The Conservatives tried a couple of Open Primaries to select candidates at the last election and were landed with the ban-it-all barking nutter Sarah Wollaston as an MP for the trouble.

UKIP are trying something along the same lines for their choice of candidate for the Mayor of London.

We have six top-notch candidates vying to be the Party’s candidate in the London Mayor elections on May 3, 2012.

They are David Coburn, Michael Corby, Michael McGough, Paul Oakley, Winston McKenzie and Lawrence Webb.

And while the members of UKIP London will have a major say in which of those six candidates is selected, we thought it would be a good idea to open up the selection process to the millions of people who live, work, own property in and visit London every single day.

That means your votes count. The results of the online public primary will be used to rank our candidates, and earn them different levels of ‘bonus votes’ towards the final result.

Of these, Winston McKenzie is by far the most fun. He has been a member of 6 parties. Among that number he founded and led the Unity Party, and has stood for the leadership of UKIP and Veritas.

He tried to be selected as a Mayoral candidate for the Conservatives in 2008 but eventually stood as an Independent candidate under the slogan “I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee; I’ve got the policies they can’t see“

His campaigning skills have also been honed by a series of spectacularly unsuccessful council and Westminster by-election campaigns. Anyone who hates the modern trend of career politicians who have never done a “real” job in the “real” world will like the idea of voting for someone who has been a boxer, a publican, a hairdresser, a rug wholesaler, a letting agent and a garage mechanic (although not all at the same time.)

The problem is that TheEye would like to see UKIP do well, so can’t really risk starting a Vote Winston McKenzie campaign. But it would have been fun.

So instead – vote for someone else here.