Diary – 2 May 2019

Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn. So it was for me a few weeks ago when, driving up the A1 on my way home to Lincolnshire, I saw some graffiti that made me think. The words sprayed on to a bridge support were as simple as they were powerful: ‘DON’T VOTE. ACT.’ It scared me that some people were so disillusioned they felt they had to take things into their own hands. But then again, if acting means standing for election, would it be such a bad thing?

I tried it before, most recently as a Tory candidate in the general election of 2010. I can’t say I loved the experience. David Cameron casually announced to a room of a hundred or more people that, as party leader, he was in control of candidates’ names and was changing mine from Annunziata to (presumably more on-brand) Nancy. I ignored him, but he appeared quite serious. The tragedy is that he was not serious about following up the result of the referendum he proposed, and neither is Theresa May. Which is why I’ve decided to stand for the Brexit party in the coming European parliamentary elections.

But it wasn’t just a few scrawled words that made me throw my life into chaos and decide to run. It was seeing my friends in the Conservative party cutting up their membership cards, watching Labour members tearing up local election ballot papers — and all over the utter betrayal of Brexit. It was a tough decision: I’ve been a Conservative party member, activist and candidate for 35 years but decided I could not stand by as Theresa May destroyed my old party. The question was, what could I possibly do to wake her — and her last remaining supporters — up? The inability to deliver Brexit is eating away at our historic democracy, so the only answer was to offer my support to the one serious party which believes in delivering a clean Brexit as quickly as possible: the Brexit party.