Flying Free (22 page)

He was brilliant. He soothed. He confided. He made us strain to hear him. He told us in mellifluous tones what we already knew – that we had been led by lies into a Common Market but that the French and the Germans desired a superstate and were working towards that end. He outlined all the wonderful things that we could do with £15 million pounds a day, our net contribution to European government.

We were like children lulled by the same old bedtime story or Catholics by the sung Latin liturgy. Even I who had written some of his best lines was
nodding admiringly. He was telling us nothing new, singing no new words, but he was rehearsing the old stuff quite beautifully.

But then, as with his disastrous ‘wreck it’ intervention at the first press conference, a strange streak of violence emerged in his tone and in his words. It was as though, in his mind, an invocation to destruction rather than an assertion of solidarity or an exhortation to creativity was the most stimulating rhetorical device that he knew.

Ducking the heat of the forthcoming debate by anticipating where he could not be challenged, he declared that no deal must be struck with the Conservatives (not that any such deal had been proposed). ‘The Conservative Party is dying,’ he said. ‘Why would you want to give it the kiss of life? What we have to do is kill it!’

It worked with the crowd just then, though killing a dying creature which might be resuscitated was not an image which I would have chosen, nor did it play well when our largely rural supporters awoke from their trance. Many of them too would have counted themselves members of the Tory family. For all that that family was now dominated by parents under the influence of noxious substances, they had residual loyalties. Amongst these was our principal financial supporter, Paul Sykes. Nor had anyone proposed a deal with the Tories. The carrot which we were proffering was intended for anyone bold enough to take it…

The debate took place after lunch. I knew that we had lost it before it had started. I also knew that battle was now joined. And that Kilroy was history.

Dick Morris and I had chatted over lunch. Dick could read all the signs. He had witnessed Kilroy’s performance and talked to the party members. That afternoon, he made a speech warning of the danger of ‘messiahs’ who leaped aboard small parties and attempted to steal their souls.

Kilroy did not hear it. He was presumably back at home. Having tossed his burning taper into the powder-keg, he was just waiting for the explosion surely to come. That evening, the entire party met for a convivial dinner and a lot of drinks in a hotel. All the MEPs, the NEC, the branch chairs and the party enthusiasts were there. Two places were left empty at the table for the Kilroys. I glanced frequently at the doors, expecting yet another
entrance – this time with what? A flurry of cloaks? A flourish of trumpets? A roll of thunder and a flash?

Nothing.

This was surely Kilroy’s chance. It had still not occurred to him that, in order to win the party leadership, he might need to befriend the members in person or show an interest in their views. He relied on his fame to do the job for him.

He resorted to the only thing that he understood – omnipotent television. I was in my shirtsleeves in my hotel room, running late and once more struggling with the cufflinks, when
Breakfast with
Frost
came on, and there on the screen was my colleague, languidly discussing our domination.

‘I would like to be leader of UKIP,’ said Kilroy to Sir David. ‘I think I could turn it into very effective electoral fighting-force… What everyone tells me they want is for the current leader to accept the inevitable and to stand down… During the last June elections, the current leader told me and others that he would stand down after the election, but then of course he got a massive election result and probably liked the size of his new train set and now he’s changed his mind. That’s fine… Now, you will think me arrogant and presumptuous and I’ll get accused of all those things, but of course I think it would be better. Otherwise I wouldn’t want to stand.’

I set off for the hall.

Oh, how I love our bloody-minded, self-reliant, determined, loyal, passionate, companionable, hard-working, funny members. I could have hugged every damned one of them that morning.

They had all seen Kilroy’s interview or heard of it from friends. They thought it funny. They thought it ridiculous. They thought it irrelevant.

They got on with UKIP’s business.

Paul Sykes was so angry at Kilroy’s death sentence to the Tories and at UKIP’s consequent determination to oppose even Eurosceptic candidates that, two days later, he withdrew all support for us.

Even then, Kilroy did not get it. Even I, who had been well aware that Kilroy had been making up to Sykes and that Sykes was hoping that the Tories would return to sanity, could not quite work out just who had been playing whom. Sykes had been encouraging Kilroy to press for the
leadership. Had Sykes been endearing himself to the Conservatives when he approved the motion at Conference? Had Kilroy struck out on his own with the ‘Kill the Conservatives’ business? And if so, how could he still suppose that Sykes would support him?

There was now a Channel 4 interview so memorably cringeworthy as to rival
Shafted
at its best.

Paul Sykes had openly declared that he was leaving UKIP because of Kilroy, yet Kilroy still somehow persuaded himself that Sykes’s argument was with anyone but him. I have met with plenty of selective deafness in my time, usually in relation to the questions ‘Who’s buying?’ and ‘Isn’t it your round?’, but this took the entire Huntley and Palmer Luxury Teatime Selection.

In order to run for Parliament in the East Midlands or to win the party leadership, he announced, ‘I will have more money than I can spend. Paul and I want the same thing. We both believe in UKIP.’

‘I don’t believe in UKIP,’ said Sykes. ‘I believe in the message on Europe.’

‘Well, I’m pretty confident that if I want him to help in the East Midlands, he would help,’ persisted Kilroy with a little laugh.

‘Not in a general election, I wouldn’t,’ snapped Sykes.

Comprehensively embarrassed and bemused, Kilroy explained the interview away as some sort of marital tiff. ‘Paul and I go way back,’ he later told the
Telegraph
. This was untrue. I had been working with Sykes since 2001 and had arranged for Kilroy to meet him only this year. ‘It’s very strange that he’s decamped. All last week he was going to help fund the general election campaign if I was in charge of it.’

So had he and Sykes fallen out?

The article continued: ‘Mr Kilroy-Silk laughed loudly. “I can’t get the man off the phone. He wants to fly me up to the north-east in his jet this weekend to campaign against the referendum on regional assemblies.’’’

That should have been the end of it. Kilroy persisted, though never by the means which the average contender would have adopted. Never once in
all the time that he was with us did he visit the other MEPs in our offices. Never once did he join us in the bars. He did not battle for popularity or credibility. He assumed them as though he were heir apparent.

He had, he said, ‘been told by every senior member of the party’ that they would like him to be leader. ‘I am told there is a vast majority of the party that would like that to happen.’

Er, yes… Except that all the MEPs and 70 per cent of branch chairs declared for Roger Knapman. We were, he said, ‘a self-selecting cabal’, though he was the only MEP selected by mutual agreement between the NEC and the MEPs.

Roger quietly appealed to him to play his part in an interview on Radio 4. ‘The party leadership was determined by one person, one vote, so there could be no straight handover. If I were to resign, then other people would put their hats in and, quite frankly, I wonder why at Robert’s age he wants to do it, because I think the vast majority would go for somebody like Nigel Farage – the next generation. It’s one thing to be ambitious. He must start to think about being a team player. I think Robert is beginning to understand that politics is a bit more serious a business than he might have been engaged in for a while, but he must understand that we can’t forever tolerate people who cannot toe the party line. We have disciplinary procedures. It is not a question of that as yet.’

Pure Roger. A dart aimed unerringly at Kilroy’s softest spot – his vanity, another at the absurdity of his former calling, a reminder of his isolation, a veiled threat… Masterly, and for Kilroy, I assume, infuriating.

And the blessed Alan Bown, thoroughly fed up with the whole business, stepped in with a pledge to make good any deficit occasioned by Sykes’s withdrawal. He also warned that he would withdraw all funding unless Kilroy’s leadership challenge, now unquestionably defeated, ceased.

On 27 October, despite Jeffrey Titford’s as ever pacific efforts, Kilroy resigned the UKIP whip, hoping to stay on as a UKIP independent. The party rejected this compromise. Kilroy still believed that he could become leader by general acclaim. On 3 November, he demanded an emergency general meeting as early as possible and announced that he would be leader by Christmas, though the party’s constitution requires seventy days’ notice
of a leadership ballot. It was a little like watching a would-be pirate yelling, ‘I am the rightful captain!’ from the water as the galleon sails on.

In January 2005, he left UKIP and founded his own party, Veritas. I predicted to Brendan Carlin, then on the
Telegraph,
that it would last for six months. Kilroy contested the seat of Erewash. He came fourth and barely saved his deposit. On 29 July, he resigned as leader of his own party but continued to sit as an independent in the EU Parliament – or, rather, did not sit but retained his seat – until 2009, when he did not renew his candidacy.

I am frequently asked – most frequently by myself in the still watches – whether I did the right thing in accepting Kilroy as our representative.

The long squabble unquestionably tarnished the UKIP brand, but it also made millions of people aware of us and of our cause. There is, I must confess, an irrepressible streak of vulgarity in me – perhaps there must be in any trader. If taking on Kilroy was the equivalent of installing glitter balls and painting the gallery shocking pink in order to sell a product in which I believed, so be it.

There was always a chance that Kilroy would come good and rediscover his old dedication to justice and the common touch which is his birthright. Since I had no desire to lead UKIP and wanted talented colleagues, I had very much hoped that this might happen.

There was a danger – there was always a danger – that he might run amok and do enduring damage, but I was aware of that from the moment we met, and made sure that the tranquiliser-guns were at all times loaded and cocked and that he could be contained.

All in all, I think I that I can say, as Churchill did of alcohol, that we took more out of Kilroy than Kilroy took out of us.

If that sounds a little cold and Machiavellian – well, perhaps the impulsive, ardent boy was growing up at last.

Europa was a Phoenician girl who was raped by a bull.

The bull seemed domesticated and harmless, so she went trustingly and without resistance with him to Crete (well, I don’t know. Maybe there was a shortage of likely young Phoenician men at the time), where he revealed himself to be the permanently priapic Zeus and had his wicked way with her. Presumably she resisted, but neither bulls, randy gods nor European Commissions heed the protests of mere mortals.

There are precious few creatures which can bring down a horny bull. In fact, until Europa’s friends and relatives can get their act together and unite, her future looks leathery, sticky and distinctly uncomfortable.

But the one beast who can cause the bull grief and distract him from his intrusive predations is none other than the humble gadfly.

So we will just keep on nipping at that thick and rather revolting hide until the poor old girl’s friends at last wake up and ride to her aid.

We made a strategic decision in 2004 that our mission henceforth was twofold. Whilst we would continue to buzz and nibble at the doped and deluded at home, we would also harry the bull about his nefarious work in Brussels.

Now that I was vice-president of a group, I had more prominence and speaking time in the hemicycle. One of the few occasions when we can challenge a Commission is at the moment of its formation. The parliament must technically approve the new Commission.

This is not as democratic as it sounds since we cannot vet or veto individual commissioners but must accept or reject the entire motley crew, and the chances of an entire parliament of pre-prepared delegates from twenty-seven countries doing that are roughly the same as those of my winning next year’s Derby. On foot.

As already stated, Commissions tend to be peopled by redundant politicians, irrelevant but obedient flunkies and big players who are temporarily too hot for high office at home.

Thus is constituted our new monarch – because, make no mistake, this is what we are talking about. What else do you call an unelected power which is the source of all laws, permits no debate and forces through laws when there is any objection?

This is no benign constitutional monarch like our own, a safeguard against political excess in turn subject to the constraints of a mighty people in Parliament. Here, as Sir John Fortescue said, ‘that which pleaseth the prince hath the force of law’.

We fought a fierce and bloody civil war in Britain to be rid of so arbitrary and capricious a monarch as this. Now our politicians have invited one back again.

So it is surely our duty, until we wake up and insist that we govern ourselves again, to examine the people afforded such power?

Non, non, M. Farage! That is not how this parliament is meant to work at all. This is meant to be a mere formality!

Otherwise, how is it that neither the Conservatives nor Labour nor any of the big groups with their huge, well-equipped research departments came up with the dirt about Commissioner-designate Jacques Barrot?

Shall I tell you where we obtained the information which rocked Europe?

On Google is where.

Anyone seeking a little light entertainment can view the event on YouTube, though they will miss the comedy in the aisles and the still more engrossing sequel.

Just to set the scene, the original appointment of this Commission had been delayed, largely because the Italian nominee, Rocco Buttiglione, had been deemed unacceptable because of his traditionalist Roman Catholic
views regarding the family and homosexuality. The delay and the alteration to the original proposed Commission was taken by some to be proof that the Commission was indeed democratically constituted.

This was strange but entirely characteristic. Buttiglione’s only crime was to be honest. In common with many millions of his countrymen and other Europeans, he was a Christian with conventional, to me misguided but perfectly tenable views as to the sanctity of sexual relations as a means to propagation. It would be a very strange and unrepresentative parliament in which these views were not represented. When asked, he frankly avowed his beliefs but undertook that they would not affect his judgements in the course of his duties.

Secularism, however, has become as dictatorial as Catholicism in its time. Communists may become members of the Commission but not Catholics – nor, of course, Eurosceptics.

For some reason, the BBC swallowed this nonsense and ran a series of interviews asserting that this proved the EU to have come of age.

This, then, was a great celebratory love-in, a group hug between all the group leaders, who were now satisfied that they had a perfectly lovely Commission to feed them laws to pass on to their people.

At 10.30 p.m. on 18 November 2004, after all the big groups had had their say, I arose to give a brisk but damning account of a proposed Commission which the president, Mr Barroso, had declared to be ‘of high quality’.

‘Let us conduct a human audit. I am mindful that audits are not very popular in the European Commission, and their auditors – if they do their job properly – get fired [a reference to the fact that the EU’s Court of Auditors can only validate 5 per cent of the Commission’s disbursements and had refused to sign off the Commission’s accounts for twelve years in succession, and to Marta Andreasen, now a UKIP MEP, who, on her refusal to sign off accounts which she believed to be dubious, was promptly suspended then sacked for ‘violating Articles 12 and 21 of staff regulations, failure to show sufficient loyalty and respect’. Yes, there is your modern Stuart monarch at work!], but nonetheless, here goes.

‘From France, we have Mr Barrot, who will take on Transport. In 2000, he received an eight-month suspended gaol sentence for his involvement
in an embezzlement case and was banned from holding public office for two years…’

Barroso smiled a thin, fixed smile. I was vaguely aware that a funny little Frenchman named Jacques Toubon appeared to have discovered a rare case of spontaneous combustion in his underpants. He sprang up, shouted, ‘
Cessez, M. Le Président! Cessez!
’ and started running up and down the aisles, growing redder and redder. I felt sorry for him of course, but speaking-time was precious, so I just raised my voice:

‘From Hungary, we have Mr Kovács, who will take on taxation. For many years, he was a Communist apparatchik, a friend of Mr Kádár, the dictator in Hungary, and an outspoken opponent of the values that we hold dear in the West. His new empire will produce taxation policy and he will look after the customs union from Cork to Vilnius. Are the EPP group and the British Conservatives really going to vote for that?’

Toubon was by now nigh convulsing. It crossed my mind that he really should excuse himself and go and sit in a basin somewhere more private, but the French were ever expressive of their manifold misfortunes. I inwardly shrugged and raised my voice still further.

‘From Estonia, we have Mr Kallas, who for twenty years was a Soviet party apparatchik until his newly acquired taste for capitalism got him into trouble. However, to be fair, he was acquitted of abuse and fraud but convicted for providing false information. He is going to be in charge of the anti-fraud drive! You could not make this up!

‘From the UK, we have Mr Mandelson, who will take on the trade portfolio. He, of course, was removed twice from the British government, but, to be fair, he is one of the more competent ones…’

Other Frenchmen were apparently trying to attend to M. Toubon, which was as it should be, only Toubon seemed in his delirium to be playing some sort of human Pacman. Every time the others drew near him, he seemed to change direction, plaintively maintaining his cry of ‘
Cessez! Ah, cessez!
’ It was all quite touching really.

‘From the Netherlands, we have Mrs Kroes, who will take on competition. She is accused of lying to the European Parliament. These may only be allegations, but they are made by Mr van Buitenen and should be listened to.

‘Ask yourself a question: would you buy a used car from this Commission? The answer simply must be “No!” Even if they were competent and even if this were a high-quality Commission – sorry, Mr Barroso, but I do not think it is – we would still vote “No” on the political principle that the Commission is the guardian of the treaties, the Commission is the motor for integration, the Commission initiates the legislation that is damaging our businesses across Europe so badly, the Commission is the embodiment of all that is worst in this European Union. The Commission is the government of Europe and is not directly accountable to anybody.

‘Please, when you vote, take note of the fact that twenty of these Commissioners have already said that they intend to attempt to implement the Constitution
even before it has been ratified by member-state governments!
In the face of such breathtaking arrogance, nobody in the Independence and Democracy Group will vote for this Commission.’

My first thoughts as I sat were, of course, for the unfortunate Frenchman – a former Minister of Culture, I recalled – with the smouldering Y-fronts, but it was all right. He was sitting again, still puce, his arms flapping, surrounded by solicitous members as he explained his symptoms. Other members were whispering the details to Mr Barroso, who looked properly concerned.

Speaker after speaker now arose to accuse me of lying.

The head of the EPP accused me of bringing shame on the entire parliament, which somehow recalled Newcastle and coal-deliveries. Lib-Dem Graham Watson, whose devotion to the EU over years would, if only it had been given to the British people, have made him a truly great public servant, told me that I had ‘behaved like an English football hooligan.’

And I honestly did not know what I had done, save tell the truth about men and women presuming to control the lives of many millions of honest, otherwise unrepresented people.

I stood to speak again, but was checked by the president of the parliament, Josep Borrell (a Spaniard who, it will be recalled, considered participation in World War II a qualification for having EU institutions in your territory, and forgot that the Danes and Finns had fought gallantly where his own nation, although rendering aid to Hitler, had remained staunchly
non-belligerent). ‘Mr Farage,’ he said, ‘I am asking you to withdraw your words so that they can be struck from the register. Otherwise, you will have to face the full legal consequences…’

Hang on.

I
would have to face legal consequences for enumerating the transgressions of people who, so far from facing the consequences, were about to be the outrageously powerful and highly-paid lawmakers for an entire continent?

By now slightly uncertain, I replied, ‘Mr President. Everything that I have said I believe to be true. If I be proved wrong, I will not only withdraw but apologise.’

More bustle. More swivelling eyes and gesticulation. More disapproving glares from Watson, now looking like a pampered Pomeranian displaced from his mistress’s bed and glaring at the interloper.

At last, the news filtered through. Barrot had indeed been convicted of embezzling £2 million from government funds and siphoning them into his own party’s funds, but President Chirac had granted him an extraordinary form of amnesty – a sort of Time Lord pardon – which attempts to expunge whole chapters of history. Barrot’s conviction had happened in fact but … er … not in law. It was a criminal offence to mention the event.

Since I was on French soil and uncertain that, in a pseudo-parliament, I enjoyed the privilege which is a prerequisite of democracy, I returned to my hotel that night and actually checked the contents of my sponge-bag, just in case I was about to be borne off to the Château d’If.

Over the weekend, I saw a very excited M. Barrot on television, declaring that the full weight of the law would be brought to bear on this dreadful Mr Farage who had committed so grave a crime.

Group leaders, however, became more and more temperate in their announcements. They had plainly been doing their research.

I returned to the parliament on Monday to be greeted with nervous smiles. It turned out that even Mr Barroso had not been aware of Barrot’s criminal record. Barrot, like Mote, had failed to declare it when examined. Barroso owes me a vote of thanks. He has somehow consistently neglected to express it. The Socialist and Liberal groups in the parliament even – somewhat furtively – congratulated me.

Opposition, of course, was futile. Barrot was made a vice-president of the Commission and, in 2008, Commissioner for – wait for it – Justice and Home Affairs.

This brief includes immigration. We therefore have a foreign criminal in charge of deciding which foreign criminals may live here.

Figures.

The First Great Battle of Europe was now underway.

There will be others, but this was what Churchill would have described as ‘the end of the beginning’ of the war between the people and the politicians.

The politicians were to win – by cheating.

Twenty days before I caused a stir by exposing Barrot, representatives of the twenty-five EU member-states had appended their signatures to the draft EU Constitution.

This had long been a cherished dream of federalists – the laying of the cornerstone of a United States of Europe, ruled by the Commission.

Modelled on the US Constitution, it was to replace all existing treaties with a single document, turn the Charter of Fundamental Rights into a Bill of Rights for the entire continent and supplant the autonomy of individual member-states over their own destiny with qualified majority voting by the entire community. In other words, individual nation states would no longer be able to make foreign or home policy decisions without the agreement of twenty-four other nations, many of them rivals. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was the Sun King of a heliocentric European Convention which drew up the Constitution.

Labour MP Gisela Stuart was a member of that Convention. She testified in 2003 that ‘the Convention brought together a self-selected group of the European political elite, many of whom have their eyes on a career at European level, which is dependent on more and more integration. Not once in the sixteen months I spent on the Convention did representatives question whether deeper integration is what the people of Europe want,
whether it serves their best interests or whether it provides the best basis for a sustainable structure for an expanding Union.’