TLIAD: If You Want To Know Who We Are
- Thread starter Uhura's Mazda
- Start date
We didn't actually find out about him being a cousin until several years after his expulsion from the Lib Dems for similar behaviour, though he was a political sparring partner of my parents at university.
Alex Richards
Donor
So we've got the SDCPGB, a Green-Liberal party with some slightly dodgy members.
Is this just 'how many *Liberal Parties can you fit on a ballot?
Is this just 'how many *Liberal Parties can you fit on a ballot?
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
3: All Is Right As Right Can Be
The Liberal Democrat offices, in a charming brick building on Cowley Road, have been remodelled in recent years: where they used to be a rabbit-warren of cubbyholes and crannies, they are now as open-plan as the engineers will allow. Apart from the top floor. The top floor, to which I am presently ascending, was sublet to another party in 2001, and their conservative tastes (and, more relevantly, their lack of cash) precluded them from paying their share of the initial plans to modernise the whole lot.
“In the end, we felt that it would be more useful to spend what money we had on the 2015 general election, to fight for our beliefs and make Britain a great place to work - not just one floor of one building.” Lord Clegg, the new Leader of One Nation, is certainly well-prepared with sensible-sounding soundbites, and his relentless positivity almost masks his prematurely lined face. Almost.
Neither of the previous Leaders of One Nation, Brendan Donnelly and Anna Soubry, agreed to talk to me, so Nick Clegg was the only option - despite the fact that he only appeared on the scene of British politics in 2004, when he became the ON MEP for Home Counties South. He wasn’t noticed by anybody back home until much later, and is still greeted by confusion in most of his media appearances. The party he has led since 2015 is not one of the most high-profile groups, even among the bantamweight category.
“I joined One Nation because I am a citizen of Europe,” Clegg tells me, “and I felt that the Conservatives and their then-allies in the Social Democrats were betraying the open, tolerant principles of which I had previously been proud as a citizen of Britain. Little-Englander Eurosceptics dominated the Tories in those days - John Redwood was the Leader of the Opposition - and the only sensible conservatives, carrying the baton passed down from Disraeli to Thatcher, were Brendan Donnelly and John Stevens.”
The two Conservative MEPs who started the One Nation party in 1999 were unknown at the time, but their electoral alliance with Campbell’s flailing Lib Dems held their European seats and gained a couple of Commons seats for their followers in 2000. Clegg had joined at the very start, inspired by the rejection of regressive and classist policies which the Tories proposed, and stood in that election. He had never been in a political party before, but seemed to acquit himself well - the Lib Dems stood aside for One Nation in 47 constituencies, including Erewash, where Clegg took home 7% of the vote.
“I must admit that I thought that we were on the way to displacing the Tories as Britain’s true centre-right party, what with the encouraging polls and the generous funding from the European People’s Party, but as the campaign continued, it was apparent that I was perhaps engaging in wishful thinking.” ON’s close relationship with the Lib Dems was the most common explanation for their failure. “No, I don’t think that was the case,” says Lord Clegg in the garret above the Lib Dem headquarters, “I think Blair fought a very good and very centrist campaign that year.”
In any case, ON didn’t make waves. In 2003 they formally became a party within the Liberal Democrats, arguing for a moderate conservatism which didn’t differ too far from the economically liberal mainstream of the party. They appear on the ballot paper much as the Co-operative Party do, as ‘Liberal Democrat and One Nation’. Clegg was elected to the European Parliament under this designation in 2004 and came a close second in the Sheffield Hallam constituency in 2005. After losing his seat in the Lib Dem rout of 2010, Clegg was raised to the peerage, taking over the running of the party from Soubry the next year. From the amount of activity I saw in the Cowley Street offices, it didn’t seem that this task was exactly a full-time role. Many off the staff went off the to the local watering hole at fifteen minutes to three on that particular Wednesday. More European People’s Party money, perhaps.
I ask Clegg whether it takes a particular type of person to dedicate their life to a minor party - or rather, an adjunct to a slightly larger minor party. “Perhaps. I certainly thought John Stevens’ run against John Bercow the time before last was a little less professional than it could have been.” The former MEP had dressed as ‘Flipper the Seal’ to protest against the Home Secretary ‘flipping’ his second home in a slightly suspect expenses claim. Stevens gleaned 4%.
“And then there were the Mosleyite entryists, but I don’t think we should give them the oxygen of publicity.” The Europe a Nation faction still meets regularly, apparently, and several members have yet to be ejected from ON. “Claire’s job - Claire in the annex, through there - is largely to look through the MySpace posts of our members to search for anything that might lead us to the last few of that group.”
One Nation is in a strange position: a conservative party nestled within a liberal one, unable to issue press releases or policies which haven’t been approved by John Thurso in his office downstairs. Lord Clegg insists that this is merely a formality, and is largely a matter of not stealing airtime from one another, but the fact remains that ON haven’t announced a new policy since last September, when they declared that they would cut Corporation Tax by 12% to companies which exported primarily to Europe. This wasn’t even criticised as mere tinkering: it was merely ignored. As we discuss this, there is a worried look on Clegg’s face which looks more at home there than the boyish smile that he is never seen in public without.
I put it to Nick Clegg that his party isn’t meaningfully centre-right. Naturally, he disagrees: “We have always been the true Conservatives of the twentie- the twenty-first century,” he says, “because Conservatives don’t want to rock the boat, we just want good governance. Well, in this day and age, good governance comes from Brussels just as often as it does from Westminster - more often, in fact, because there are diverse voices in Brussels that can take the edge off extreme and undemocratic policies. Meanwhile, we have the official Conservative Party trying to divide this nation by playing the Europe card, trying to rile up the populace that real Conservatives would just like to quietly satisfy. The prospect of Prime Minister Carswell is a real threat, not only to our country, but to our Conservative traditions.”
The SDP would disagree with Lord Clegg’s opinions on Brussels. “Well, of course they would” he laughs in reply. But they have more seats than he does.
“Look,” Clegg says, extending his hands earnestly, “if you want a party which is confused about whether it is a nationalist team of hatemongers or a centrist party in a centrist country, then by all means go for the SDP, but if you want a party on it’s way back up, a party which believes in one nation of Britain at the heart of one nation of Europe, then you have to support One Nation. Yes, we lost our last Commons seat in 2015. Yes, we only have one MEP left. But we’re on the up, make no mistake. If you look at how well Macron did in France, you have to admit that there is a hunger in the West for sensible, moderate and open policies which cannot be offered by the Tories as they currently position themselves.”
But Macron lost. And Royston Flude, the current ON representative in Europe, is not exactly a household name. And the cash they get from the EPP and the Lib Dems has to dry up sometime, if results don’t improve quickly.
I change tack: in the current situation, with Prime Minister Kendall privatising the Royal Mail and bringing Britain reluctantly into the Euro, is there still room for One Nation in the political landscape? “Well, of course there is. We are progressive - in the old sense, that of economic growth and help for individuals without subjecting them to socialism. And there are very few progressive parties around, least of all the Labour Party, with its history of anti-semitism scandals and scorn for the liberty of the common man. However popular they are, Labour can never push us out of the free market of ideas. Look: we’re here, and we’re here to stay.”
He doesn’t sound very convinced.
“In the end, we felt that it would be more useful to spend what money we had on the 2015 general election, to fight for our beliefs and make Britain a great place to work - not just one floor of one building.” Lord Clegg, the new Leader of One Nation, is certainly well-prepared with sensible-sounding soundbites, and his relentless positivity almost masks his prematurely lined face. Almost.
Neither of the previous Leaders of One Nation, Brendan Donnelly and Anna Soubry, agreed to talk to me, so Nick Clegg was the only option - despite the fact that he only appeared on the scene of British politics in 2004, when he became the ON MEP for Home Counties South. He wasn’t noticed by anybody back home until much later, and is still greeted by confusion in most of his media appearances. The party he has led since 2015 is not one of the most high-profile groups, even among the bantamweight category.
“I joined One Nation because I am a citizen of Europe,” Clegg tells me, “and I felt that the Conservatives and their then-allies in the Social Democrats were betraying the open, tolerant principles of which I had previously been proud as a citizen of Britain. Little-Englander Eurosceptics dominated the Tories in those days - John Redwood was the Leader of the Opposition - and the only sensible conservatives, carrying the baton passed down from Disraeli to Thatcher, were Brendan Donnelly and John Stevens.”
The two Conservative MEPs who started the One Nation party in 1999 were unknown at the time, but their electoral alliance with Campbell’s flailing Lib Dems held their European seats and gained a couple of Commons seats for their followers in 2000. Clegg had joined at the very start, inspired by the rejection of regressive and classist policies which the Tories proposed, and stood in that election. He had never been in a political party before, but seemed to acquit himself well - the Lib Dems stood aside for One Nation in 47 constituencies, including Erewash, where Clegg took home 7% of the vote.
“I must admit that I thought that we were on the way to displacing the Tories as Britain’s true centre-right party, what with the encouraging polls and the generous funding from the European People’s Party, but as the campaign continued, it was apparent that I was perhaps engaging in wishful thinking.” ON’s close relationship with the Lib Dems was the most common explanation for their failure. “No, I don’t think that was the case,” says Lord Clegg in the garret above the Lib Dem headquarters, “I think Blair fought a very good and very centrist campaign that year.”
In any case, ON didn’t make waves. In 2003 they formally became a party within the Liberal Democrats, arguing for a moderate conservatism which didn’t differ too far from the economically liberal mainstream of the party. They appear on the ballot paper much as the Co-operative Party do, as ‘Liberal Democrat and One Nation’. Clegg was elected to the European Parliament under this designation in 2004 and came a close second in the Sheffield Hallam constituency in 2005. After losing his seat in the Lib Dem rout of 2010, Clegg was raised to the peerage, taking over the running of the party from Soubry the next year. From the amount of activity I saw in the Cowley Street offices, it didn’t seem that this task was exactly a full-time role. Many off the staff went off the to the local watering hole at fifteen minutes to three on that particular Wednesday. More European People’s Party money, perhaps.
I ask Clegg whether it takes a particular type of person to dedicate their life to a minor party - or rather, an adjunct to a slightly larger minor party. “Perhaps. I certainly thought John Stevens’ run against John Bercow the time before last was a little less professional than it could have been.” The former MEP had dressed as ‘Flipper the Seal’ to protest against the Home Secretary ‘flipping’ his second home in a slightly suspect expenses claim. Stevens gleaned 4%.
“And then there were the Mosleyite entryists, but I don’t think we should give them the oxygen of publicity.” The Europe a Nation faction still meets regularly, apparently, and several members have yet to be ejected from ON. “Claire’s job - Claire in the annex, through there - is largely to look through the MySpace posts of our members to search for anything that might lead us to the last few of that group.”
One Nation is in a strange position: a conservative party nestled within a liberal one, unable to issue press releases or policies which haven’t been approved by John Thurso in his office downstairs. Lord Clegg insists that this is merely a formality, and is largely a matter of not stealing airtime from one another, but the fact remains that ON haven’t announced a new policy since last September, when they declared that they would cut Corporation Tax by 12% to companies which exported primarily to Europe. This wasn’t even criticised as mere tinkering: it was merely ignored. As we discuss this, there is a worried look on Clegg’s face which looks more at home there than the boyish smile that he is never seen in public without.
I put it to Nick Clegg that his party isn’t meaningfully centre-right. Naturally, he disagrees: “We have always been the true Conservatives of the twentie- the twenty-first century,” he says, “because Conservatives don’t want to rock the boat, we just want good governance. Well, in this day and age, good governance comes from Brussels just as often as it does from Westminster - more often, in fact, because there are diverse voices in Brussels that can take the edge off extreme and undemocratic policies. Meanwhile, we have the official Conservative Party trying to divide this nation by playing the Europe card, trying to rile up the populace that real Conservatives would just like to quietly satisfy. The prospect of Prime Minister Carswell is a real threat, not only to our country, but to our Conservative traditions.”
The SDP would disagree with Lord Clegg’s opinions on Brussels. “Well, of course they would” he laughs in reply. But they have more seats than he does.
“Look,” Clegg says, extending his hands earnestly, “if you want a party which is confused about whether it is a nationalist team of hatemongers or a centrist party in a centrist country, then by all means go for the SDP, but if you want a party on it’s way back up, a party which believes in one nation of Britain at the heart of one nation of Europe, then you have to support One Nation. Yes, we lost our last Commons seat in 2015. Yes, we only have one MEP left. But we’re on the up, make no mistake. If you look at how well Macron did in France, you have to admit that there is a hunger in the West for sensible, moderate and open policies which cannot be offered by the Tories as they currently position themselves.”
But Macron lost. And Royston Flude, the current ON representative in Europe, is not exactly a household name. And the cash they get from the EPP and the Lib Dems has to dry up sometime, if results don’t improve quickly.
I change tack: in the current situation, with Prime Minister Kendall privatising the Royal Mail and bringing Britain reluctantly into the Euro, is there still room for One Nation in the political landscape? “Well, of course there is. We are progressive - in the old sense, that of economic growth and help for individuals without subjecting them to socialism. And there are very few progressive parties around, least of all the Labour Party, with its history of anti-semitism scandals and scorn for the liberty of the common man. However popular they are, Labour can never push us out of the free market of ideas. Look: we’re here, and we’re here to stay.”
He doesn’t sound very convinced.
Alex Richards
Donor
Between this and the G&S Headlines I'm pretty sure you're baiting me now.
Alternative title for the last chapter: A Thing of Shreds and Patches
This line is pure gold.
Meanwhile NICK CLEGG AS BASICALLY A LIB DEM NEWBIE FB GROUP MEMBER LEADING A MINOR LIB DEM AFFILIATE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
This
This is
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
So much to process.
A Maastricht Referendum. The Vulcan. Dougie Carswell's Conservatives? Clegg and Boozy Anna in the Lib Dems' loft, like some weird uncle who cam for a party and is still there weeks later. With Claire the Fascist-Finder General? Liberal (Kaftan)-Greens? Dr Death of the CPGB? So much to process.
And the strangest of the lot: Royston Flude is a real person.
This is
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
So much to process.
A Maastricht Referendum. The Vulcan. Dougie Carswell's Conservatives? Clegg and Boozy Anna in the Lib Dems' loft, like some weird uncle who cam for a party and is still there weeks later. With Claire the Fascist-Finder General? Liberal (Kaftan)-Greens? Dr Death of the CPGB? So much to process.
And the strangest of the lot: Royston Flude is a real person.
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
He was second-to-bottom of the 4 Freedoms Party (UK EPP)'s London list in the 2014 Euro elections. I saw his name and couldn't resist.
Guffawed.
Ripped off my shorts.
Had to go for a walk.
This isn't dank, it's just a very very very very good capture of Clegg's voice. So much so I reread it aloud in my impersonation of him and it worked.
This is a lovely little piece of work, the different world it's concocted is phresh as phuc, and you are a
God, you're right, I just tried it and even started doing Those Hand Movements
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
I’m Now A Respectable Chap
Mike Potter (SDP Leader from 1996 to 2002) wasn’t very keen to speak to me for this feature, unfortunately, but his successor has never been comfortable out of the limelight. He responded to my email almost immediately with a list of pubs for me to choose from.
The Harvest Moon in Orpington (“a typical JD, but with one of the nicest pub carpets in the Borough”) was the venue for my interview with Nigel Farage. The carpet was indeed indescribably lovely, although its rich colours clash unpleasantly with Farage’s sickly, sweaty face. His looks could be described as ‘Kermit the Frog, but made out of tweed and dunked in the Thames several hours ago’. It is a very British face.
I ask him how he is getting on. “Same old - representing my constituency, fighting for the rights of ordinary British people. Just because there aren’t as many cameras following me around any more doesn’t change that: I’ve been campaigning for twenty-five years and after all that I’m skint, single and s - and I’m not going to stop any time soon.”
Farage has represented Orpington in the Commons since 2000. This was part of Potter’s legacy: his alliance with the Conservatives included not only the seats of Plymouth Devonport, Greenwich and Woolwich and Richmond in Yorkshire, but candidacies in at least one more safe Conservative seat. This was Orpington, and the candidate selected was local boy and metals trader Nigel Farage, a man who had been a member of the SDP since the early 1990s, when Alan Sked’s Anti-Federalist League dissolved itself into the party against the wishes of its founder (who returned to the Liberal Party and was given a peerage in 2004).
The 2000 intake of SDP MPs replaced all of David Owen’s people apart from Mike Potter himself. Graham Booth stepped up in Plymouth and Damian Hockney replaced Graham Cartwright. This was a good result against a major setback for the Conservative Party, with which they were in alliance. Redwood’s leadership had paled in comparison with Blair’s charisma - although of course it would all go wrong for Labour over the next five years. The disastrous war in North Korea and the damaging split with the newfangled Peace Party underlined a series of domestic catastrophes and a recession in 2004.
“We had it pretty good while Hague was Leader of the Opposition - not great, but pretty good. He was realistic on Europe, he seemed to understand what Mrs Thatcher was all about, and his voice was funny enough that he was featured on the Culshaw, Bird and Fortune show more often than even Blair’s. And that was good. It distracted from Mike, who was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bland ponce.”
Mike Potter didn’t lead the SDP for long into the 21st century. His fellow MPs were all from the Tory genepool and got on much better at that stage than with him. Farage challenged for the leadership in 2002, and both Booth and Hockney voted for him. The Party Executive had no choice but to go with the flow. “I won’t pretend it was an easy thing to do,” admits Farage, “but even with just two years in Westminster under my belt, I could see that they wouldn’t give in to him as easily as they would to me.”
And that proved to be the case, when Blair’s government fell in the 2005 election, and William Hague made Farage Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. “That was a weird brief. I had Scotland, Wales, Europe and Any Other Business under one roof. I think he was secretly hoping that I would be distracted from the Europe issue - after all, he’d already forced me to row back on the In/Out Referendum in our manifesto. Said it was too soon after the last one, which was abject nonsense, as Maastricht wasn’t an In/Out issue, it was a shake it all about issue.”
Farage, despite what he may say, did get a little distracted from his European focus. He put a stop to Prescott’s planned Wales County Council (a Labour-backed referendum on devolution had failed in 1997 and this was their way of, as Farage puts it “empowering the Labour apparatchiks at the expense of ordinary citizens”) and blocked any further extension of powers to the Scottish Assembly for as long as he was in Cabinet. He also changed the electoral system in Scotland from STV to the usual First Past the Post system for the 2006 election in a far-sighted move: although it reduced Conservative representation in the Assembly and denied his own party their own seat in the body, Labour was returned with a majority despite losing the popular vote to the SNP, and were able to weather the “Braveheart boost” which might have had catastrophic results for the Union if the SNP had been able to form a government in Scotland.
But Farage’s personal success came at a price. Hockney had lost Greenwich and Woolwich to Labour in 2005 in one of their few gains of the night, and Graham Booth retired due to ill health two years later, handing Plymouth Devonport to Labour in a narrow by-election. Potter having retired in 2005, Farage’s only colleague in the latter stages of the Hague Ministry was the new Richmond MP, Godfrey Bloom. And for every positive story about Farage, Bloom would match it with a new scandal about sexism or racism. He was Torier than the Tories.
“And I could see that we were ailing. We were seen as a single-issue party, fixated on Europe - can you imagine it! - while agreeing with the Tories on everything else. And we disagreed with them on a whole lot of things, but the media refused to listen. I had to make a snap decision in 2009, when Hague rowed back on his promise to implement our grammar schools policy.” The decision he took was to tear up the alliance agreement. It was bold: the SDP hadn’t gained a seat under its own steam since 1989. But although Farage was now unable to influence policy from within Government (and his relationship with the rest of Cabinet had never been particularly strong) he was now able to castigate it from the sidelines. Theresa May deposed Hague later that year, and her initial polling bounce was cut short abruptly by Farage when he gave an interview in which he recounted her failures on Immigration as a wet-behind-the-ears Home Secretary. Farage’s final victory over his erstwhile allies occurred when Stuart Agnew defeated the Conservatives in the Norwich North by-election.
“In European elections, we tended to put up our own candidates - as it was STV, it didn’t make much difference to the overall Alliance result - and we could see that our best results standing alone would be on the East coast and in Devon and Cornwall. And hey presto, that’s where we directed our efforts upon winning independence from the Conservatives.” They held their three seats and came second in twenty other seats, splitting the right-wing vote enough that May had to seek a coalition with the Lib Dems. “I guess we can take credit for killing the Lib Dems as a major force - fifteen seats in 2010, four in 2015. And all because we forced the Tories into a genuine coalition. I’d say they were pretty much dead.”
Farage saw that there were gains to be made in the European Parliament: “Well, Euro elections have a very low turnout, and even those who vote don’t really care. So I realised that there was a tremendous opportunity to energise the Eurosceptic vote in those elections and build from there down, as it were, to success at Westminster. And I mean, at that stage, the only MEP we had was batty old Ray Allerston in Yorkshire North, so we couldn’t exactly lose ground.”
They might not have seen their European success in 2014, though, if it hadn’t been for the sudden media interest in the SDP in the year before. “Both May and McDonnell were bumbling along below 40%. They would both need coalition partners. Hence the interest.” And the interest in the SDP was intense. It couldn’t be otherwise, with the attention-seeking duo of Bloom and Farage entertaining the nation every evening on the News. “Remember that Stuart got in on the action with his global warming stuff” Farage reminds me. Many people conceived or rekindled a hatred of the SDP at this point. Others began to support them. And the addition of ex-Labour politician and celebrity Robert Kilroy-Silk to the line-up, as candidate for the Five Boroughs, expanded the appeal to sections of the centre-left.
“I regret it now, of course, but it was a very good move to get Kilroy involved.” You can smell the hubris on Nigel Farage’s breath. You can smell something, anyway.
Kilroy won his seat, despite long-time Social Democrat Chris Pain standing against him as a ‘Socratic Demosthenic’, and joined Jane Collins (Allerston’s successor in Yorkshire North) in Brussels. They were the largest third-party contingent in the British MEPs of 2014. The polls maxed out at 12% for the SDP.
The next year saw a more professional SDP. Bloom was forced into retirement after one too many drunken Rotary Club speeches, and Richmond was held by the sluglike but intelligent Jonathan Arnott. Two new seats were also won by long-time SDP member Julia Reid (in Totnes) and ex-Tory MP Roger Knapman in Central Devon. The county is now one of the main strongholds of the SDP, as evidenced by the slogan ‘Make Devon Purple Again’.
I asked Farage whether he was disappointed not to have convinced more Tories to jump ship with him in 2009 or later. He laughs. “I don’t want deselected Tories in my party. I want good, strong Social Democrats who believe in the Social Democratic principles of the independence of the Market, the Independence of Britain, and personal independence against the Nanny State.” Note that he still calls it ‘his’ party, despite the fact that he currently represents Orpington as an Independent.
He has loosened his tie over the course of our session at the Harvest Moon. A well-wisher comes over to him and jokes about his scruffy appearance. “Well, he barks jocularly in reply, “the SDP certainly became a lot more respectable while I was in charge, but I look at all the current chap, and I wonder if a bit of scruffiness wasn’t a bad thing!” That’s Nigel Farage: inveterately anti-Establishment. He’d never have survived in a larger party.
The Harvest Moon in Orpington (“a typical JD, but with one of the nicest pub carpets in the Borough”) was the venue for my interview with Nigel Farage. The carpet was indeed indescribably lovely, although its rich colours clash unpleasantly with Farage’s sickly, sweaty face. His looks could be described as ‘Kermit the Frog, but made out of tweed and dunked in the Thames several hours ago’. It is a very British face.
I ask him how he is getting on. “Same old - representing my constituency, fighting for the rights of ordinary British people. Just because there aren’t as many cameras following me around any more doesn’t change that: I’ve been campaigning for twenty-five years and after all that I’m skint, single and s - and I’m not going to stop any time soon.”
Farage has represented Orpington in the Commons since 2000. This was part of Potter’s legacy: his alliance with the Conservatives included not only the seats of Plymouth Devonport, Greenwich and Woolwich and Richmond in Yorkshire, but candidacies in at least one more safe Conservative seat. This was Orpington, and the candidate selected was local boy and metals trader Nigel Farage, a man who had been a member of the SDP since the early 1990s, when Alan Sked’s Anti-Federalist League dissolved itself into the party against the wishes of its founder (who returned to the Liberal Party and was given a peerage in 2004).
The 2000 intake of SDP MPs replaced all of David Owen’s people apart from Mike Potter himself. Graham Booth stepped up in Plymouth and Damian Hockney replaced Graham Cartwright. This was a good result against a major setback for the Conservative Party, with which they were in alliance. Redwood’s leadership had paled in comparison with Blair’s charisma - although of course it would all go wrong for Labour over the next five years. The disastrous war in North Korea and the damaging split with the newfangled Peace Party underlined a series of domestic catastrophes and a recession in 2004.
“We had it pretty good while Hague was Leader of the Opposition - not great, but pretty good. He was realistic on Europe, he seemed to understand what Mrs Thatcher was all about, and his voice was funny enough that he was featured on the Culshaw, Bird and Fortune show more often than even Blair’s. And that was good. It distracted from Mike, who was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bland ponce.”
Mike Potter didn’t lead the SDP for long into the 21st century. His fellow MPs were all from the Tory genepool and got on much better at that stage than with him. Farage challenged for the leadership in 2002, and both Booth and Hockney voted for him. The Party Executive had no choice but to go with the flow. “I won’t pretend it was an easy thing to do,” admits Farage, “but even with just two years in Westminster under my belt, I could see that they wouldn’t give in to him as easily as they would to me.”
And that proved to be the case, when Blair’s government fell in the 2005 election, and William Hague made Farage Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. “That was a weird brief. I had Scotland, Wales, Europe and Any Other Business under one roof. I think he was secretly hoping that I would be distracted from the Europe issue - after all, he’d already forced me to row back on the In/Out Referendum in our manifesto. Said it was too soon after the last one, which was abject nonsense, as Maastricht wasn’t an In/Out issue, it was a shake it all about issue.”
Farage, despite what he may say, did get a little distracted from his European focus. He put a stop to Prescott’s planned Wales County Council (a Labour-backed referendum on devolution had failed in 1997 and this was their way of, as Farage puts it “empowering the Labour apparatchiks at the expense of ordinary citizens”) and blocked any further extension of powers to the Scottish Assembly for as long as he was in Cabinet. He also changed the electoral system in Scotland from STV to the usual First Past the Post system for the 2006 election in a far-sighted move: although it reduced Conservative representation in the Assembly and denied his own party their own seat in the body, Labour was returned with a majority despite losing the popular vote to the SNP, and were able to weather the “Braveheart boost” which might have had catastrophic results for the Union if the SNP had been able to form a government in Scotland.
But Farage’s personal success came at a price. Hockney had lost Greenwich and Woolwich to Labour in 2005 in one of their few gains of the night, and Graham Booth retired due to ill health two years later, handing Plymouth Devonport to Labour in a narrow by-election. Potter having retired in 2005, Farage’s only colleague in the latter stages of the Hague Ministry was the new Richmond MP, Godfrey Bloom. And for every positive story about Farage, Bloom would match it with a new scandal about sexism or racism. He was Torier than the Tories.
“And I could see that we were ailing. We were seen as a single-issue party, fixated on Europe - can you imagine it! - while agreeing with the Tories on everything else. And we disagreed with them on a whole lot of things, but the media refused to listen. I had to make a snap decision in 2009, when Hague rowed back on his promise to implement our grammar schools policy.” The decision he took was to tear up the alliance agreement. It was bold: the SDP hadn’t gained a seat under its own steam since 1989. But although Farage was now unable to influence policy from within Government (and his relationship with the rest of Cabinet had never been particularly strong) he was now able to castigate it from the sidelines. Theresa May deposed Hague later that year, and her initial polling bounce was cut short abruptly by Farage when he gave an interview in which he recounted her failures on Immigration as a wet-behind-the-ears Home Secretary. Farage’s final victory over his erstwhile allies occurred when Stuart Agnew defeated the Conservatives in the Norwich North by-election.
“In European elections, we tended to put up our own candidates - as it was STV, it didn’t make much difference to the overall Alliance result - and we could see that our best results standing alone would be on the East coast and in Devon and Cornwall. And hey presto, that’s where we directed our efforts upon winning independence from the Conservatives.” They held their three seats and came second in twenty other seats, splitting the right-wing vote enough that May had to seek a coalition with the Lib Dems. “I guess we can take credit for killing the Lib Dems as a major force - fifteen seats in 2010, four in 2015. And all because we forced the Tories into a genuine coalition. I’d say they were pretty much dead.”
Farage saw that there were gains to be made in the European Parliament: “Well, Euro elections have a very low turnout, and even those who vote don’t really care. So I realised that there was a tremendous opportunity to energise the Eurosceptic vote in those elections and build from there down, as it were, to success at Westminster. And I mean, at that stage, the only MEP we had was batty old Ray Allerston in Yorkshire North, so we couldn’t exactly lose ground.”
They might not have seen their European success in 2014, though, if it hadn’t been for the sudden media interest in the SDP in the year before. “Both May and McDonnell were bumbling along below 40%. They would both need coalition partners. Hence the interest.” And the interest in the SDP was intense. It couldn’t be otherwise, with the attention-seeking duo of Bloom and Farage entertaining the nation every evening on the News. “Remember that Stuart got in on the action with his global warming stuff” Farage reminds me. Many people conceived or rekindled a hatred of the SDP at this point. Others began to support them. And the addition of ex-Labour politician and celebrity Robert Kilroy-Silk to the line-up, as candidate for the Five Boroughs, expanded the appeal to sections of the centre-left.
“I regret it now, of course, but it was a very good move to get Kilroy involved.” You can smell the hubris on Nigel Farage’s breath. You can smell something, anyway.
Kilroy won his seat, despite long-time Social Democrat Chris Pain standing against him as a ‘Socratic Demosthenic’, and joined Jane Collins (Allerston’s successor in Yorkshire North) in Brussels. They were the largest third-party contingent in the British MEPs of 2014. The polls maxed out at 12% for the SDP.
The next year saw a more professional SDP. Bloom was forced into retirement after one too many drunken Rotary Club speeches, and Richmond was held by the sluglike but intelligent Jonathan Arnott. Two new seats were also won by long-time SDP member Julia Reid (in Totnes) and ex-Tory MP Roger Knapman in Central Devon. The county is now one of the main strongholds of the SDP, as evidenced by the slogan ‘Make Devon Purple Again’.
I asked Farage whether he was disappointed not to have convinced more Tories to jump ship with him in 2009 or later. He laughs. “I don’t want deselected Tories in my party. I want good, strong Social Democrats who believe in the Social Democratic principles of the independence of the Market, the Independence of Britain, and personal independence against the Nanny State.” Note that he still calls it ‘his’ party, despite the fact that he currently represents Orpington as an Independent.
He has loosened his tie over the course of our session at the Harvest Moon. A well-wisher comes over to him and jokes about his scruffy appearance. “Well, he barks jocularly in reply, “the SDP certainly became a lot more respectable while I was in charge, but I look at all the current chap, and I wonder if a bit of scruffiness wasn’t a bad thing!” That’s Nigel Farage: inveterately anti-Establishment. He’d never have survived in a larger party.
