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When Nigel Farage resigned as Party Leader at the Southport Conference last year, I thought long and hard about whether to stand for the leadership of the party. I was approached by MEPs, NEC members, Regional Organisers and large number of Branch Chairmen encouraging me to go for it. In the end, after much agonising, I decided that the time was not right. In hindsight, I think I made the right decision.

It is a year on and I find myself in the same position because Lord Pearson has vacated the position of Party Leader and the search is once again on for a replacement. The big difference this time is that I don’t have to think long and hard about whether to stand or not, as I have absolutely no intention of putting my name forward for the leadership of UKIP.

My reasons for this decision are simple: I am committed to a huge amount of public meetings in the North West over the coming year, as well as helping to oversee some overdue restructuring in the region. I also want to spend a lot of time in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland campaigning for the assembly and parliamentary elections next year, as well as putting myself forward once again for my local council.

I wish whoever decides to stand for the leadership of our party all the very best of luck. They have my respect and full support.

Honourable politicians are few and far between, but until today, one led the UK Independence Party.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch stepped down as our Party Leader today, and contrary to some of the rumours doing the rounds on the internet, it came as a shock to many of us. I was asked just the other day about the future of UKIP and I reiterated my belief that Lord Pearson’s ambitious proposals to professionalise and re-structure the party machine were imperative if we were to move up to the next level. Whoever wins this winter’s leadership election must be committed to such changes, for I firmly believe that our party has out-grown its current day structure.

Lord Pearson was also as honest as the day is long, some would say too honest, and he did not care much for the intricacies of the UKIP manifesto, as was shown by his interview on the Campaign Show. Lord P was a throw-back to a by-gone era, a cause man, not a party man, and it was refreshing. For him, getting out of the European Union meant everything and he didn’t care how we did it. Whether it was deals with Labour or the Conservatives, it did not matter if it took us a step closer to extricating ourselves from the ‘octopus’, as he describes it, that is Brussels.

Although UKIP lost its leader today, it hasn’t lost Lord P. He has given a commitment that he will continue to work “flat out” in the House of Lords as a UKIP peer and will continue to raise money for the party. There is also no doubt in my mind that the party’s loss is the causes’ gain and Lord P will campaign even harder for the referendum we so richly deserve, now that he is free from the shackles of party leadership.

As the Party Chairman, I will now have the unenviable task of overseeing a second leadership election in a year: a task I would not wish on my worst enemy.

A UKIP North West member telephoned me today to inform me that someone called “Honey something” has attacked me on her blog. “Honey something” turns out to be Mary Honeyball, a Labour MEP from London and someone I wouldn’t know if I tripped over her in the street, or in the parliament.

On her blog, she asserts that I have the worst attendance record of any British MEP during plenary sessions in the European Parliament (58%). I said before I was elected that I would only go to Brussels for important votes, when I might, albeit very rarely, be able to stop powers being transferred from Britain to Brussels. However, Honeyball and her Labour associates consistently stab this country in the back and vote in favour of much of this nonsense; indeed, sometimes, they even write it. So excuse me if I don’t turn up to vote about tractor parts in Sweden or to show solidarity with some far flung country that is having a hard time I prefer to work in my constituency.

Another reason I go to Brussels is to give speeches on behalf of my constituents, which also benefits the party, as local newspapers pick them up. This year I have spoken about car parking charges in Congelton, bin collections in Bootle, flood relief for Cumbria and job losses on the Wirral. All good local issues. I also ask local UKIP branches if there is anything they would like me to raise on their behalf and I try my best to do so. According to my colleague Gerard Batten, Honeyball has only spoken in the parliament once since being re-elected in June 2009 and it wasn’t about her constituency or even her country, it was about Italy! So come on Mary, what are you actually doing to earn your crust?

Sorry, but the sooner Mary and I get our P45’s the better. The difference is, I want it and she doesn’t.

In yesterday s Commons sketch in the Daily Telegraph, it was said that the  Ghost of Churchill  stalked the prisons debate. Mark Menzies, a Conservative MP from Fylde, which is in my own region, reminded MPs that 100 years to the day, Winston Churchill, the then Home Secretary, announced that  the mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.   The response from fellow Conservative MP, Crispin Blunt, was that this statement was made when Churchill  was in his Liberal phase.

Indeed, Churchill was a leading light in the Liberal Party in Edwardian England and at this time he also advocated sending fewer people to prison, just like our current Justice Secretary Ken Clarke. Interestingly, Churchill was thirty-five when he made the above statement.

Therefore I would like also remind readers of a another Churchill quote in relation to this:  If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.

Proof that clarity comes with experience.

Today’s Daily Telegraph claims my attendance record in the European Parliament is terrible. Alongside UKIP MEPs, David Campbell Bannerman and Godfrey Bloom, my attendance record at plenary sessions is the lowest of any British MEP. I’ll hold my hands up, as my attendance record is flaky to say the least. But so what? I treat Brussels with the contempt it deserves: it has no real democratic mandate and MEPs only exist as a pretence to make the EU look democratic, when in fact we all know it is not. I also keep abreast of what is going on out there through the work of the excellent UKIP staff. So as I always say, one does not have to be in the joke shop to know the jokes.

The think tank Open Europe believes that this is just too awful. They say “British MEPs are paid an awful lot of money to defend the interests of UK voters in Europe but it’s pretty difficult to do that if they don’t turn up to vote. Helping to fight the general election campaign is all very well but MEPs’ first duty is to make sure that EU laws coming out of the European Parliament are good for the UK.”

My point is that although I have the worst attendance record, I am certainly not the worst MEP. Rather than go to Brussels, sit on useless committees, claim my £200+ ‘daily allowance’ and bleed off the British taxpayer, I work in my constituency, hold public meetings and take up matters on behalf of constituents. I also have a mandate to do this, as I said openly during the European Election campaign that would only go to Brussels for important votes, nothing more and nothing less. The voters knew what they were getting, and judging by the responses that come back to my office, the constituents seem happy with the work I do.

My two pet hates, besides the European Union, are the curse that is political correctness and our increasingly intrusive Nanny State. Please allow me in this blog post to indulge in the second.

I have recently spent a lot of time in hospital, especially on maternity wards. I cannot praise the medical staff highly enough: they were hard working and professional. However, the experience left me a little uncomfortable, as I felt that the NHS had moved away from healing and caring, which we all want it to do well, and has begun to move into the field of preaching and making life-style choices on behalf of its patients.

Take for example the issue of breast-feeding. Apparently the most recent research shows that ‘breast is best’ and therefore bottle feeding is out and the NHS is pushing breast-feeding like it was no one’s business. But it is going too far when it is making mums who do not want to breast-feed, or cannot, feel inadequate, as I witnessed myself on a number of occasions. As a result of my experience, I was not surprised to see a story on the front page of the Sunday Post informing readers that the NHS is to stop giving bottle-feeding classes in an effort to push its breast-feeding policy. This is not just dictatorial; it is also dangerous, as was pointed out by numerous doctors and professors.

My point is that the NHS should not be telling us how we should look after our own children. That is the job of parents, not the state, although the Labour government increasingly intruded into family responsibilities. If a mother does not want to breast-feed that should be her prerogative and she should not be made to feel second class by the breast feeding Mafia that preach to us in modern day hospitals. Moreover, the NHS should not be choosing to drop bottle feeding classes simply because it believes that breast-feeding is superior (at the moment). Surely it is about choice and the NHS is denying women the right to choose how they want to feed their baby. This is wrong.

Just like NHS sponsored organisations like NICE calling for children as young a five to be given sex education classes or for the banning of alcohol adverts, it’s more proof that in modern day Britain, the state still thinks Nanny knows best.

Yesterday, politicians were being ‘wheeled out’ on to TV to tell us that alcohol adverts should be banned because they encourage excessive drinking; especially amongst the young and impressionable. So what the politicians are saying is that advertisements alter our actions and encourage us to do certain things that otherwise we would not. Interesting.

So let’s get this right: we are going to ban alcohol adverts because apparently they encourage youngsters to act irresponsibly, but we allow adverts that promote abortion, which also encourages people not to take responsibility for their actions. Do you get where I am going on this one? Rank hypocrisy.

It’s a strange country that places elimination of so-called binge drinking over the ending of a life.