South London borough. A street party, with no security, to give protesters the opportunity to hurl abuse at party members and talk about the one allegation that is harming Farage’s chances: racism.
McKenzie booked a steel band, telling them they were going to the opening of a shop. When they realised it was a UKIP event they packed up in the full view of the media, but not before they did an interview with Channel4’s Michael Crick.
The small number of UKIP members who were insane enough to attend were treated to protesters claiming to be angry Romanians, attacking Nigel Farage’s unfortunate comments about not wanting to live next door to men from the country, giving the whole thing another run in the media.
Then McKenzie allegedly took to the media to say that Nigel Farage had not attended the event because Croydon was “unsafe” and “a dump”. All of this was conducted to the mood music of a merciless beating on Twitter from finger-wagging leftists.
You could hear the left tutting and whispering ‘we told you so’ and ‘this was always going to end in disaster’, once again loosening Farage’s grip on the vital UKIP/Conservative waiverers who like the UKIP leader but are not yet ready to permanently commit.
One UKIP member on the ground told Breitbart London that the event was “a total disaster”, when asked how something like this could have been allowed to happen he simply replied: “Two words: Winston McKenzie.”