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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
How did Farage persuade Reckless and Carswell to ditch the Conservatives? Would UKIP ever do a deal with another party? How have three near-death experiences shaped Farage's politics? How does Nigel feel about controversial kippers and their high-profile gaffes? Twenty-one years after its formation as a single-policy protest party, and on the eve of what promises to be one of the closest, most exciting general elections in recent memory, the truly remarkable rise of UKIP and its charismatic leader, Nigel Farage, have caused nothing less than a tectonic shift in British politics. And the aftershocks are being felt far beyond the corridors of power in Whitehall... This book, written by the man who orchestrated that extraordinary rise, is not an autobiography, but rather the untold story of the journey UKIP has travelled under Farage's leadership, from the icy fringes of British politics all the way to Westminster, where it is poised to claim the popular vote. In it, he reveals for the first time exactly how, over the last few years, Farage and his supporters have ushered in a very English revolution: secretly courting MPs right under the nose of the political establishment, in the tearooms and wine bars of the House of Lords. With characteristic wit and candour, Farage takes us beyond the caricature of the beerdrinking, chain-smoking adventurer in Jermyn Street double-cuffs as he describes the values that underpin his own journey: from successful City trader to (very) outspoken critic of the European Union and champion of Britain's right to govern itself.
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Seitenzahl: 303
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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CONTENTS
To my long-suffering family
CHAPTER 1
EUROPEAN ELECTIONS: MAKING BRITISH POLITICAL HISTORY
IALMOST CHOKED ON my bacon sandwich. And it’s not often that a Liberal Democrat can make me do that.
Would I, Nick Clegg asked on the Nick Ferrari LBC radio programme, be prepared to face him in a live television debate to talk about the European question?
It was an odd request for a political leader whose Liberal Democrat Party was facing electoral wipe-out in the European and local elections of May 2014, less than three months away.
‘Let me think about it,’ I said.
I delayed giving an answer for a few reasons. The first was that I could not quite work out Clegg’s motives. It marked a big risk for him given that the Liberal Democrats were – according to the polls – looking set to be devastated in the May European elections.
The second reason was that, even with my chutzpah, I was nervous. I have been on BBC Question Time and Radio 4’s Any Questions countless times – both of them risky forums; a foot wrong and you pay dearly for it – but a live television debate was a whole new ball game. I really couldn’t afford to mess this up. Also, to be fair to Clegg – whom I have known for years from when he was an MEP in Brussels – he was declared the best debater in the country after the live debates between himself, Brown and Cameron in the run-up to the 2010 general election.
Having been an MEP since 1999, I had delivered speeches on the floor of the European Parliament in Brussels, but never something this big. And I was apprehensive. Also, to delay announcing my decision was more dramatic. So I said I would announce my decision on the same radio programme where Clegg had laid down the gauntlet: the Nick Ferrari show on LBC. It created a bit of speculation in the media: was I too chicken to do it? – that sort of thing. On the show, Nick prodded me. I teased him for a bit. ‘What d’you think I should do, Nick?’ I asked. Of course, I then accepted the challenge on air.
The live television debates were a big risk. Ever since I had returned as leader of UKIP in 2010, I had set down winning the European and local elections in May 2014 as a marker. I had told party donors, UKIP activists and the press – in fact, anyone who would listen – that we had a good chance of winning them.
In Europe, 350 million people have the vote to choose MEPs who represent them in Brussels. UKIP was putting up candidates for every MEP constituency in Britain. The May elections also allowed Britons to vote for local councillors up and down the country. If UKIP could beat Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in both sets of elections, we would be on our way. We would be able to show that we were not just a protest party that retired colonels from the Shires voted for. If we won, we would be able to prove for the first time that we had broad appeal, that we could take votes from the traditional Labour working class, and from moderate, middle-class Tories. It was our chance to show that we replaced the Liberal Democrats as the third force in British politics, and to give the establishment in Westminster a bloody nose. Politically, and financially, UKIP could not afford to mess this up; I would spend the whole party coffers on winning these elections – by polling day, we had just £6,000 left.
As soon as I took the debate challenge, Patrick O’Flynn, the UKIP head of communications, and Alex Phillips, my media aide, swiftly started negotiations with Liberal Democrat central office. The Liberal Democrats were pretty helpful and played a straight bat with us, which I hadn’t expected. LBC were to host the first debate and, to my astonishment, the BBC agreed to do a second debate between the two of us a week later.
The original dates offered were 27 March and 3 April. The debates would be just over a month before people across the EU were due to go to the ballot box to vote for MEPs and local council members.
April 3rd happened to be my fiftieth birthday, so I rejected it out of hand. I didn’t want to spend my birthday standing next to Clegg, no offence. So I suggested the 2nd instead.
The format – agreed between us and the Lib Dems – was pretty straightforward. We each would present a short argument summarising our position on Britain’s relationship with the EU and then Ferrari would select a question tabled by a member of the audience whom LBC and the BBC had chosen to represent both sides of the debate. We would not know the questions beforehand. Clegg and I were both given a minute for each answer with a large stopwatch visible to us. The whole debate would be shown live and then there would be a YouGov opinion poll immediately afterwards.
Patrick O’Flynn and Gawain Towler, whom I hired in Brussels ten years ago to work for UKIP, started drafting some of the issues that we expected would come up and arguments that I could make. I have never been one to make notes, let alone write a speech. In 2013, I wrote my party conference leader speech and it was a mistake. I was far too leaden. I am much better with a clear head, thinking on my toes. But both Patrick and Gawain impressed on me as we rehearsed various questions and answers that, no matter how well prepped I might be, once I was on that platform I was on my own. I also recognised that the questions suggested had to be selected by LBC and the BBC, so they would be sensible ones.
On the evening of the first debate, the media coverage ahead of it was getting bigger and bigger. It had been a strange day. Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 had mysteriously disappeared a few weeks before, and despite the story of the missing jet still dominating the news agenda for the day, the media focus on that evening’s debate just kept growing. The debate was scheduled for 7 p.m., and I left the UKIP office in Brooks Mews, Mayfair early. Traffic in central London is so appalling it’s difficult being on time anywhere if you drive. The venue for the debate was a corporate hotel on Northumberland Avenue, just off Trafalgar Square. We were so early I decided to go via the Westminster Arms for a quick pint, much to the total astonishment of everyone in there.
Then off to the Britannia. As we pulled up outside the rather corporate hotel, I could scarcely believe the scenes in front of the entrance. There was a mob of photographers and cameramen. At that moment, I did just think to myself: ‘What the hell are you doing here, Nigel? This is far bigger than anything you have ever done before. What on earth have you done this time?’ Call it a profusely English trait, but I am pretty good at not showing my nerves – but blimey, I was nervous.
We were shown into a separate ante-room. And then straight onto the platform.
Clegg opened the debate. He is certainly no fool and is pretty polished. He kicked off by playing the ‘fear card’. If we leave Europe, he said, we cut ourselves off from being a part of a union that makes us stronger, safer and richer. If we pull out, we run the risk of not being able to recover from the financial crisis. It was a bit woolly.
Then it was my turn. Imagine, I said, that you are being asked to join the EU rather than extricate yourself from it. Would you join a club that charges £55 million a day as a membership fee? Would you sign up to a club that would impose thousands of new laws over which neither your own Parliament, nor you, have any say? And would you sign up to a club that would open your borders to 485 million people who can live in your country, bring their families and do as they wish?
The questions from the audience were well chosen – why hadn’t the British public been given a referendum? Were there benefits to migration from Eastern Europe?
The debate was pretty straightforward and quite clean. But I regretted that my answers were heavy, a bit too serious, and maybe hectoring. I should have been lighter, injected a bit of humour, but, largely, I was OK with it.
As soon as we left the stage, YouGov started polling to see who was deemed to have won the debate.
It says everything about the media and the political class that in the so-called spin room after the debate it was universally agreed that Clegg had won it hands down. Most political journalists in the UK – called lobby journalists – work as a pack. There are a few notable exceptions but in the main they are feral. While few of their readers (or editors) realise it, they agree between themselves what the story is, what ‘line’ they are going to take. That way no one ever is surprised by a call from a night news editor revealing that they have missed a big scoop. The press may be free in this country, but little of it is independent. Regardless, the media and the Lib Dems thought that Clegg had come out of it best.
I didn’t know, but left to go to a fund-raising do at the Reform Club, the palatial club on Pall Mall, just down the road from the Britannia. I had told the Kipper donors that I couldn’t make it for the start but would join them for a drink later. I could have walked to the Reform Club – it is such a short distance – but I really didn’t want to be mobbed by reporters. As I got in the Land Rover, Gawain called me: ‘Polls are in, Nigel. You’re comfortably in the lead.’
57 per cent of those polled thought that I had won the debate, whereas 36 per cent said they believed that Clegg had. YouGov had polled about 1,000 people.
At the drinks at the Reform Club, I knew that I really had to focus hard on the next week’s debate. Clegg, wounded by the poll, would come back harder and probably better in the second debate. In all the years that I have known Clegg in Brussels and Strasbourg and all the events where I’ve bumped into him, I cannot recall a single interesting anecdote about the man. Not one. But while he may be a bit dull, he is certainly not stupid and I knew he would try much harder to beat me the following week.
I also realised that I was at a massive disadvantage to the likes of Clegg. As with all of these things. No other party leader has my diary. No other party leader organises his own diary for that matter. I don’t let anyone near mine. UKIP simply doesn’t have resources like the Tories, Labour or the Liberals. We don’t have the infrastructure of staff and so much of the job of overseeing the day-to-day running of UKIP falls on my lap. I help handle relations with donors, strategy of the party, most of the press coverage – and I’m also an MEP. Life was and remains utterly frantic.
Of all the times that I have done Question Time, which was probably the nearest I had got to doing a live television debate, I don’t recall ever doing it when I felt well, or having any energy. The amount of travelling I do between London and Brussels just wears you out. Clegg, who is just under three years younger than me, looks much more fresh-faced, and no wonder. He even has time to do the school run, for goodness sake. Watching the first debate afterwards, I realised that I looked tired and sweat more than Clegg under the lights.
So, with that in mind, I spent the next five days off the booze, I took some long country walks near the house in Downe – in my job I rarely have time to exercise – went to the steam room a few times and had some early nights. Normally, I go to bed at about 1 a.m. and then up at 5 a.m. or so. I was determined not to feel and look like a wreck in the next debate. I wanted to be in the position for once in my life where I did not feel completely shattered.
On the morning of the second debate, 2 April, we briefed the Daily Telegraph that my plan for the evening was to attack Clegg on how he had been a political insider all his life, citing his lobbying career in Brussels, and arguing that he had vested interests in the continuation of the European Union. I am proud of how Patrick O’Flynn called this right. By leaking that, it meant that Clegg would have to spend the day preparing to be the aggressor in the debate. This tends to play out very badly with British voters. The British electorate do not like to watch two politicians slug it out – it’s not theatre, as some of the boorish MPs in the Commons believe, it just looks ugly and undignified. Aggression also suggests desperation.
We reached Broadcasting House, this time not via the Westminster Arms, and went into the BBC Radio Theatre. David Dimbleby was hosting the second debate, as he had done in 1975. He had said that, forty years on, the topics being debated on Britain and Europe were nearly exactly the same – democracy and jobs. His job, he said, was to get me and Clegg debating.
From the minute we kicked off, Clegg was on the attack, throwing verbal punches everywhere. He seemed cross and frustrated. He was under pressure and it showed. There are things, he said, that are so big, like terrorism, that you can’t fight them on your own. For the first ten minutes, I really was on my heels – not on my toes – and he was coming out with some clearly prepared lines – Britain would become Billy No Mates, and then Billy No Jobs. Clegg also used a pre-rehearsed joke which bombed: he said that the Liberal Democrats were the party of ‘in’ and UKIP was the party of ‘Putin’. It was a bit contrived.
I waited – Patrick and I had talked about our strategy for the debate. Let him attack for as long as he could; it turns the voters off and makes him look like he believes he is on the back foot. I remember looking at him and thinking pretty early on in the debate: ‘He’s got nothing left. He has no more bullets.’
I tried to keep my cool, to come across as relaxed and to be lighter, less hectoring than in the first debate. I dealt with the arguments, was non-aggressive and just matter of fact.
One of the best questions was about the strain that immigration had put on Britain’s local services – GP surgeries, schools, housing.
I was able to remind the audience that the then Labour government had predicted just 13,000 Eastern Europeans would come to the UK and that Clegg had written in The Guardian newspaper that the influx to Britain would represent a ‘wee trickle’.
In fact, I pointed out, the increase in net migration has been, and continues to be, so vast that Britain cannot plan anything because we have no control over the numbers of EU migrants coming over our borders. Local authorities have no idea how many extra primary school places we will need, and GP surgeries have no idea how many new patients will be trying to register.
At the end, Dimbleby gave both me and Clegg the opportunity to sum up each of our arguments. I looked straight into the camera and urged viewers to join our ‘People’s Army’ and help us bring down the political establishment. It was the first time I had used that phrase. I don’t know who had come up with it – it might have been me, I can’t remember – but it had been kicking around the office. It was, however, to become the mantra of our European election campaign.
At the end of the debate, I offered my hand to Clegg and, reluctantly, he accepted it. We tried to look friendly with each other. I knew I had done well.
Backstage, in the corridor, the two of us rubbed shoulders as we were preparing to leave. ‘I suppose you’re going to a private club again, now,’ Clegg said to me, referring to the last debate when I had raced off to the Reform Club. ‘No, Nick, I’m not. But last time I went to the Reform Club, which, unless I am very much mistaken, is the birthplace of the Liberal Party.’ I cackled and walked off.
In fact, I was due at a drinks party at Stuart Wheeler’s flat in Mayfair. I say ‘flat’ but Stuart’s London apartment, which he has since sold, is beautiful and large. As I arrived, the atmosphere was euphoric. The party was full of Stuart’s friends and Kippers who had been watching the debate on the television in the flat before I arrived.
As the poll results began to come through, they showed that they were dramatically in my favour. Instant polls put me on 69 per cent and Clegg on 31 per cent. Astonishing.
The first person I bumped into at the party was Lord Hesketh, the car-racing fanatic who left the Tories and joined us in 2011. As the polls came in, people were elated. I felt that night that we had really had a chance to talk about borders and trade – that we had grown into a real party with plenty of messages.
We stayed for a few drinks, then me, Patrick O’Flynn and Alex Phillips decided to carry on. I had, after all, been very well behaved on the booze front to prepare for the second debate. We managed to trot round to The Guinea pub, one of my all-time favourites, on Bruton Place. It was quite surreal, standing outside this seventeenth-century pub on a beautiful spring evening with so many people coming up to us and asking about the debates, having my first drinks for five days.
I felt that that night, even though it was 2 April and the European and local elections were just over a month away, was when the campaign really started. The success of the debates had ignited people’s interest in the elections, and they had given us a massive boost. I felt we were in a very, very good place. As it turned out, far too good a place. I may as well have stood on a hilltop and said ‘Shoot me’. Our early success meant that the Tories would come at us even harder. The last three weeks of the campaign would turn out to be utter agony.
* * *
On 23 April, we launched the UKIP national tour from Sheffield. Why Sheffield? Well, it’s a happy coincidence that it’s Clegg’s constituency, but it was actually because we wanted to promote the idea that UKIP is not a party of traditional Conservative voters, that it attracts a broader vote and that the working classes are welcome with us.
So I travelled up to Sheffield that Tuesday and we launched a nationwide billboard campaign. The billboards were the culmination of around six months’ planning with an agency called Family (based in Scotland), Paul Sykes (one of our most loyal donors) and me. We had started thinking of themes and ideas for the billboards even before my back operation the previous November. I signed off on all of them and by the time we got to April, I was thrilled with the ones we chose to go with. The idea for each of them was to get people talking, to engage voters on the whole European issue and to try to encourage them to get out and vote. I hoped they would create a stir. I was not disappointed. The poster of which I was particularly proud showed an escalator going from the shore of the English Channel leading up to the top of the White Cliffs of Dover with the line: ‘No border. No control. The EU has opened our border to 4,000 people every week. Take back control of our country. Vote UKIP on 22nd May.’ The media went mad, as I suspected they would. I was accused of being racist because the poster campaign revealed the full extent of immigration into the UK.
One poster led with the question: ‘Who really runs this country? 75 per cent of our laws are now made in Brussels.’ It seemed that whenever I made the point that more migrants had come to Britain in 2014 than ever before, I was somehow a xenophobe. Even when I stated that we were discriminating against migrants from countries such as India and New Zealand, members of our Commonwealth, to make way for Romanians, this was somehow unpalatable in the wine bars media luvvies frequent in Islington and Shoreditch. Talk about being out of touch with their viewers and readers. A poll at the time of our campaign found that 77 per cent of those surveyed believed that something should be done about immigration levels. Yet I was not allowed to express the view that British workers have been hit hard by the effect of cheap European labour, that the influx of migrants eager to do the same job for less has effectively made the minimum wage the maximum wage. It is ironic that the Labour Party was founded on principles of looking after the interests of the working class, yet Miliband is more than happy to gift control to Brussels.
So began our national tour: public meetings up and down the country to talk to voters about the EU, immigration, education, the health service. Everything that matters. It was also to encourage them to get out and vote on election day. From Sheffield we went to Gateshead, followed by Manchester then Dudley. It was really hard work. In addition to the public meetings, I was doing hours and hours of local media.
The national tour lasted a fortnight. What I found astonishing was that the Tories and Labour were nowhere to be seen. They just didn’t bother canvassing or even trying to get the vote out. I suppose that lot are afraid of leaving Westminster. We just kept going, from Portsmouth to Bristol to Swansea to Derby.
The nationwide campaign coincided with our television party political broadcast. I was pleased with it. It laid out some fairly bald and shocking facts about the financial cost of our membership in the EU, and the personal cost to Britons. To meet current levels of immigration in this country, a house would have to be built every seven minutes. Setting up a business in the UK now is fiendishly hard because 3,580 new EU laws have been introduced since 2010 that effect how British firms can conduct themselves. It seemed that no one was allowed to mention the extraordinary strain that immigration levels put on local services, primary schools, GPs and housing.
On Sunday 27 April I was back home, just over three weeks before polling day. I had got back to Downe the night before. I was exhausted and just wanted to see my two girls. Unusually for me, I turned my phone off. When I switched on the television on the Sunday morning, the reports were that UKIP was in the lead in the polls. We were polling at 35 per cent. I was astonished, and scared.
There is only one thing worse than being behind, and it’s being in the lead. It is a very vulnerable place to be. I was scared that we had peaked too early and that we had just made ourselves a target. Now that the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems could see how far ahead we were, they would know that they still had some time to get their acts together, and attack UKIP and me. After I saw the news, I drove to the newsagent’s to buy a copy of the Sunday Times, which had sponsored the poll. Our semi-detached cottage in Downe is far too remote for newspaper delivery and the days of having a few shops in a village are over. They’ve all been wiped out by the supermarkets.
So I got in the Volvo and drove to get the papers. I had a deep sense of foreboding, which proved to be prescient. The press were about to go for us with fresh zeal. They were going to have us for dinner. The Sunday Times poll triggered a drip-by-drip constant media attack that would last until election day.
The first nightmare concerned a girl called Sanya-Jeet Thandi. I had known her since she was twelve. She comes from a Sikh family in Medway – right in the middle of my south-eastern MEP constituency. I had known her since she was a teenager because she had been at school with my youngest son, and her mother had also taught my boy. In about 2010, I was addressing a public meeting in Gravesend and she was there. She told me she had joined the party and expressed her keenness on the UKIP message. She spoke very well in public and when she applied for an internship in Brussels, we got her one within an MEP’s office there. She did six months for us in Brussels. I recall that when she was there I even called her mother and said that Sanya must be made to understand that Brussels is not the safest of places – in truth, it is rough – and that UKIP couldn’t be in loco parentis.
I couldn’t have done more for her. She was the girlfriend of a well-known Tory political blogger and was studying at the London School of Economics. I was aware at the time that she was under considerable pressure from her peers for being a member of UKIP.
Early on in May, Sanya had appeared on Channel 4 News to defend UKIP immigration policy. She argued that Britain had turned its back on the rest of the world and instead had opened its door to migrants from Eastern Europe. As always, the immigration issue is a tense one.
A week after she did Channel 4 – we were just days from polling day – Sanya issued a statement to the press saying that while a member of UKIP she had been subject to racism. I was mystified.
I could not understand why she had said it. I was certain she had not been the victim of racism. She went onto Channel 4 News and said that she had resigned from the party because she believed that we reached out to people who supported racism.
It did us real harm.
There was more trouble ahead. This time it would be my fault. I gave an interview with James O’Brien of LBC. It is clear to me now that I shouldn’t have done it.
I knew that as a broadcaster he had been ticked off by Ofcom, the media regulator. It was a pretty hectoring interview. Why did I say that I would be concerned if Romanian men moved in next door? Well, with 28,000 arrests in five years in the Metropolitan area alone … Why was I a member of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group? … It was boom. Boom. Boom. This was hardly an interview. It was him broadcasting his views. In any case, it was a mistake on my part, and it went down badly. Patrick and I were normally very selective on who we talked to and O’Brien was an example of bad judgement to say the least, on my part.
The interview was done on a Friday and the following day I was at home, catching up on paperwork. I was terribly worried that I had done something in that interview that would change the course of the campaign. It is at times like this when you realise who you can rely on and draw genuine support from. I spoke to Paul Sykes, our biggest donor, about it and he was immensely reassuring. Paul, the Barnsley son of a miner who made millions selling buses and coaches and dealing in property, is pretty no-nonsense and not easily fazed. He was behind the construction of Mead-owhall shopping centre in Sheffield and during his career had employed thousands of people. He was one of the few people in whom I could confide.
But, sure enough, as I expected when I went to buy the Sunday papers, they were far from nice. There was less than one week to go to election day and the coverage was appalling. The Sun and the Mail on Sunday both ran pieces saying how terrible I was talking about Romanians. How dare I? The BBC ran a line about how no Romanians had come to the UK at all. But the very newspapers who were attacking me for expressing concerns about Romanian immigration into the UK ran screaming headlines a few pages later about Romanian gangs involved in child trafficking.
Did my comments on the Friday before election day cost us votes? I’m not sure. But by the weekend, we were already down about 5 per cent in the polls, which then settled at 28 per cent until election day.
Monday morning brought no comfort. Stuart Agnew, the UKIP MEP for eastern England and a Norfolk farmer, had been putting up campaign boards as people shouted abuse at him from their car windows, calling him a racist.
The press campaign managed to turn people who were not naturally in favour of UKIP into people with a hatred of us, fostering a belief that we were somehow a racist organisation. This filtered through to the grass-roots level. Canvassers experienced real unpleasantness when they went campaigning door to door. One UKIP man in north London tried to stop another man from tearing down UKIP posters and got his teeth knocked out. The police pressed no charges. Unbelievable.
But, in a funny way, it did embolden the core part of the UKIP vote. They seemed even more determined than before to get out and vote. What did those miserable few weeks cost us? Without them, perhaps we could have got 15–20 per cent more, but overall we held fast at about 28 per cent – still enough to win and draw blood from the Tories and Labour and decimate the Liberal Democrats.
Just before polling day – that Thursday in May – something strange happened. I remember saying to Patrick O’Flynn, ‘This isn’t normal. It’s gone eerily quiet.’ The phone was not ringing. What more could I do? I had travelled the length and breadth of the country already, holding public debates, campaigning. We had invested heavily in the billboard campaign.
But the press coverage we were getting was appalling. By the time polling day arrived on 22 May, it was a huge relief.
Given that they were local and European elections, there wasn’t much I could do on that Thursday, sitting in the office in Brooks Mews in Mayfair. So I went for lunch, had a few drinks afterwards and just waited. We had been in the lead for so long, it had been gruelling. It is far more exciting being the horse that comes up on the inside to win than having to keep the pace for three weeks.
We didn’t get the proper result through until the following Sunday, when I was in Southampton for the count. By then, the polling was pretty accurate. It was enormously exciting. As the results came in, great swathes of the map of the UK started to go UKIP purple. I was shocked by the results from Wales. On the electoral map, we looked to have almost as much as Plaid Cymru. We topped the poll in Merthyr Tydfil, for goodness sake. We had fought an election campaign in Wales, of course, but nothing that warranted this sort of result. We just hadn’t had the resources to compete with Labour, and certainly there was no real party infrastructure there. So, when the Welsh results started to come in, I was flabbergasted. We got 28.1 per cent of the vote. Labour got 28.7 per cent. I think what UKIP had done in Wales was to remind them what a rotten deal they were getting out of Cardiff when they looked at the health and education provisions Westminster meted out to them under devolved power.
It is strange, I know this from my days in the City, but when you have a huge success, it can leave a very bitter taste in the mouth. When you are sitting on a massive loss – when a trading position just gets worse and worse and you just keep losing more money – it is an enormous relief when you just think, ‘Right, to hell with it. I’m getting out of this’ and you cut your losses, get out and go for lunch. It’s very clean.
It is quite different when you have a trading position and you make a lot of money. Instead of being enormously smug and cheerful at your gain, you start to beat yourself up that you had not got in earlier and made more money. I felt that way about Wales. To be just 0.6 per cent of the vote away from beating Labour. Why on earth hadn’t we tried that bit harder? We were so close. Imagine that fool Miliband’s face.
The European elections would turn out to be the moment that we made British political history, but as the results were still coming in, I had plenty to be furious about.
The year before, we had deselected a UKIP MEP called Mike Nattrass. At one time, he had been deputy leader of the party. He tried to sue us. It all got very unpleasant. But even though he lost that time, we were to lose in a very different and more damaging way in our battle with him.
Nattrass, who was a very wealthy property man from the West Midlands had, to our incredulity, been allowed to set up his own party by the Electoral Commission. His new party, which was to stand in the May European elections, was to be called ‘An Independence from Europe’, not a world away from my UK Independence Party. Worse still, because its title began with an ‘A’, it was at the top of all the ballot papers for the European elections, with its slogan ‘UK Independence Now’. Voters have their lives to lead, most do not have the time to make sure that they have studied all the major candidates and would perhaps not suspect that someone with a name and raison d’être purporting to be like UKIP would try to pull the wool over their eyes. Many people saw that party’s name and thought it was us. They got a third of a million votes – quite unbelievable. Undeniably, it cost us at least two seats, some think it cost us three. Allowing Nattrass to launch a party with that name was shocking and showed the absolute contempt that the establishment have for us on so many levels. It also meant that they were given the green light to dupe voters.
I was furious. Talk about the status quo – anything that could be done to damage UKIP. I cannot imagine anything similar being allowed to happen to either the Conservatives or Labour.
Nonetheless, despite Natrass and the media campaign to seriously undermine us, we got the biggest proportion of the vote in the EU and UK local elections and we made British political history. It was the first time that any party since 1906 apart from Labour or the Tories had won a national election in Britain. We now had MEPs in every region in Britain. It was seismic. With 4.37 million votes – or 27 per cent – we were the biggest party, and we got twenty-four seats. In the local elections, UKIP gained 161 councillors up and down the country.
