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The shocking truth about Kilroy
Rachel Johnson meets Ukip’s pin-up
boy and finds to her horror that she likes him
Rachel Johnson
In order to interview Robert Kilroy-Silk,
the orthodontically perfect public face of Ukip, it is first necessary
to talk to his people. But his people, it turns out, are his wife
Jan. ‘So,’ Jan growls in what the BBC calls a lovely regional accent
(though I am not good on accents, I know the Kilroy clan hails from
Birmingham, where his grandfather was a roadsweeper, and his grandmother
cleaned pub floors). ‘You want to write one of those fluffy articles,
do you, about his orange face?’
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I am already beginning to be a little scared
of Jan, who is, I am told by several people — including Kilroy himself
— ‘the brains behind the throne’. But I tell Jan honestly that I do
not know what sort of article I shall write, because I haven’t spoken
to my people yet, nor have I met her husband.
When I do, it is clear that what my editors want — and I should remind
you that Kilroy’s lot are making life even more desperate for the
Conservatives in the marginals, in the suburbs and, yes, even in true
blue strongholds by offering a clear anti-European choice — is an
unbiased report. ‘I want you to rip out his Aztec gizzard,’ instructs
the editor of this, the Tory house mag. ‘I want you to show that he
is an absurd person, grandiose in his ambitions, who has only managed
to sew up the Poujadist vote,’ commands his deputy.
‘He’ll probably come over as plausible,’ reports the political editor,
on his mobile from Bournemouth, where Ukip is not mentioned even once
during the first day’s proceedings, as if the Ukippers were publicity-grubbing
terrorists rather than the party which pushed the Tories to a humiliating
fourth place in the Hartlepool by-election last week, and have decided
to fight every seat next May.
‘But he’s a mad proto-fascist, and his MEPs are dodgy and...’. At
this point his mobile cut out, so I rang back. ‘Some of them are crooks
...Mussolini something ...crackle crackle.’ ‘Thanks Peter,’ I say,
and ring off.
On the way down to Kilroy Towers in Bucks, I review what I know of
his story to date. Served as Labour MP for Ormskirk for 12 years,
then resigned his seat. For 17 years presented Kilroy for BBC daytime,
from which he was sacked summarily for making remarks about the customs
and practices of Muslim fundamentalists in his newspaper column. (A
subeditor decided that ‘Arabs’ made a crisper headline, with predictable
results.) Refused to apologise on the grounds he was ‘not racist,
and told the truth’. Stormed to success in Euro-elections in June
on his single-issue platform of taking Britain out of Europe (though
has strong views on immigration too). Electrified last week’s Ukip
conference with the following two sentences: ‘The Conservative party
is dying, why would you want to give it the kiss of life? What we
want to do is kill and replace it.’ This language, and the decision
to field candidates who could damage the prospects of Eurosceptic
Tory MPs, directly led to Ukip’s loss this week of its biggest backer,
Paul Sykes, which was the best news the Tories have had since ...well,
since Sandra Howard. (‘You can’t let the person with the biggest chequebook
determine the policy of the party,’ he tells me unrepentantly the
next day, on the telephone. ‘It’s all very amicable. We’re all having
lunch with our wives in London today.’)
As I drive along the A40 in autumn sunshine, the copper beeches on
the turn, I burnish my mental image of a tall man with silvered hair,
a bronzed complexion, gazing into camera with unbreakable confidence
and unblinking turquoise eyes. I also imagine the steely Jan, who
has equipped me with idiot-proof directions. ‘When you get to some
gateposts with stone balls,’ she tells me, ‘we’ll let you in. If you
get to the White Lion pub, you’ve gone too far.’ And I naturally visualise
his house, which is bound to be some Beckingham-Palace-type spread
with a paved drive and Velux windows. As I drive past driveways to
‘The Sheiling’ and ‘Heron’s Nest’, I sense my suspicions are confirmed.
I stop in the village to buy some batteries, and I vox-pop the shop
assistants in the chemists. My subject was once called the housewife’s
choice — so what did housewives think of him now? There are five women
working in there, and all have an opinion. ‘A bit smarmy, not my cup
of tea,’ says Annie, behind the counter. ‘Like all politicians, he
tells you what he thinks you want to hear,’ says Bel. ‘He opened the
church fete, I’ve got a photo of us together,’ says a sixtysomething
proudly, stacking shelves. The young Colleen tells me to say hello
to him and that she loved his chat show. ‘I stood behind his wife
in the butcher’s once,’ says the last, whose name I do not catch,
making a face. ‘I bet he has to toe the line.’
I get back into the car for the final leg. I pray hard. ‘Please, let
me not find him attractive. Please God, let him be a total plonker.
Otherwise how can I write the piece?’
Having done a predictable U-turn at the White Lion, I arrive at the
stone balls and press a buzzer. Iron gates creak open. I drive up
a tree-lined avenue. And I drive. After a while I let out my dog,
Coco, for exercise. I spy a deer park. I spy a walled garden. I spy
an aviary. Finally I park outside a magnificent bow-fronted stucco
pile, and let out a whistle.
Two black Labradors lollop towards us and sniff Coco’s hindquarters,
which is the perfect ice-breaker. RK-S comes out in a Ralph Lauren
checked shirt and dark trousers, looking rather waxen compared with
my Ronsealed mental picture of him. Jan, who is so far not frightening
at all, brings chewy treats for all three dogs. So we spend the first
few minutes talking about our dogs, as one does, then he tells me
about the house.
‘It’s Grade 2*, with a Jacobean courtyard and Victorian façade,’ he
tells me, ‘Don’t forget the star. Built for Nelson’s nephew originally.
We bought it off Ozzy Osbourne’ (then he tells me about Ozzy’s sale
of the period features, like masonry pineapples on columns, and how
he had to make replicas). Dirk Bogarde was also a previous owner.
The place is a Country Life cover-story, believe me. ‘Now, do you
want to sit in or out?’ he continues. ‘I must keep up the suntan.
It’s a national institution, after all.’
I turn to Jan. ‘Don’t go,’ I beg. ‘You’re the one I feel I should
be interviewing.’ She is heading into the house to find cushions.
‘No thanks,’ she replies with a dark look. ‘Not now. I’m going to
pay for my retirement by selling the True Story.’ When she returns
to where we are sitting on a stone-flagged terrace, admiring the lawns
and cedars of Lebanon, she brings us strong coffee on a silver tray.
And goes again.
So, I start in, utterly disarmed by the pair of them. How right-wing
exactly are you? Once a Labour MP, always a Labour MP, eh?
‘There aren’t any right-wingers any more,’ he answers. ‘Am I right-wing?
I’m anti-capital punishment. I’m pro-abortion. I’m for overseas aid
and civil liberties and progressive taxation. But I’m right-wing’
— and you can see the inverted commas hovering — ‘because I want to
govern myself, and I think there are a lot of bogus asylum-seekers,
and I don’t think we should have open borders.’
In the world according to Kilroy, Britain should take only what it
needs: plumbers, doctors, carpenters, irrespective of race or colour,
with the aim of keeping the population stable, rather than keeping
thousands of asylum-seekers in detention centres. On Brussels — which
he visits ‘as little as possible’ — he is as clear. ‘I was elected
to get us out of Europe.’
On the forthcoming general election, he declares his mission is all
about ‘driving the Tories further towards Euroscepticism’ rather than
taking votes from them (at this point, I tell him that my father is
fighting Teignbridge, a Liberal-held seat in south Devon, for the
Tories, and that Robert Kilroy-Silk is probably the major obstacle
standing between Stanley P. Johnson, 64, and his lifelong ambition
to win a West Country seat for the party he loves so much. I sob slightly
towards the end.)
‘It’s not my job to save the Tories,’ he responds, mercilessly. ‘My
job is to give the British people an opportunity to express their
views on Europe. No one under the age of 45 has ever been asked whether
they want to continue to be part of a European political union. If
the Tories adopted my policies, they would win.’
I fire further key questions. Hunting? ‘I wouldn’t ban it.’ Iraq?
‘I would have gone in on the 45-minutes claim but I wouldn’t have
gone in if we’d known the truth.’ Kerry or Bush? ‘Bush.’ Duvet or
blankets? ‘Blankets.’ Le Caprice or the Ivy? ‘The Caprice.’ Football
or cricket? ‘Liverpool.’ Land Rover or Volvo? ‘We’ve got two Range
Rovers, one in Spain, one here.’ Spain or Buckinghamshire? I ask.
‘In the end, this is my country,’ he answers, politician to his fingertips,
which are still rimmed with the dirt of old England from digging up
his vegetable garden. ‘If we had to choose, there isn’t any doubt.’
Then we walk around the 14-acre estate. He shows me the indoor swimming
pool, designed by Jan, on the understanding that I will not do that
journalistic thing of asking to see someone’s house and then making
snide comments about it in print. I promise I won’t. Why should I?
I like him. And I like his wife, his house, his garden, his fallow
deer and his dogs. Do I find this 61-year-old six-foot matinee idol
multi-millionaire, who assures me in the orchard that I am ‘a very
glamorous woman’, attractive? (I’m afraid I was fishing again.) Sure.
As I drive out, I decide that the man who left the Labour party, was
sacked from the BBC, and whose Tory-wrecking ambitions have now led
to his new party, Ukip, losing its main backer, this man really does
need balls of stone, now. As for the lovely Jan — she’s always had
’em, I reckon.
© 2004 The Spectator.co.uk
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