Earlier this week I was offered the chance to be the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) for The Brexit Party in Hazel Grove, a constituency that lies between Macclesfield, where I live, and Stockport. However, I turned down that chance. What follows explains why, and how I got to be in that position in the first place.
Let's rewind to the end of April this year. Theresa May, having had her terrible 'deal' soundly defeated in the Commons, was hanging on as Prime Minister, the Tories were both polling in single figures going in the Euro election and seemed hopelessly pathetic and divided, and there was this shiny new party on the scene whose very name captured their raison d'etre - The Brexit Party (BXP).
So, first I became a registered supporter of the BXP, and then a few weeks later, I applied to be a PPC. The application took several hours to complete - it was clear I was going to be heavily screened. Then in June I attended a candidate selection session in London, and a few weeks later heard that I'd been successful.
There existed for a while two pools of PPCs - those who had been allocated a constituency, and those who hadn't; I was in the latter. It's hard to know exactly how many of us there were, but I think there were around 150 of us in the unallocated category. I assumed it was to give the party some room for manoeuvre when it came to withdrawals and the potential emergence of big name candidates. Anyway, apart from attending the first candidate launch event in London at the end of August, I then heard nothing until two days ago. (The purpose of this piece, by the way, is not to criticise the BXP; while I've been frustrated at the lack of contact since June, it comes across as a fast-moving, highly disciplined and well-managed organisation).
Then I was offered Hazel Grove. Some rapid googling told me what I needed to know; while it's currently a Tory-held constituency, it's had a Lib Dem MP in the recent past, and is in the top 20 Lib Dem target seats at the forthcoming election. It's the kind of place where splitting the pro-Brexit vote genuinely risks the election of a non-Tory, and I can't be the person to do that. I know the BXP will field a different candidate (unless a backroom deal is done) and that risk will still exist, but at least it won't be on my conscience.
Had I been offered a northern Labour constituency with a Remainer MP and a miniscule Tory vote, I'd probably have accepted the offer. It would have been quite fun trying to take some votes off the Labour Party. And that's what lies at the heart of my decision - deciding which battle is the biggest one to fight.
I've always been a strong advocate of Brexit - check out my blogs round the time of the referendum in 2016 - mostly for negative reasons rather then positive ones; as an economist I firmly believe that the EU's monetary union will eventually and fatally conflict with its lack of political union, an almighty conflagration will result, and we're best off out before then to avoid the collateral damage. Add in the anti-democratic aspects of the EU, and leaving has always been the most sensible way forward for me. That said, I'm not one-eyed about it; there were always perfectly respectable arguments for remaining if you didn't share my analysis.
However, the course of events from the 2016 referendum until Boris got his revised deal persuaded me there was a bigger battle to find than Brexit - the one for democracy (yes, I know that sounds over-dramatic and a bit pompous, but I have no better words). It was clear that there was a cabal of people in the UK - and I include MPs, Lords, some of the judiciary and the civil service, the BBC and other parts of the media in that - who genuinely and sincerely think that they know best; that they see things with a clarity and knowledge that 'the little people' lack.
The irony is that in their self-assurance that they're doing the right thing for the British people by using every legal and parliamentary trick to try to engineer the UK staying in the EU, they miss the most fundamental truth of all - the cohesion of this country, the sacrifices we make through taxation and the imposition of laws we may disagree with, the acceptance of results when things don't go our way - are all predicated on the basis of one person, one vote. If the sanctity of that arrangement is threatened, you strike at the heart of what keeps us together. I'm not just talking about noisy political activists here. I mean the millions of people who do dull jobs to pay the taxes and provide the social fabric upon which this country depends. Piss that lot off and while you might not have a short term problem (they're not the sort to riot or go on strike), you're sure as hell storing up a long term one for yourself.
So yes, back in May this year I thought with the Tories failing as badly as they were, with a Prime Minister who appeared to have had her personality surgically removed (it was an interview she did with Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special a couple of years ago, rather than anything 'political', that persuaded me of her utter hopelessness), and with our democratic tradition under threat, the best contribution I could make to putting things right was to become a Brexit Party PPC. At the time, my fear for the future of democracy was greater than the fear of a Corbyn-led Labour government - I thought that if the British people were stupid enough to vote for Corbyn, as long as they were doing so with both Brexit and the democratic principle secured, that was up to them.
But times change, and most people reading this will know the course of events over the last few months; Boris was elected leader of the Conservatives, he's managed to renegotiate an agreement that the EU said couldn't be reopened, and the Commons has cynically stymied it, and every other course of action that looks vaguely like Brexit. I still find it massively frustrating that Brexit hasn't happened, but I am at least now convinced that the shaken-up and turned-around Tories respect and want to implement the result of the 2016 referendum.
There are two other things that are relevant. First, I think the BXP are wrong to oppose Boris's deal. Of course it's not perfect, but if longstanding Brexit advocates like Daniel Hannan, Steve Baker, and even Arron Banks can live with it, then that's good enough for me. The role of the BXP should now be to fight Labour where the Tories can't win, and keep the Tories honest as we go into the next phase of negotiations with the EU. Second, the Labour Party hasn't changed; it's standing in this election on a whole raft of insanities, whether that be the proposal to appropriate 10% of the share value of all companies over 250 employees, or the raft of wealth taxes we're likely to see. Frankly, continuing to argue about the best kind of Brexit in those circumstances is like arguing over what colour to paint the front door when the house is on fire.
So the biggest battle to fight now is not Brexit, nor even - I hope, and the Tories better not let me down on this, democracy - but stopping Labour getting anywhere near power. Their policies are punitive, ill thought-through, massively counterproductive and frankly, dangerous. The tactical voting we need to see is not anti-Brexit coalitions, but anti-Labour coalitions, even if that means voting Lib Dem MPs where the Tories are highly unlikely to win. I know there will be plenty of people reading this who will disagree with that. However, just as Boris's deal with the EU isn't perfect, I'm not saying a Conservative government would be perfect. But to go back to my theme; we need to decide which is the biggest battle to fight, and who's the enemy to fear the most. And those of us who oppose that foe must act as one, even if it means fighting alongside those with whom we have differences.
So there's my - cliche alert - "journey". From outraged and worried, to acting on what I felt was a call to action, and back to ordinary voter in next month's election. My political fires have been stoked however - I'm just not sure yet where they will take me next.
