Can the Brexit party keep its right and left-wing supporters happy?

This weekend, the most popular political party in Britain will hold a rally in Birmingham to plan its march to Westminster. The Brexit party came first in the European elections but to its supporters, this was just the warm-up.

If today’s polls became tomorrow’s election result, then the Tories would be left with just 87 MPs, barely a quarter of their current strength. Nigel Farage would lead an army of 193 MPs, and doing such damage that Jeremy Corbyn would still hang on to a party of 234. It is scenario that is terrifying the Tories – and delighting the Farigistas.

In Birmingham tomorrow, the party aims to unveil the first 100 of their would-be MPs, part of Farage’s plan to fight every single seat in the next general election. ‘Both parties need to be obliterated,’ says Ben Habib, one of the Brexit party’s new MEPs. It might cost £15 million to fight such an election, he says, but he’s ‘very confident’ of raising the cash. Some of which could come from his pocket alone.

Last week, the Brexit party held a secret council of war in Westminster to help decide on what policies to promote. ‘We talked about the economy, infrastructure, law and order, education and most importantly political reform,’ says Habib. ‘That’s where we really need to champion the British people, because clearly there’s something rotten about the way Parliament is working.’

But given that the party only has one policy – Brexit – it needs to be careful. It has drawn support from left and right, having established itself as neither. But a raft of new policies will mean it has to choose sides.

Annunziata Rees-Mogg, one of its best-known MEPs, says this should be doable. ‘You only have to go from somewhere like Chesterfield (Labour) to Mansfield (Tory / Labour marginal) and the Tory heartlands in Lincolnshire to discover that Labour and Conservative supporters all feel they’ve been left behind,’ she says. 

Lance Forman, a former Tory advisor who owns the famous eponymous salmon smokehouse, says the Brexit party ‘could become the party of small business, unless the Conservative party changes.’

These MEPs are now back from Brussels, with plenty of tales of what they found. ‘It felt very corrupting,’ says Forman. ‘You had a sense they were trying to seduce you into this wonderful lifestyle. As you were filling in your details, very glamorous women arrived and put these nice boxes of chocolate in front of you to start munching on. It felt like a scene from a movie in the 80s where suddenly the doors then slam behind you and the horror movie begins.’

Last week, Rees-Mogg spoke about the ‘shiny new’ iPad she was given on the ‘corrupt gravy train’ for MEPs. ‘An iPad is a useless piece of kit for the job we need to do. I would describe it as a toy. I think this job is much too serious to have frivolities like that,’ she said.

After the ‘Big Vision Rally’ on Sunday, the Brexit party’s MEPs will head to Strasbourg to fire their opening salvo at the European parliament – where they are the (joint) largest party. The following week, they’ll find out if Farage has successfully succeeded in pulling together enough MEPs from other countries to form a larger group of allies and, if so, how much speaking time they’ll be offered in major debates, and how many parliament’s committees they will sit on.

But why bother, given that they want to be gone within months? Intelligence gathering is the simple answer, says James Glancy, a former Royal Marine and now MEP. ‘We are still learning how this institution operates. We shall monitor closely what happens on fisheries and plans to build a common army. It’s an opportunity to be on the inside,’ he says.

Ben Habib seems happy to take this up a notch. ‘If I get there and find likeminded Eurosceptic MEPs and I can wind them up against the EU, I can get our message being spoken not just by us but a whole load of people,’ he explained.

But Christina Jordan, a former nurse and cabin crew member, wants a more conciliatory approach. ‘We love Europe,’ she says. ‘We love the Europeans – it’s the institution I have a problem with. When they meet us and see we don’t have two heads and a third eye they will appreciate our position. We’re actually quite nice people.’

Some of her colleagues are more suspicious. Gawain Towler, the party spokesman, says he wouldn’t be surprised if a ‘random’ fraud inquiry crops up, to look into their expenses, as happened to Ukip. ‘They will be checking us,’ he said. ‘I don’t think scrutiny is a bad thing but when the EU randomly selected a party, two years ago, I wonder why they chose Ukip.’

The Brexit party MEPs have already become lightening rods. None more so than Louis Stedman-Bryce, who took one of the MEPs seats in Scotland. He describes himself as a black gay man and has had to endure racist attacks online. ‘I’m not upset,’ he says. ‘All of the abuse I get makes me even more determined. I hate being bullied.’

Forman’s smokehouse in Hackney, east London, was targeted by vandals who drew a thirty-foot swastika on the entrance to his family business. He’s Jewish and found it ironic, given that he had relatives killed in the Holocaust. ‘It wasn’t intended as an anti-Semitic attack at all,’ he says. ‘It was an attack on me – but they got it wrong. They now look like the racists.’

When Malaysian-born Christina Jordan was on a train to Brussels, a passenger came over:

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‘She was European and found out I was an MEP. She said: ‘Don’t send us immigrants home’. I said I wasn’t exactly born in this country either, as I am an immigrant myself. I told her I wouldn’t be joining a party that believes in that stuff,’ as she walked away.’

Diversity is the Brexit party’s secret weapon. Forman lists the statistics: three of the Brexit party’s eight London candidates are Jewish, one is half-Pakistani in origin. There is a Hindu. Another of Iranian descent. ‘To accuse a group like that of being racist is just wrong,’ he says.

It is a visible way of answering the most obvious charge: that the Brexit party are a bunch of far-right extremists. They see themselves as the obvious successors to the Tory party, especially if the Conservatives make another mess of Brexit before October 31^st.

Gawain Towler is licking his lips at the prospect. ‘I think our registered supporters will jump through the roof,’ he explains, speaking in a Westminster pub. ‘Tory branches up and down the country will find it a very difficult day. Their structures will collapse. Their membership secretary, their deputy chairman will move. The activist base will collapse. The ones with experience, who know how it works, will vanish. I’ve spoken to tens of them over the last few months.’

This does imply that, as the policies are announced, the Brexit party will be of the right and may struggle to keep hold of its left-wing supporters. But as one MEP tells me, they aim to tell Tory voters that if Boris Johnson cannot deliver Brexit then the old party is finished and that ‘a vote for the Conservative party is a vote for Jeremy Corbyn’.