When Parties Are Not Fun

What happened to successful men playing golf?

Sitting in The Mog, the Marquis of Granby pub in Westminster that was to become synonymous with Brexit, I scanned the article in The Express to locate the quote I had sent over yesterday. Through the columns of Tory MPs reactions I finally found the line that captured a pithy remark made by Nigel Farage. Blink and you'd miss it. Yet this was 2013, and in many ways, a victory.

Back then, I was Head of Media for UKIP. The party was hovering around single digit polling, and getting any sort of media pick up was a labour of love. While Nigel was an easy sell to rolling news, where I would schedule back to back hits with all the channels who have their political studios in 4 Millbank, the partisan print press were less minded to offer any exposure to anybody outside their legacy political tribe.

Gawain Towler, a long time servant of the party, was Head of Press, and together, we ran the party's communications from bar stools in a busy Westminster pub just down from Parliament and round the corner from the political TV studios. As well as well as having the benefit of attracting a range of lobby hacks for a livener, who could be courted and cajoled with a pint, it was also a necessity to work from the pub. UKIP's EU Parliament offices were just on Smith Square, in Europe House which at one point in time played host to the Conservative Party Headquarters from where Margaret Thatcher famously did the balcony wave after winning the General Election of 1987. Yet as party aparatchiks in London, we could be accused of misappropriation of EU funds were we to occupy them (a la Marine Le Pen today). UKIP had a handful of MEPs, all entitled to staff in Brussels, but Gawain and I had to be maintained from a different budget, and one that wouldn't extend to also supplying legal to use bricks and mortar.

By 2013 UKIP had already been going for the best part of 2 decades. It would become the year that Nigel Farage would morph into a household name, the party would almost take a by election victory in Eastleigh and came a resounding third in local elections. Twenty years of work finally starting to pay off. It would be another decade hence, this time with Reform UK, that Nigel would finally make it into the UK Parliament and see his party topping the polls.

My point is this. Political journeys are rarely fast, or simple. Particularly under a First Past The Post system and where purdah rules tend to allocate airtime to parties based upon their last election results. So any entity without MPs tends to simply be brushed aside.

It took 100 hour weeks to finally be able to start lifting UKIP to prominence, and a dedication to doing every bit of media offered, even if it started with turning up at the GMTV studios at 05:30am and finishing the day at Newsnight at midnight. Yes, we enjoyed a number of PFLs (proper f*cking lunches) and had fun along the way, but the sheer energy required in those days must never be underestimated. We worked damned bloody hard. Keeping up with Nigel's work ethic demanded it. We toured the country doing a series of town hall meetings in far flung corners of forgotten England. A 5 hour night sleep felt like a luxury.

And even with the tireless dedication, were it not for the raw charisma of Nigel, the keenness of news editors to have him on their programmes to spice things up, it would have likely all been for very little.

It’s why so few entryist parties have any impact at all. Making a successful political party takes much more than enthusiasm and cold hard cash, and regarding the latter, you need a lot of it. It requires building branches up and down the country, appointing a Party Secretary to manage the legal constitution, finding thousands of candidates and vetting them.for local, devolved and general elections, and election agents for each of them. Even incidentally things like producing the PPB (the party political broadcast allocated to each party of a certain size at election time) is a specialised endeavour with unique coding and formatting for each Broadcaster. You can't just set up a political party from your ivory tower, throw a meagre quarter of a million quid at it, and expect it to be anything but a vainglorious boondoggle.

This is evidenced by all the little right wing parties that have emerged in recent years. Heritage. Reclaim. UKIP 2.0. The SDP. And then some.

None have added anything notable to the political landscape bar extra boxes on a ballot paper.

So why bother? Particularly when they all seem to be espousing the same political ideology and at most, would therefore serve to cannibalise the right wing vote if they did miraculously cut through.

And yet today we are informed of two new political entities that have launched. Ben Habib's vanity project with its deodorant tick logo, and Rupert Lowe's something or the other. Think tank? Pressure group? Future party? The fact they aren't going together tells you most of what you need to know about the men and their respective projects.

I wish them both well, but anybody with even half a brain cab deduce that anything but Reform UK right now is a wasted vote at best.

We still have an old Brexit Party MEPs WhatsApp group where the reception of these new ventures has been nonchalant if not rather pitying. Reading the comments under Ben's launch post on X suggests the right wing voting populace largely sees his efforts as a pointless ego trip. And despite his obsession with attacking Nigel Farage and smearing his character, the fact that the rest of us bar Rupert and Ben are still not only firm friends but firmly behind Reform rather puts paid to the idea that Nigel is the one who struggles to get along with others.

It's all rather sad really, in both senses of the word.

I just wish near retired businessmen would stick to perfecting their tee off or tinkered with vintage cars, instead of launching myriad new political parties.

Only one can win, and in doing so, save this country.

So if it's Britain's future you care about, which is kind of the point of politics, pepper your patriotism with pragmatism. Say no to Parties that are simply no fun.