Ukip’s only MP on why he abandoned the party to pursue his own agenda
Douglas Carswell’s shock resignation on Saturday has lost Ukip its only MP, and led to claims he was a plant. He tells Stefanie Marsh where his loyalty lies and what he really thinks about Farage
WHEN Douglas Carswell, MP for Clacton, abandoned Ukip in a shock manoeuvre on Saturday, the Right-wing group lost its entire parliamentary party in one fell swoop. No wonder, then, that its most visible members screeched “betrayal”. Nigel Farage claimed Carswell “was never in Ukip” (contradicting his own previous description of Carswell’s association with the party as a “marriage made in heaven”). Paul Nuttall, Ukip’s current leader, claimed that Carswell had been about be sacked. Arron Banks, who co-founded Leave EU and bankrolled Ukip but was suspended from the party earlier this month, tweeted yesterday that Carswell was: “borderline autistic with mental illness”.
Carswell is unmoved. He describes himself as luxuriating in a state “of Zenlike euphoria” ever since his side was victorious in the EU referendum in June, a state only heightened by his wellplanned abandonment, and possible annihilation of Ukip.
Perhaps it’s no wonder he has little loyalty to Ukip. It was just over two years ago, in August 2014, that the maverick Eurosceptic backbencher defected to Farage’s party, in a move that rocked the Conservatives. For Carswell, Ukip was merely a legitimate means to an end — the end being Brexit: “Leaving the European Union has consistently been the lone star around which everything has orbited,” he says. “I wanted Britain to leave the European Union. I correctly understood that in order to force David Cameron into giving us a referendum, it was necessary to join Ukip — to make sure the right people ran the right sort of campaign. It was essential to make sure that Ukip didn’t run the referendum campaign and there are obviously going to be people in Ukip who are going to be cross about that. But I’m not — we won the referendum.”
Farage now claims that Carswell was working against Ukip all along. “If the central charge against me is that I don’t have a Britain’s-gone-to-the-dogs Eurosceptism, I’m guilty as charged. I would say that optimistic approach was rather vindicated on June 23. Can you imagine if the other lot won that referendum campaign?”
Carswell claims he arbitrarily chose Saturday to announce his resignation. This claim seems unlikely to be true given that Saturday was when tens of thousands of protesters gathered in London to March for Europe, an event that was distracted by Carswell’s bombshell.
He’d made the announcement via email to his 20,000 constituents, and then on his blog. He hasn’t spoken to Nuttall, who is said to have found out about the defection through a text on a friend’s phone, or to Farage “since before that by-election we lost. Not the Stoke one — the one before that. All I would have been doing is giving them a heads-up. Already one or two people tried to invent myths that I was about to be pushed before I jumped, which is utter nonsense. Imagine if I had picked up the phone and said, ‘Oh I’m going to make this announcement’. Do you think they would have taken it passively? Of course they would have spun it. They spun it afterwards as much as they could.”
Because of Carswell’s resignation, he has spoken to the Standard twice in the past five days. The first time was on Wednesday morning in his office in Westminster. He was on cloud nine, noting that it was exactly a week before Article 50 was due to be triggered. He was still in Ukip then, but playfully made a point of referring to Farage at all times as “Sir Nigel” — one of the key reasons the two are said to have fallen out is that Carswell apparently refused to lobby for Farage’s longed-for knighthood. An hour after the interview, 52-year-old Khalid Masood killed four people outside Parliament, including a police officer, before being shot dead. The response of Ukipers Farage and Nuttall has been controversial. In an interview with Fox News, Farage blamed the attack on “multiculturalism”.
Yesterday, Carswell spoke about Ukip member’s reactions. “Essential to being a shock jock is that you are shocking, so I think we might take with a pinch of salt some of the things that people say.” The charge that Farage has been given too much airtime is “a contentious but very valid point”, he says. “I hope that when people select someone to speak on an issue, they might think carefully who it is they’re inviting to come and comment.” He suggests that “perhaps with the new technology we should learn to all press our mute buttons. Maybe with the social media revolution we need to be a little bit more discerning as to who we listen to. There’s a lot of noise out there.”
Carswell isn’t the only one deserting the Ukip ship. “Some 3.8 million people made the move to Ukip at the last general election. I think we’re seeing many people making the same journey I’m making. I think I’m right in saying most of our county councillors in the east of England are not standing again. A lot of this is linked to the realisation that our job is done.”
‘People are inventing myths I was about to be pushed. Imagine if
I’d given them a heads-up’
This coming Wednesday will be the “best day of my political life, there’s going to be a very long, warm afterglow”. Londoners, who mostly voted to remain, are unlikely to share his joy, which led him, last year, to post a tweet suggesting Britain should declare June 23 “Independence Day” a national holiday. Will London be celebrating? “No. I say this with reverence to your readers — the last thing we want to do on June the 23 or this Wednesday is do anything that looks like gloating. The referendum was divisive. People need to come together and I think to have a June 23 celebration would hinder that.”
He’s not going to force a by-election in Clacton because (read the small print) he’s not actually changing political parties. Farage wants to force a vote in the constituency but Carswell is relaxed. “I’ve literally had thousands of responses, and with the exception of a tiny handful they are overwhelmingly supportive.” Will Banks follow through on his pledge to stand against him? “Is he a member of Ukip these days? I don’t know. For whom would he stand?”
Will Carswell go back to the Conserva- tives? “I’m not going to rejoin the Conservatives — I’d need to call a by-election, my wife [Clementine] would kill me and my constituents wouldn’t be too happy. I used to think that we needed to fix politics by having the right people as the right ministers. But I now think we need far-reaching revolutionary change. Because at the moment politics is Tweedledee versus Tweedledum. There’s no real accountability of those who make public policy to the public.”
So will he stand as an independent? “No.” Never? “Well who knows what’s coming.” A new party, then? “Someone at Conservative Home was saying today that the old political order is back in charge. Well, actually, no they aren’t. The referendum shows that there is a new politics and it’s not going to go away.” Carswell’s new book, Rebel, is all about that — its cover shows a red clenched fist.
Crucial to understanding Carswell is to realise that he sees himself as a revolutionary. “I want to overturn many of the established orthodoxies,” he says. “Vote Leave created a pop-up party, using the internet to mobilise people in parts of the country where political parties had been redundant for decades.” Should traditional parties be worried? “Goodness, yes... There’s a huge opportunity out there for the right sort of insurgency.”
What about his accountability? If, after Brexit, Britain falls apart, are we going to be able to hold its chief architect to account? “Absolutely. I was one of Vote Leave and I have been pushing for this for all my adult life. If it goes well — please don’t regard me as a leader, please regard me as a small player in a big game — I’m very, very happy to defend it. I think it’s going to be the most extraordinary improvement in our democracy and our economy.”
People who write him off underestimate the drive that his ideological aspirations give him, which he shares with quite a few members of the Leave campaign, many of whom have, like him, fallen away once Brexit was achieved. “For months the cavalry didn’t arrive and there was this wonderful day when suddenly Boris and Michael and all the rest of them declared and we thought, ‘Thank goodness!’. But we’d already tried to put in place a sort of army for them to lead.” For Carswell, and many like him, Brexit itself is but a means to an end: a new libertarian world order.
He is confident about Theresa May and commends David Davis on his performance before the Commons Brexit Committee. He’s happy that “the automatic right of freedom of movement of people will come to an end” and foresees “a seasonal workers’ scheme and something similar for the construction industry”.
He’s unconcerned by the announcement by Goldman Sachs that it is going to relocate 600 jobs to the Continent. “Let’s wait and see. I suspect that in 10 or 20 years the City of London’s gravity of the financial centre will be even greater.” He claims, but can’t prove, that there has been a “sea change” in attitudes among businesses, “who see the opportunity for business in the rest of the world”.
What about holidays, will Britons be able to go Spain without a visa? “I think there will be deal that will allow the free movement of workers,” he says. No queues at Dover? “I don’t think it’s going to happen. We’ve done quite a lot of homework on it and we’ve come up with some really thought-through ideas. It would be wonderful if people could focus on the fact that there are actually some very straightforward answers to some of these issues.”
It would be wonderful if Carswell could give some straightforward answers too. He deals not in certainties but visions. “One of the extraordinary facts of leaving the EU is to trigger a huge democratic discussion about how things could be different,” he says.
Farage is unhappy and destined to remain so. “Let me put it this way, we’ve won. Why the grumpiness, why the anger? I’m pleased as punch.” Why are there still so many angry people at the top of Ukip then? “I think there are one or two people who’ve never forgiven me for winning my seat.” And a measure of jealousy? “Can I tell you a little secret? I don’t really think about it. We’re out of the European Union. Ever since June 23 I walk to work with a spring in my step. If there are some people who are grumpy, I’m sorry, I don’t really think about them.”
‘We should learn to press mute and be discerning about who we listen to — there’s a lot of noise’