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Byline Times provides a profile of twenty of Nigel “Man of the People” Farage’s candidates for this week’s Euro Elections, and they look very much like the elites he rails against.
The Brexit Party candidates for the Euro Elections reveal a common thread of a moneyed elite, big business and finance.
Out of these 20 profiled candidates, 18 are company directors, 8 are bankers, 5 work in derivatives and hedge funds, ranking them among a metropolitan and business elite which the Brexit Party rhetoric repeatedly condemns
Many of these candidates are involved with hedge funds or derivatives, sectors of the financial industry were the ones who profited from the Brexit turmoil, by betting on Sterling’s collapse and downturns in British firms. These organisations are known to oppose EU attempts to regulate the hedge fund industry.
Two of the candidates are directors of Leave Means Leave, the organisation promoting a hard (WTO) Brexit. Another is a director of the Leave group Veterans for Britain which received donations from Arron Banks and from Leave.eu. Others have links to Far Right groups which are already fomenting tensions, such as the American right-wing youth group, Turning Point; the website Westmonster, and UK organisations such as the Tax Payers’ Alliance
You can download a PDF of this candidate list here. Byline Times will be updating this compendium of the Brexit Party’s Great and Good, so do contact news@bylinetimes.com with any additions or corrections.
Connections to Leave Campaign and Associated groups
John Longworth, 61, standing in Yorkshire and Humber.
Longworth is a director with Richard Tice of the hard Brexit Leave Means Leave campaign. He is a business consultant, and was director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce from September 2011 until March 2016 when he left due to a difference of opinion over Brexit. He was until 2016/17 a director of soft-drink manufacturer Nichols plc and the UK-India Business council.
Richard James Sunley Tice, 54, standing in East of England.
Together with Arron Banks, Tice is one of the founders of Leave.eu, which has been fined by the Electoral Commission with regard to illegalities in the 2016 Referendum campaign. He is co-director with John Longworth, a candidate in Yorkshire and Humber, of the hard-Brexit backing Leave Means Leave group. In May 2019, he was appointed to the board of the Brexit Party
Tice is chief executive of Mayfair-based asset management group Quidnet Capital Partners LLP, which has around £500 million of property under management. Prior to joining Quidnet, he was CEO of real estate group CLS Holdings, a multi-national property investment group with over £1 billion of assets. Whilst in that role, he led the planning applications for two 50 storey residential towers in Vauxhall. He is said to be friendly with Leave-supporting Vauxhall MP Kate Hoey. He set up a £100 million investment fund for commercial property outside London. According to the Bad Boys of Brexit website, some of his property developments have attracted controversy. He has made his money over 30 years in the international property business and was previously chief executive of Sunley Group, a privately held property development company. He is the grandson of the property developer Bernard Sunley.
Roger Lane Nott, 74, standing in the South West.
Lane-Nott is a is a director of Veterans for Britain which strongly advocates leaving the EU. Veterans for Britain received funding from Arron Banks, and from Leave.eu. He was previously a Royal Navy Rear Admiral. Since retiring from the Navy, he has worked for Formula 1 motorsport and served as chief executive of The Industry Technology Facilitator, (previously known as Centre for Marine and Petroleum Technology). According to his Linked In page, he works for the Agricultural Engineers Association, a trade group which serves the interests of, among others, tractor manufacturers. Companies House records state that he has been a director of two other trade bodies, the Association Of Manufacturers Of Power Generating Systems and the Milking Equipment Association Limited. He resigned from all of these in 2014.
George Thomas Stahel Farmer, 29, standing in the South East.
Farmer is Head of Turning Point UK, a Far Right student pressure group originally founded in the US. He is engaged to Candace Owens, communications director of the U