Flying Free (20 page)

Twelve MEPs… 2,650,768 votes… 16.1 per cent of the total… Tories and Labour given a hiding by the electorate… Lib Dems knocked into fourth place…

Only one thing marred my joy that night. It was that David Lott was not at my side at the count in Didcot but a strange, bespectacled man who looked a little like actor Anton Rodgers at his most blimpish and whose wife was inexplicably crying as the results were announced.

Just as Kilroy had strolled into his candidacy by merit of television, so David, the architect of so much of our success, had been displaced by Ashley Mote because David worked quietly in the offices (and horse-boxes) whilst Mote was a marketing man and author who impressed the faithful by his pompous speechifying and his impressive publications.

Mote had written a popular book called
Vigilance – A Defence of British Liberty
before he joined the party in 2000. He was therefore ‘an authority’. A further book about immigration,
Overcrowded Britain,
was much hawked at party meetings and conferences and cemented his reputation as a good researcher and a pundit to be heeded. He was a busy emailer and a skilful self-promoter. He drafted a petition to Her Majesty requesting that she withhold assent to the Nice Treaty. He persuaded twenty-eight peers to sign it, and, with Trevor Colman, now a UKIP MEP, made a series of videos about the EU which also sold well within the party.

David was too busy selling the party. Mote was selling Mote. Which is why, no doubt, when the list of candidates for the South East was published in January 2004, it read 1. Farage, N., 2. Mote, A. and 3. Lott, D.

Why was Mrs Mote weeping at the announcement that her husband had attained a long-held ambition? I can only surmise that she knew that, now that he had entered public life, the ceiling was about to fall in. Tragic irony was no longer nagging at her. It was clouting her over the head with the rolling-pin. Here they were on what should have been the greatest night of their lives, surrounded by jubilant, honest faces, and her husband’s public shame and destruction were inevitable.

The following morning, we met at Didcot station on our way to London for the public celebration of our triumph. Ours was a nodding acquaintance. Mote was aloof in keeping with his perceived (at least by himself) status. He did not join in with the rabble in the bars, but had his own admiring coterie, usually of ladies who had long since crossed contraceptives off their weekly shopping-lists and gentlemen in blazers who were relieved that they had done so.

I told him to buy a first-class ticket so that we could talk in private.

‘Look, I’ve been a lone ranger in this region up till now,’ I told him. ‘Now that there are two of us, we’re going to have to work together. We’ve got to trust one another.’

It was only for a moment, but he cast me a glance so furtive, doleful and bitter that I suddenly knew that we had a grave problem.

‘Oh, absolutely,’ he said. ‘Right.’ And he proceeded hastily to outline his ambitions.

He wanted to focus, once he reached Brussels, on fraud and corruption amongst MEPs.

Now we started to reap the whirlwind.

It is not like this for established parties which scorn democracy, of course. Their candidates come from ‘pools’ (clearly postered ‘No Diving’, ‘No Petting’ and ‘No Bombing (unless the Leader has a bad dream about WMDs)’).

In these pools paddle ingratiating, air-guitarist timeservers whose only wet-dreams in youth are about people saying ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, ma’am’ to them. They generally pubesce, as we understand the term, at the age at which normal humans have mid-life crises.

Only then, when they are members of the Privy Council and have OBEs for conspicuous cravenness, are they found in bed with Greek waiters and/ or misfortunate and very angry weasels. At this point, the party machine pays off the weasel and the offender appears in the media with a supportive family before entering the Priory and taking up evangelism.

We, by definition, do not crave power above principle or we would certainly not be in UKIP. Sorry. You can be a European Commissioner if you have hidden a £370,000 mortgage like Peter Mandelson or embezzled £2 million like Jacques Barrot, but UKIP MEPs must be exceptionally scrupulous about not abusing public funds.

We do have forms which candidates have to complete, declaring criminal convictions and proceedings pending. We have since tightened up our checks on the veracity of candidates’ answers, but, at the time, we tended
to believe them. We do have CRB checks (now enhanced), but, there is no box to tick in response to the questions, ‘Are you by any chance an egomaniac shyster?’ or, for that matter, ‘Have you any unconventional feelings with regard to weasels?’

Until now, aside from the odd unguarded indication that the leadership was his as of right, Kilroy had behaved. Now, with his position assured by due process, he flexed his muscles.

In public, of course.

That Monday, after a photo-call on College Green in Westminster, we adjourned to 1 Abbey Gardens, the House of Lords press facility, for a press conference. The world’s media had been forced to acknowledge us and was here in force. I sat at Roger’s right hand, Kilroy at mine. That was as far as normal order of precedence went. I answered questions in a very unsophisticated, jubilant way. Roger, as ever, was cool and dry.

Now it was Kilroy’s turn. The microphones and cameras turned and lunged at him. It was like a brand new blonde in San Fernando valley at the final stroke of midnight which announces her eighteenth birthday.

‘So, Robert…’

A momentary and fetching expression which said ‘Moi?’, then the long fingers intertwined and the brand new deck of cards which was his smile was fanned.

‘What are you going to do when you arrive at the European Parliament?’

‘Wreck it,’ said Kilroy.

It was the first time that he had presumed to venture from a script which he had absorbed from us. As ad libs went, it was inept and pretty much disastrous.

My heart plummeted. My face just fell. Roger half raised a hand as though he had been about to strike his own brow, then thought better of it. His lips twitched just once.

UKIP has no interest in wrecking anything. If other European nations elect to subjugate themselves to an insensitive soviet, that is their business. If we can inspire them by example or expose the deficiencies of the system, well and good, but our concern is with Britain and the freedom of her subjects to run their own lives.

It was instructive to see a true professional trying to save a bad ad lib. Kilroy instantly sniffed our disapproval and his questioners’ glee. ‘…Expose it for the waste and corruption and the way it is eroding our independence and sovereignty,’ he continued, grasping now at flotsam from the stately ship UKIP, ‘Our job is to go there and turn round and say, “This is what they do. This is the way they waste our money. This is how they all go on the gravy train and spend their time in restaurants and … the rest of it.”’

Then he adopted his invariable strategy. He switched to petulant aggression in hope that adrenalin would come to his rescue. ‘I don’t want to go to Brussels. I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be bogged down in the committees and all the rest of it.’

Yep. We had a problem in waiting. I still thought that Kilroy would learn. I was not excessively worried. Roger was. He was more experienced than I.

I
was
worried the following morning. I was at City Airport, headed for Brussels and intent upon the problem of forming a new group, when I received a call from Mote. ‘Er, Nigel. Yes. Good,’ he burbled. ‘Um, the
Telegraph
this morning…’

‘Yes?’ I snapped as I presented my ticket at the check-in. I hadn’t yet seen a paper today.

‘Don’t worry about it. It’s all political. Just, you know… Nothing to worry about.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ I called. ‘Excellent.’

I checked in. I bought a
Telegraph
.

I moaned.

Several people in that departures hall jumped and snatched up their infants. They thought, apparently, that a stray bullock with colic had somehow wandered into City airport. A moment later I was swearing and hitting things and looking around for someone who looked suicidal so that I could offer to help.

Political?
Political?

We had encountered political prejudice all right, but in what conceivable sense was the factual account of a plea and directions hearing in Chichester Crown Court, relating to nine charges of false accounting totalling £67,000
– in what sense was that political? Or was Mote’s claiming housing benefit and income support whilst in receipt of £4,000 per month from other sources a sort of Robin-Hood-in-reverse protest against the welfare system?

All right, so the case was not yet proven and Mote was pleading not guilty, but, even were he innocent as a newborn, by what right had he stolen the candidacy from David Lott by lying? By what right had he betrayed the trust of all those hundreds of thousands of voters and the support of so many hard-working party-activists who had laboured on his behalf with no prospect of personal advancement?

At any point in the campaign, right up to the night of the count, he could have told us the truth and that seat would have gone to David. Mote had appeared at a pre-trial hearing in Worthing in May. Had that come out on the Sunday before the election, all that hard work, good faith and hope – the entire campaign – might have foundered.

It was obvious, of course, why he had lied. His position, income, allowances and pensions were now inalienable. He could even (and did) plead immunity from prosecution. He was an MEP, and there was damn all that we could do about it. He had used the rules to commit daylight robbery.

I continued to curse and seethe all the way to Brussels. I am still seething now as I write.

We withdrew the whip within weeks. Mote, who appeared to have mugged up on every trick in the book to delay the cause of justice, playing the British courts off against the EU Parliament, was to remain an unattached MEP until June 2009.

In August 2007, he was found guilty of twenty-one charges of deception. He had constituents email the judge, praising his wonderful work as an MEP. In his summing-up, the judge said how important it was that Mote should return to his valuable work as soon as possible after serving his sentence.

He was sentenced to nine-month sentences, all, alas, to be served concurrently (had he received a twelve-month sentence, he would have lost his seat and it could have been reassigned) and then returned to Brussels. Throughout that time, he held a seat entrusted to him by UKIP voters and drew his MEP’s income.

The first day of the new parliament in Strasbourg was a bunfight. Ten new member-states had just joined the Union. All of Europe’s media and many from further afield had gathered to eye up the new intake and to identify new stars. The PR-conscious members dressed as though for the Academy Awards and had pre-prepared mission-statements, at least for their own nation’s media, about their noble intentions. The European Parliament is as full of noble intentions as a Miss World stage, and, since Miss World has rather more influence than an MEP, they are as seldom fulfilled.

Of course, Kilroy was our star-turn, which was fine by me. He was doing leader-in-waiting today, and his extempore stuff did not wander far from the great UKIP standard melodies. This was, to be honest, one role which I was happy to hand over. I was running the parliamentary group, and the formation of the new group was taking up all my energies.

The Independence/Democracy group was a coalition of secessionists and reformists – those who wanted out and those who believed that the EU could somehow be reformed. Aside from strategic differences, there were Danes, French, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Swedes, Greeks and a solitary Irish independent to be reconciled to our new union and rules and principles to be agreed. Because UKIP brought eleven people to the party, the chairmanship was shared between me – although a whippersnapper, already something of a parliamentary veteran – and the true veteran, Jens-Peter Bonde.

So I did not expect us to make headlines that day. I chaired a brisk
midmorning
press conference. It passed without incident but for Kilroy’s
face-pulling
to the gallery whenever Roger spoke. Later, as I scurried from office to office, and from floor to floor, however, I kept hearing the name of my old friend, fellow battlefield-tourist and new colleague, Godfrey Bloom.

It took me a while to be sure that that was indeed what was being said. The lifts in this tower of Babel were filled with mumbles and gabbling in many different languages and dialects, and at first I assumed that the repeated ‘Bloom’, even with something which sounded remarkably like ‘Goff ray’ in front of it, was the Latvian or Estonian for ‘directive’ or ‘committee’ or one of those other exciting words which features largely in conversations round there.

When I had heard it in a French mouth, coupled with much guffawing, and in a couple of Swedish, accompanied by tutting, I knew that something was afoot.

It was at a cocktail party that evening that I bumped into Edward McMillan-Scott, quite our favourite Europhiliac Tory, who also represented Godfrey’s Yorkshire & the Humber constituency. Edward was beaming and chuckling as he told me the tale.

Stephen Sackur, the BBC’s Europe correspondent, had been having a quick word with Godfrey after the press conference when our new secretary general, Herman Verheirstraeten, said, ‘I see we have a space on the Women’s Rights Committee, Godfrey. Would you like to join?’

Somewhat to Herman’s surprise, Godfrey had accepted the invitation. He is an economist and an experienced businessman and adviser to business who has long sponsored the Cambridge Women’s Rugby Union team out of his own pocket and deplores the counter-productive nature of so many blanket regulations which, he said, were hobbling and often killing small enterprises at home.

He was speaking from experience, not expressing a casual opinion, when, regarding maternity regulations, he said, ‘No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age. That isn’t politically correct, is it? But it’s a fact of life. The more women’s rights you have, it’s actually a bar to their employment.’

Sackur, his acute antennae tingling, had therefore asked whether Godfrey would say the same thing on camera. Godfrey had obliged. What he was saying was in fact unexceptionable, but no doubt Godfrey sensed a certain crackle in the air, and, being Godfrey – ebullient and prone to what they used to call ‘bamming’, or teasing the easily teased – he proceeded with a bit of improvised jollity.

Denis Healey famously advised, ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging.’ Godfrey believes in hiring a JCB and seeing if he can attain fresh air as soon as possible – via the antipodes. ‘So yes, I’m joining the Women’s Rights Committee,’ he said, ‘though of course, I come from Yorkshire, where women always have their husbands’ dinners on the table by six – but I’m concerned that they’re not cleaning behind the fridge properly.’

I suppose if he had been more mannered, he would have adopted a stage-Yorkshire accent in order to show that this was a joke, at the expense, if of anyone, of his male constituents
d’un certain age
. Had he been illiterate, he might have added ‘lol’. Neither is Godfrey’s style. Having lobbed out this grenade (a family joke, as it happens, which did not play in the hypersensitive atmosphere of Strasbourg) he just donned his bowler and set forth for the pub.

The following day,
The Guardian
’s front page shrilled ‘Neanderthal!’ above a picture of Godfrey, complete with bowler. Other media worldwide followed suit, expressing outrage.

The
incantevole
neo-fascist (the words are not mutually exclusive, or there would be no fairy-tales) Alessandra Mussolini cooed, ‘I know the English have a sense of humour about themselves, but I am from Naples and I can say that we women do know how to cook and clean the refrigerator and even be politicians, whilst perhaps Godfrey Bloom does not know either how to clean the refrigerator or how to be a politician.’

Godfrey would not have disputed a word of this, and at least la Mussolini acknowledged that Godfrey’s remark had been humorous.

A few weeks later, I was to receive a phone call from Miss Mussolini. She requested a meeting. If an adolescent Farage had witnessed the resultant scene without additional detail, he would no doubt have congratulated me and passed through early adulthood content in the knowledge that any hardships would prove worthwhile.

We sat there over coffee and she flung back that lovely hair and fixed me with those lovely eyes. She covered my hand with hers and she said, ‘Nigel, I am so lonely…’

‘Yes!’
cheered the adolescent Farage who lurks always at the back of my cranium.

‘I’m all on my own,’ she purred. ‘I want so much to be with you…’

I’m sure that the adolescent Farage did not speak the words ‘Go on, my son! Get in there!’ but he was saying something disgracefully like that. My tonsils were by now tickling, so I cleared my throat and sipped my coffee. Meanwhile, I instructed the adult Farage to bind and gag the adolescent Farage and to tell him to behave.