By Robert J Lee
Eccentric Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer, now a former Liberal National Party life member, has threatened to form a new political party after an explosive public fallout with LNP management.
Along with three sitting members, Palmer resigned from the LNP a week ago after what he said were bad policy decisions and his inability to get along with Premier Campbell Newman and party president Bruce McIver, a former transport magnate who once owned 100 Kenworth trucks.
Palmer said he would probably find the required 500 members to form a political party which could in effect splinter conservative groups in the state.
Katters Australian Party has offered Palmer membership however the miner said he might go his own way, and has been seen in the company of the two former LNP members who now sit as independents.
The formation of any new conservative party mounted by Palmers white shoe brigade follows in the tradition of a classical counter-gang operation so well developed by Brigadier Kitson and the British Secret Service MI6 in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising, 1952 to 1960.
Whenever political groups were formed by the Land Freedom Army of blacks, Kitsons operatives would infiltrate the groups and split them by psychological or other means, so much so rendering any opposition to British occupancy as totally ineffective.
Clive Palmer inadvertently may be falling into the same trap.
His new party, if ever formed may give him a platform to criticize the LNP government, however it is unlikely it would ever become electorally appealing to the masses.
More likely it will become a soapbox for high rollers and the new Liberal white shoe brigade comprising members from the big end of town.
The mining magnate made his money selling Australian mining leases to foreign corporations.
Clive should retire while he is in front. ends