Neil Hamilton

His own man?

Showman?

Questions for cash?

The greatest prime minister we never had.

National treasure

Hero

Saviour

Genius of Brexit

Neil Hamilton is one of the most famous or perhaps infamous ex-MPs of modern times. Though he was a passionate parliamentarian it is a curious twist of fate that he had achieved far greater sway once he lost his seat. Barrister, university lecturer, journalist, campaigner, MP, Assembly Member, teacher, quiz show contestant, talk show guest, actor, interviewer, controversialist, contarian, transvestite, bon vivant, author, media factotum extraordinaire and all round national treasure – Neil is truly one of a kind. Ebullient, amiable, affable, gallant, garrulous, telegenic, bankrupt, bankable, intelligent, elegant, avaricious, dapper, debonair, sanguine, bonhomous, irrepressible, innovative, opinionated, outspoken, unbreakable, querulous, quixotic, resilient, unflappable, enervating, disputatious, shameless, faithful, always immaculately attired and seldom captious – Neil is a man of many parts. I have long been adazzle by his gifts and his chequered story. How can one possibly do justice to such a multitalented man whose life has had such triumphs and such travails? There has scarcely be a dull moment.

Notwithstanding being brutalized by the left wing gutter press for years, Neil never once lost his composure. He defied the insults and rose above them. He never resorts to vulgarities. Throughout his travails, ever bore himself with a dignity that it would profit others to study.

Given the slings and arrows of outrageous reportage that Neil suffered it is inexplicable that he never resorted to contumely or Anglo-Saxonisms. He is a man not given to wild emotion.

A man of prodigious gifts and endless energy yet he never achieved the high ministerial office to which he aspired. He was too incautious, farouche and perhaps unembarrassable for his own good. As one ex-Tory MP said to me of Neil, ‘’he had no sense of danger’’. Neil is certainly no Westminster cardboard cut-out.

For 20 years Neil was one of Britain’s most colourful and instantly recognizable characters. That is all the more surprising given that he is undemonstrative. He is not visually arresting. Neither unusually tall nor short – Neil is not obese nor skinny. His dress sense is a little old fashioned. Yet somehow he garnered endless media attention – much of it unsought and even unwanted.

Tatton was the constituency that Neil graced with his presence from 1983 to 1997. It would be fair to say that he is not universally adored in his former Cheshire stomping ground. He later brought levity and controversy to the once staid National Assembly for Wales. He now enjoys an uncharacteristically quiet retirement in rural Wiltshire

Neil’s political career was dogged by allegations of cash for questions that refused to go away. He made some powerful enemies. A meretricious Egyptian billionaire Mohammed Fayed was a deadly foe of his. The Guardian newspaper was hellbent on bringing Neil down. Most of Fleet Street was extremely hostile to Neil in the 1990s. A lesser man would have cracked under the strain. Seeing vicious headlines about his splashed across the front pages of several newspaper day after day was more than enough to destroy the average person. But Neil is so much more than a mere normal man.

The 1997 election was a seismic shift from Conservative to Labour. But during Labour’s landslide election one seat attracted more media coverage than any other. That was Tatton where Neil stood and lost.

There was a time in the late 90s and early Noughties when Neil Hamilton was a household name. You could not turn on your telly without seeing Neil and Christine.

Background

Mostyn Neil Hamilton was born on 9 March 1949 in the United Kingdom. He has always been known by his middle name: Neil. Mostyn is a place in Wales and perhaps significantly this name is de-emphasised like Neil’s Welsh heritage.

It was in 4 Trelyn, Lane, Fleur de-Lis that Neil was born. The house was that of Neil’s paternal aunt. Fleur de-Lis that boasts being Neil’s birthplace. It is in the district of Bedwellty in Monmouthshire. It is not far from the small town of Blackwood. Monmouthshire a county that has passed back and forth between Wales and England. It is the most anglicized part of Wales. The illegitimate son of Charles II was styled the Duke of Monmouth: he of the ill-fated 1685 Rebellion. But apart from that Monmouth and Monmouthshire are names one seldom hears.

Some doubted that Monmouth is Welsh at all. The Welsh Guards once advertised for recruits saying they must be from Wales or Monmouthshire impliedly saying that Monmouthshire is not in Wales. When Neil was eleven they moved to Ammanford, Carmarthen. Neil never particularly stressed his Welsh identity. He was always a committed unionist.

Bedwellty has now been assigned to the County of Gwent.

Neil was born is very close to Abertillery: a rock solid Labour constituency that he was to contest 15 years later. His birthplace is also close to other places that are legendary for their socialist fervor: Islwyn and Ebbw Vale. The latter being the seat of Welsh Labour’s most famous son Nye Bevan and later the seat of the sometime leader of the Labour Party: Michael Foot. Bedwellty became part of the Islwyn constituency that was later represented by Neil Kinnock who was leader the Labour Party from 1983-92. Kinnock was known as the Welsh windbag for his verbose and tedious oratory. He and Neil Hamilton were not in sympathy. When Kinnock was sent upstairs to the House of Lords he styled himself Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty.

The appeal of Labour to those in coalmining communities is not hard to understand. Before Labour was founded as the Labour Representation Committee in 1894 conditions for most people in South Wales were grim indeed. It was one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the United Kingdom. Most people left school at 12. Men toiled for decades in horrific conditions underground for poverty pay. Coal mining was extraordinarily dangerous. Shafts collapsed and sometimes there were gas explosions. Dozens were killed every years and many were injured. Many of the injured could not afford treatment. There was no disability benefit. Workhouses still existed. The aristocrats who owned the coalmines were filthy rich despite not doing a day’s work. It all seemed grossly unjust. Labour promised to make life better for the great majority of people who were poor. There was an awful lot of avoidable suffering and Labour wanted to alleviate this. The Conservatives and Liberals offered no such solutions. Their MPs were mostly upper class or middle class. By contrast Labour MPs of that generation were usually identifiably working class. By the time Neil was born Labour was building the welfare state. It had made life significantly better for the majority of people. Back then 65% of people called themselves working class. Class identity was strong. People aligned behind political parties often on a class basis.

Disraeli’s dictum is that the Church of England is the Tory Party at prayer. This was never accurate but there was a grain of truth to it. Note that for centuries the Anglican Church in Wales was known as the Church of England. This irked many as disrespectful to Wales.  It is now called the Church in Wales not the Church of Wales. By the time of Neil’s birth most Welsh people were Nonconformists of some stripe or other: Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists or even like David Lloyd George – Disciples of Christ. Very few working class Welsh people were Church of England. Being an active Nonconformist correlated with voting for Labour, the Liberals or even Plaid Cymru (the Party of Wales). The Church of England was said by Disraeli to be the Tory Party at prayer. This was inaccurate but contained a grain of truth.

The Hamilton’s lived in Wales where coalmining was the main industry. Neil’s father was the chief engineer for a mining company. Both his grandfathers had been down the mines. Though conditions in the pits were often ghastly it was relative handsomely remunerated. It was danger money.

The surname Hamilton relates to a town in the Scots Lowlands: Hamilton. There is indeed a Duke of Hamilton. There is a surname ‘Hamill’ as well.

The Britain that Neil grew up in was very different from today. In 1949 under 1% of the population was non-white. In Wales it was more like 0.1% and in Carmarthen even less than that. Back then being Irish was considered to be ethnically diverse. Most people had never eaten rice other than in rice pudding. Indian and Chinese restaurants were all but unknown. The Second World War was still a very recent memory. Almost all items were still rationed. The British Empire was extant and was assumed to have long way yet to run. There was National Service. This meant that young men had to do two years in the army, Royal Navy, Royal Marines or RAF. There were exemptions for conscientious objectors, the disabled, parliamentary candidates and doctors. Doctors could perform their service by providing medical care in the colonies. Before the Suez Crisis of 1956, the British Empire was assumed to have a long way yet to run. Men only a few years older than Neil did National Service but it was phased out in 1963 so Neil did not have to do it.

Labour had won a sweeping victory in 1945. Labour’s Attorney-general Sir Hartley Shawcross said, ‘’we are the masters now and not just for now but for a very long time to come.’’ It was widely forecast that the Conservatives would be out of office for a generation. It was to general astonishment that the Tories won office again in 1951. That was only by fluke since Labour won more votes but the vagaries of the first past the post system awarded more seats to the Conservative and Unionist Party.

In Neil’s childhood the Cold War was at its height. Capitalism was seriously questioned. There was thought to be a strong chance that communism would triumph.

The 1950s was a time of austerity at first. The United Kingdom was decidedly bland compared to today. It was only just recovering from the war. But rationing was being phased out the UK entered a sustained economic boom. Unemployment was very low, inflation was low and consumer goods were becoming ever more affordable. Strikes almost never occurred. Cars and televisions came within reach for the middle class. The working class had disposable incomes like never before. To people who remembered the Great Depression and the Second World War, the 1950s seemed splendid. The Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told people ‘’you’ve never had it so good.’’ Supermac was right. Yet relative poverty still existed. Foreign holidays were the preserve of the few, nay, the very few. Most Britons had never been on a plane. The remotest villages still did not have electricity in the 1950s. Most people still kept their houses warm in winter with coal and logs crackling on the hearth. Central heating was not the norm until the 1960s.

Despite the economy growing, 1950s Britain was monochromatic compared to today. Many Britishers thought that there was a better life to be had in sunnier climes. They had the automatic right to immigrate to Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. There was even the assisted passage scheme. The UK Government even sent orphans to Australia. Why was Britain trying to get rid of its people as it brought in people from the ‘New Commonwealth’ of Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Kenya? The Commonwealth was very much the frame of reference. Few Britons thought of themselves as being European.

Unemployment was so low in fact that there was a paucity of workers in some regions and in certain sectors of the economy. This caused the Conservative Government to invite immigration from the Commonwealth and indeed colonies which back then still existed. Her Majesty’s Government specifically asked people from Caribbean countries and South Asia to move to the United Kingdom to work. One of those Conservative cabinet ministers who invited doctors and nurses from the West Indies to come and work in the UK was a certain John Enoch Powell!

Neil had grandparents living in Portsmouth.

Neil grew up in one of the most overwhelmingly pro-Labour areas of the UK. Neil was a born dissident. He loathed the idea that the state would control everything. Growing up in a small town run by a smug, corrupt and self-serving Labour council he saw the Conservatives as representing liberty. At the age of 15 Neil joined the Conservative and Unionist Party. It was a highly unusual move. It proves he is broadminded and even has moral courage. Labour had just come into office under Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. But was already a convinced anti-socialist. Neil has always been notable for his utter fealty to the House of Windsor.

Although Neil is Welsh he was brought up in an Anglophone family. He later learnt some Welsh though as he says himself he can only make ‘’a fair stab’’ at speaking the language. When he was at school Welsh was hardly ever taught. His education was conducted exclusively through the medium of English.

Something of Neil’s character may have come from him growing up middle class in a very working class town. His family was much better off than many of their neighbours. He regularly went to England to visit relatives. This emphasized in him the oneness of the United Kingdom. Therefore his Conservatism and his Unionism were not swimming against the tide quite as much as one may have imagined.

Growing up in a small town can induce the small town mentality. But it can also do the opposite. Neil is not timid and embraces cosmopolitanism.

As soon as Neil opened his mouth it was plain that he was given to ‘yappin’ to use the Cymro-English colloquialism. He was to make his life by talking.

At school Neil did well academically. However, he was no sportsman. His eccentricities did not make him popular. He was unafraid and paid a price for his outspokenness.  Despite attending a state school he did not acquire a Welsh accent but spoke Received Pronunciation. The only state educated Welshman who speaks with that accent from Neil’s generation is a Swansea grammar school boy – Michael Howard. Lord Howard was a Tory Home Secretary and later Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

Neil passed his 11+. In those days children sat this exam in English and Maths. The top 20% went to grammar school and had some chance of going to university. In a grammar school pupils were taught subjects such as the sciences, ancient languages, modern languages and humanities subjects. They would sit Ordinary levels (O levels). They were the equivalent of GCSEs but were harder than ‘A’ levels are now. Then pupils could sit A levels aged 18. A levels were extremely challenging. Even a D grade was hard to get.

In 1963 only 4% of people went to university. But universities were expanding rapidly in the 1960s.

Those who did not pass the 11+ (80% of the population) went to a secondary modern where they would do some English and Maths and learn trades like woodwork, metalwork, sewing, cookery and suchlike before leaving school aged 16. Most people in the 1960s left school without any qualifications at all. There were plenty of jobs that did not require qualifications such as being a factory worker, farm labourer, navvy, janitor, joiner, shipbuilder, construction worker, miner, cleaner, shop assistant and so on. The UK still had a lot of mines, factories and shipyards in those days.

Though Wales was made about rugby, Neil was no rugger bugger. Nor indeed was he great shakes at any sport. He was often found with his nose in a book.

Amman Valley Grammar School was there Neil was educated. He did his O levels and A levels there.

University

University College Wales, Aberystwyth had the inestimable honour of educating Neil Hamilton. He is surely Aberystwyth’s most illustrious graduate. There he read economics and politics.

Many undergraduates professed the cloying and stultifying socialism of the Welsh section of the Labour Party. There were also blood red commies. Some of them adulated the most prolific mass murderers of all time such as Mao Zedong and Stalin. It was all in the name of compassion of course. For some leftists these communist tyrants were messianic.

The 1960s was a time of change. 60s teenagers were ‘’children of the revolution’’ as the song said. It was the era of the counterculture, the sexual revolution, flower power, hippies and the anti-war movement. Some couples started to live together before marriage. Unwed pregnancy was no longer quite as scandalous as it had been a decade earlier. Times they were a-changing, as Bob Dylan sang. But even then the counterculture was perhaps as not strongly felt in rural Wales as it was in Swinging London. Through all this upheaval Neil made a name for himself as a young fogey. Some young men grew their hair down to their shoulders and wore shaggy beards but Neil was always short back and sides and was always clean-shaven. He has always been delightfully contra mundum.

Neil was a baby boomer. Those born in the late 1940s are said to be a very optimistic generation. That is because from their birth life got better and better for decades. It was only when such people neared the age of 30 that the Western World started to encounter serious problems and stagnation.

By the 1960s the UK had emerged from the shadow of the Second World War. It appeared to be a time of rampant consumerism. Car ownership quadrupled in the decade. Items that had once been the preserve of only the middle class had become affordable for working class people – telephones and televisions.

The Vietnam Conflict war raging. The Cold War as at its height. There was an ideological clash in Britain too between left and right. Labour was officially on the side of the Free World in the Cold War. But there was a significant faction within Labour that did not support the Free World and felt more than a little sympathy for communist tyrannies. Many communists had joined the Labour Party. They were Trotskyites, Stalinists and Maoists. These comrades thought that the free market was evil, capitalism must be smashed and the Cold War was the West’s fault. Labour was forever enfeebling Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.

The prospect of nuclear war hung over the world like a sword of Damocles. The Cuban Missile Crisis had been but a few years before in 1963. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament organized ban the bomb marches. Quite a few Labour Party members wanted the United Kingdom to engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament and leave the UK vulnerable to a nuclear Holocaust without any means to defend itself.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of late 1960s radicalism was its vandalism. It wanted to tear down. Radical enmity towards Western civilization was all the more shocking because of the totalitarians that it looked to. Such nihilism horrified even Labour moderates.

When Neil went up to university there was a Labour Government. A short, soft-spoken, pensive, podgy, pipe-smoking Yorkshireman named Harold Wilson was Prime Minister. Though Labour had won a landslide majority in 1966 it became deeply unpopular just one year later when the Pound Sterling was severely devalued. The United Kingdom was withdrawing from South Arabia (Yemen). There were sanctions on Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) because of its Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Britain had twice been rejected in its bid to join the European Economic Community. There were protests and rising tensions in Northern Ireland.

The Conservative and Unionist Party was led by the uncharismatic bachelor Edward Heath. Heath’s uptight manner, uninspiring personality, wooden oratory and emotional unintelligence led one Tory image maker to say ‘’we have to try to turn Ted into a human being.’’ It proved to be mission impossible. Edward Heath was square in face and square in personality.

While Neil was at university, in the summer of 1969, Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales in a magnificent ceremony in Caernarvon Castle. The Secretary of State for Wales, George Thomas MP, had spoken some of the ceremony in Welsh. Thomas George Thomas went by his middle name ‘George’ but was jocularly known as ‘’Tommy Twice’’. George Thomas was later to go on to be Speaker of the House of Commons and was ennobled as Lord Tonypandy – taking the name of his quondam South Wales constituency that was not far from Neil’s natal place. As Lord Tonypandy was a passionate royalist and a committed euroscpetic he was one of the few Labour politicians whom Neil held in high regard.

The investiture of the Prince of Wales was an occasion for Her Britannic Majesty to come to Wales. That was something that did not happen all that often. In the 1960s celebrity culture was only just starting. The House of Windsor was still unquestioningly exalted by almost everyone in the United Kingdom. The 20 year old Prince Charles was held in high esteem.  All the Welsh notables attended eminent persons from across the Commonwealth of Nations were there.

Her Majesty Queen had dubbed her firstborn son Prince of Wales. There had been no Prince of Wales for decades before that. The investiture simply strengthened Neil’s monarchist convictions. There was a handful of racist Anglophobic ultra-nationalist headbangers in Wales who objected to the prince. They tried to ruin the wonderful day for all decent people. But His Royal Highness Prince Charles went on a five day tour of the Principality and was very rapturously received by his mother’s adoring subjects. It seemed to confirm just how popular the monarchy was.

The same separatist bigots in Wales had been trying to wreck the solemnity of God Save the Queen when it was sung at Cardiff Arms Park before rugby matches by jeering through it. It was grossly insulting to the average Welshman who was a fervent British patriot. Coming so soon after the Second World War it was also spitting on the grave of Welshmen who had valiantly laid down their lives for the United Kingdom. These shameful tantrums by separatists in Wales underscored to Neil how distasteful, small-minded and spiteful separatism is. He has always been a firm unionist.

Some of the separatists in Wales turned violent and called themselves the Free Wales Army (FWA). Fortunately they did not manage to kill a single person.

Neil has always punctured the pretensions of these anti-democratic separatists who professed to speak for Wales.

Back then some youngsters affected grunge. But not Neil. He often wore a smart tweed jacket or blazer even on the weekend and he began sport bowties. It is a confection that never left him. He has always been an aesthete. Who has ever see him dress down?

Neil took a degree in 1970.

He was also a mad monarchist.

He later took an MA in the economics and politics in 1975.

Neil was a well-known member of the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS). He joined in 1968 and left in 1974. He was elected to represent FCS. In this capacity he went to Italy to attend a conference of Movimiento Sociale Italiano (MSI). MSI was largely regarded as a continuation of the Fascist Party. Some joked that MSI stood for Mussolini Sei Immortale (‘’Mussolini you are immortal’’). This error of judgement did not harm Neil’s career overmuch. Conservative abhor fascism as a racist and totalitarian species of socialism. Fascism is about social engineering and the abolition of liberty. It is a creed that is profoundly anti-conservative.

In the 1960s there was a spirited debate surrounding the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC was the precursor to the European Union (EU). The EEC was often known was the ‘common market’ to make it seem less threatening. Young and hip people tended to be Europhiles. Neil perhaps typically decided to be a Eurosceptic. He was in the Anti-Common Market League (ACML). Many in that organisations believe that the Commonwealth of Nations was still a force in the world. If the United Kingdom acceded to the EEC it would be abandoning the Commonwealth. ACML warned of a European Parliament, British law been subordinate to European law, the European Court of Justice overriding Her Majesty’s courts, the European Commission functioning in effect as a cabinet and the advent of a European single currency. The predictions of the ACML were dismissed as deranged jeremiads. But ACML turned out to be a Cassandra.

Always independent minded and never attune to the zeitgeist, Neil called for large scale privatization. This was very audacious at the height of Butskellism. Butskellism comes from the names of the two post war Chancellors of the Exchequer Richard Austen (‘’Rab’’_ Butler who was a Conservative and Hugh Gaitskell who was a Labour man. Butskellism suggested that there was a consensus – a mélange of socialism and capitalism. The mixed economy appeared to be the Aristotelean mean. Harold Macmillan had argued for this via media since the 1930s and later published a book on it The Middle Way. Few dared question such shibboleths at the time. In a sense Neil was a decade ahead of his party’s thinking. He was a Thatcherite before even Thatcher herself! He had no truck with the flabby compromises of Butskellism. Neil never does anything by half measures.

In the early 1970s France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and West Germany were all more prosperous than the UK. Remember in those days Germany was divided into East and West. The argument ran that these countries were all members of the EEC. If the United Kingdom were to join then it too could share in this. Italy was in the EEC but lagged behind. Denmark and the Republic of Ireland were also in accession talks with Brussels. Could joining the EEC bring the Northern Ireland conflict to an end? As it turns out there was fat chance of that.

In 1973 the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community. Neil was adamantly against. In 1975 a referendum under the Labour Government of Harold Wilson ratified the British Government’s decision post-factum. Neil then bowed to the will of the people and said that the EEC had achieved his acceptance. Decades later Europhiles were not so democratic when a referendum did not go their way.

The British Conservative Monday Club was very much on the right of the Tory Party.  Its foes – and they were legion – called it racist and far right. The Monday Club had that name because of the Monday in 1961 in which Harold Macmillan had addressed the South African Parliament. Macmillan’s oration in Cape Town was known as the ‘winds of change’ speech. In it he said there was a wind of change blowing through Africa and adjustments needed to be made in view of this. ‘Like it or not the growth of nationalism is a political fact.’ Macmillan’s message was that the white minority in South Africa could no longer keep power to the exclusion of the 80%+ of the populace who were of other races. Macmillan was delivering a message on behalf of the Commonwealth of Nations. The multiracial Commonwealth was growing louder in its denunciations of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial discrimination. Macmillan’s speech had not been cleared in advance with the South African Government. The Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was present in the chamber when Macmillan delivered his address. Verwoerd was called upon to respond. The Dutch-born politician was aghast and professed himself almost speechless and what he considered to be an astoundingly breach of protocol and an unwarranted intrusion into South Africa’s domestic affairs. The Monday Club was founded in opposition to Macmillan’s policy. It argued that majority rule was premature in Rhodesia (now named Zimbabwe) and South Africa. It thought that Tory policy had been generally limp wristed for decades and needed to become far firmer.

The Monday Club said that apartheid should be supported and that the United Kingdom should recognise the illegal white minority regime in Rhodesia as a legitimate government. The Monday Club called for funding for voluntary repatriation of our Commonwealth cousins. It said that non-white British citizens should be offered money to ‘go home.’ In fairness the law provided such funding right up until well into the years of Tony Blair’s administration. Very few ethnic minority Britons took up the offer. The Monday Club was vociferously anti-socialist. It also demanded the annihilation of the IRA. As the majority of people wanted the death penalty to be restored the Monday Club said it was democratic and logical that the supreme sanction be brought back. At best it was Toryism on steroids. Others called it crypto-fascist.

There was much polemic against the Monday Club. People inveighed against it as being an apologist for the white supremacist regime in Pretoria. To be fair, there was a measure of veracity in that accusation.

Neil noted the hypocrisy and emptiness of this self-regarding moralizing about South Africa. Virtually every country in Africa was undemocratic. Yet only one was singled out for a chorus of execration. And that was for manifestly racist reasons. It was because the South African Government was white. People put Nelson Mandela on a pedestal. Who was the Mandela of Zaire or Ethiopia or Chad or Uganda or a host of other slaughterhouse states all across the continent? No political prisoner would last 28 months incarceration in another African country let alone 28 years. This tu quoque argument did not convince many.

Neil contested the chairmanship of FCS but was defeated by David Davis. Davis was then at Warwick University studying Business. He went on to be a prominent Tory leadership contender and cabinet minister.

Seeking gainful employment, Neil found work as a teacher at St John’s College in Southsea in 1973. That was near his grandparents.  While teaching he read for the bar. In 1978 Neil found a new job at Hatfield Polytechnic in Hertfordshire. It is now called the University of Hertfordshire. Neil continued to teach there part-time as a struggling junior barrister. He gave up teaching in July 1982 and concentrated fully on the bar.

At Cambridge, Neil founded the Eldon League. It was named in honour of the notoriously reactionary early 19^th century Lord Chancellor – the Earl of Eldon. Born plain ‘John Scott’, Lord Eldon was the son of a highly successful Newcastle coal merchant. He then matriculated at University College, Oxford. He was a Tory ultra. He said that representative government was the opposite of what the United Kingdom had. Eldon was never happier than when awarding political dissidents 14 years transportation to Australia with penal servitude or indeed sentencing malfeasants to hang. He vigorously defended slavery and said that grand larceny should be punished by death even in the case of children. He is ridiculed in Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy ‘Eldon big ears had on.’ Astonishingly he has statuary honour in his old Oxford college. By a curious coincidence this is also Shelley’s college (University College, Oxford) and he is also honoured with a fine marble statue.

The Eldon League was a decidedly unserious right wing drinking club. They held picnics and garden parties. The Eldonians would spray each other with champagne and engage in suchlike jolly japes. They celebrated such crucial events as the King of Swaziland’s birthday. It attracted a quaint and faintly fruitcake crowd. They published a jocular manifesto demanding that plastic be outlawed and internal combustion engines be abandoned. Insofar as possible the only used train and horse drawn carriages as their conveyances when travelling to and from Eldonian events. It was seen as being against the entire 20^th century. Its member dressed up in anachronistic garb. Neil styled himself by the characteristically antiquated title of Imperial Prior. The Eldon League was a menagerie of eccentrics. But in it, for once, Neil did not seem like an odd fish.

Neil’s atavism was perhaps not quite as unusual as it might seem. In the 1970s a show aired on television called Good Old Days. In the show people went to the theatre togged out in Edwardian clobber. They were treated to pre-First World music hall acts. Some of the elderly theatregoers will have been children in the Edwardian era. In the 1970s Britain was on the skids. The empire had been dissolved. Inflation eroded incomes, there was rising unemployment, rising crime and sinking national self-belief.  The country was palsied by strikes. There had been the three day weeks because coal was in such short supply that for a couple of months workplaces could only be provided with three days’ worth of electricity each week. There seemed to be no end to the cycle of stagnation and turmoil. The Ulster Conflict was raging with no end in sight. In Caledonia and in Cymru separatist sentiment had metastisised. Entry into the EEC had been deeply divisive.  The United Kingdom was the sick man of Europe. It seemed apt that Britain treat itself to one last dose of nostalgia for its zenith.

Whilst he was an undergraduate Neil was an active Conservative. At a young Conservative conference he met a lady of his age named Christine Holman. Miss Holman was a doctor’s daughter who was then studying sociology at the University of York. A romance blossomed. They have been inseparable ever since. Their motto is – we do things together.

Unlike Neil, Christine had grown up in one of the most fiercely Conservative places in the realm: rural Hampshire. She was a doctor’s daughter and spoke RP as one might expect someone to do who belonged to the southern English upper middle class.

While at York, Christine made some friends for life. They were Harvey Proctor and Michael Brown – about whom more later.

Christine worked as a secretary for a number of Conservative MPs. For a while she worked for Sir Gerald Nabarro. He was known for extravagant handlebar moustache and his stentorian voice with which he boomed out his outrageously racist beliefs: ‘’how would you like your daughter to marry a big buck n****** with the prospect of coffee coloured grandchildren?’’  Standing 6’4’’ and well-built, Nabarro was a former army physical fitness instructor and was unfailingly perfectly turned out in tailor made Saville Row suits. He had the most extraordinary presence. Sir Gerald and had become a self-made millionaire as a timber merchant. Gerald Nabarro’s voice was said to have been the loudest in the British army. And that’s really saying something! His saloon bar prejudices did his political career a power of good in the West Midlands.  That was Enoch Powell country. He love the monarchy and despised undergraduates. The permissive society was a particular bugbear of his.

Gerald Nabbaro was once had up in court on suspicion of dangerous driving. He was acquitted on the basis that it was not him but his secretary who was driving. Nabarro’s revolting racialism did not add lustre to the Tory diadem. In mitigation one might plead that he was a man of his era. Such rebarbative views were not uncommon in the 1960s. Moreover, the Latin word for black was more of a conversational word than a racial slur at the time.

Nabarro’s racist screeds are perhaps even more surprising considering that he belonged to a much persecuted ethnic minority himself. He was Jewish. But that Christine chose to work for him out of all the Conservative MPs shows poor judgement on her part. Was it not at the very least ethically suboptimal to work for a man who expectorated such detestable racial invective? How did his racist outbursts make the beleaguered black community feel? How did his loathing of mixed race children make them feel? Surely his racist diatribe aggravated racial animus, playground bullying and even heavy violence against non-white people in the United Kingdom.

In 1974 Neil was selected as a Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate. He stood in Abertillery. This seat was in the mining area of South Wales. Of the 650 odd seats in the United Kingdom this was Labour’s safest. The result may be guessed. It was a dry run for a marginal seat next time.

Upon graduation Neil taught history for a while. He then decided that he wished to be called to the bar.

Neil went up to Cambridge to read law. Is college was Corpus Christi. As he already had a degree he was able to take a truncated programme. He did the two year course and received and LL.M. Even Neil’s worst enemy does not doubt his intellect.

While at Cambridge, Neil was active in the Cambridge Union. That is the debating society of Cambridge University.

In 1977 Neil was at the Tory Conference when it was addressed by a 16 year old Yorkshire schoolboy named William Hague. Ambitious young Tories were chanting ‘’bastard, bastard’’ because they were emerald with envy. What a flying start this boy had. Who could ever compete with that – addressing the conference aged only 16! Hague was to go on to be leader of the party and Foreign Secretary.

After 1976 the United Kingdom was led – or rather misled – by a Labour Prime Minister named James Callaghan. ‘Sunny Jim’ as his few fans called him was an amiable and ineffectual figure presiding over what one newspaper called ‘mounting chaos.’ There was strike after strike and seemingly endless inflation. James Callaghan came across as a kindly but pathetic grandfather. The public was thoroughly fed up after the Winter of Discontent – the strikes in late 1978 into early 1979. Notoriously as the gravediggers’ union took ‘industrial action’ for several weeks we could not even bury the dead.

As a wag noted, Callaghan was an Englishman with an Irish name who sat for a Welsh seat. Neil Hamilton is a Welshman with a Scottish name who sat for an English seat.

In 1979 Neil was selected as the Conservative candidate for Bradford North. It was a Labour seat but a marginal one. Bradford did not have a large Pakistani community at the time. British-Pakistanis tend heavily towards Labour. As the Labour Government was reviled for its lassitude, incompetence and decrepitude there was a very considerable chance that Neil could win in Bradford North. But in God’s Own County it a significant handicap that he was not a Yorkshireman. Yorkshire folk tend to regard those born outside the white rose county as an inferior breed. As he joked, ‘’I fought Bradford North and Bradford North fought back.’’

Called to the bar in 1979, Neil began his practice desultorily.

When he came down from Cambridge, Neil read for the bar. He was duly called to the bar. He practised in property law and taxation law. It was a lucrative area of practice.

In the 1980s there was some Thatcherite oomph. Inflation was falling. Consumerism was on the rise. The economy was growing at least in southern England – the Tory heartland. In the rest of the UK there was rising unemployment. It was the decade of big hair and small government. In 1982 the United Kingdom defeated Argentine aggression against the Falklands.

In the early 1980s Neil was the European and Parliamentary Director of the Institute of Directors.

In 1982 Argentina launched an illegal and unprovoked invasion of the Falkland Islands. That was despite almost everyone in the Crown Dependency wishing to remain British. Her Majesty’s Armed Forces duly liberated them. Neil was strongly of the belief that it was right to fight for freedom. He cannot be called a chauvinist or militarist. Some left wingers such as Tam Dalzell said that the Falklanders should be handed over to the fascist junta.

On 12 March 1983 Neil got some very good news. He was adopted as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Tatton. It was one of the safest Conservative constituencies in the realm. Neil’s luck was redoubled when two months later there was an early election.

Christine was the secretary of Michael Grylls MP for Chertsey at the time. You can guess which party he was in!

Into politics

Neil was always sartorially retro. Dressing as though he were born two generations earlier perhaps expressed a yearning for Britain’s imperial zenith. He never quite coincided with people of his age and region. Neil liked to wear three piece suits and had a taste for tweed. He often sported millinery long after it was fashionable.

In 1983 Tatton became vacant. This was a rock solid Conservative constituency in Cheshire. Neil had himself selected. His predecessor as the Tory MP was a most distinguished financial journalist. Tatton was a seat that seemed to be impossible to lose. The seat had previously been called Knutsford after another large town within its bounds. It has been in Conservative hands for decades.

In those days a Tory candidate other 30 without a wife would be looked askance at. If a man over the age of 30 had not taken to wife was he a womanizer? Or even worse, was he what they would then have called ‘queer’? 95% of Tory MPs being male back then and same sex marriage was not thought of. Neil was able to assure Tatton Tories that he was affianced to a young lady of the most unimpeachable Conservative credentials. She had been secretary to the most ferociously right wing Member of the Commons: Sir Gerald Nabarro.

Neil was so confident of winning Tatton that five days before polling day he found time to get married to Mary Christine Holman. Like Neil, Christine is always known by her middle name. The couple married in Cornwall. The happy couple was joined in holy matrimony by the Reverend Father David Johnson. Neil had known David when they were up at Cambridge together. David had been President of the Cambridge Union Society. Johnson was an overdressed, acerbic, vertically challenged, foul mouthed, alcoholic of pronounced racist views and homosexual habits. Fr. Johnson had known Neil at Cambridge. The couple chose not to have children.

Neil was enamoured of the Prime Minister. To him Mrs. Thatcher was Gloriana. He never once criticized her.

1983 was a bumper year for the Conservative Party. With Maggie Thatcher as Prime Minister and Britain buoyed up after victory in the Falklands and Labour in hoc to the loony left the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Neil romped home in Tatton. Finally his childhood dream was realized. It must have made for quite a honeymoon!

Neil and Christine bought a house in Tatton to show their commitment to the seat. Neil had to show his face at every bun fight in the constituency: village fetes, Christmas carol services, Remembrance Day wreath laying and suchlike.

No sooner had Neil’s political career begun than he nearly ended it. It was a pattern of unwisdom that we was due to repeat. Neil went on a controversial visit to Berlin in 1983. Thay was just a few months after he was elected to Parliament. Some schoolboy high jinks occurred. That is putting the kindest possible interpretation on it. Some said that japes might be excusable in an adolescent but in a politician they were unforgivable.

Later a TV documentary was broadcast in 1984 entitled Maggie’s Militant Tendency on a programme called Panorama. It focused on Neil’s contentious visit to what was then West Germany. The programme also revealed Neil’s address to the MSI in 1972. It described his time in the Eldon League and the Monday Club. The programme documented his friendship with George Kennedy Young. Kennedy Young was once Director of Britain’s external intelligence agency: MI6. Some viewed him as far right. He was Chair of the Society for Individual Freedom – a strange position for a spy.

It said that there were some Conservative MPs who were Nazis. It was a leftist media plot to smear the party and pretend that the Tories were infiltrated by anti-democratic elements in the same way that Labour was. The programme alleged that Neil Hamilton had given a straight arm salute in Berlin while fooling around in 1983. Neil was on the trip with Gerald Howarth MP and an activist named Philip Pedley. Pedley had once been Chair of the National Young Conservatives. Neil said his reputation had been besmirched by the BBC. Socialist scribblers on Fleet Street took up the story. They were very delighted to traduce Conservative MPs.

Neil later wrote about the programme, ‘’It was an extremely damaging libel and I was extremely concerned about its impact on my career.’’ That is unsurprising. Perhaps this is when his black hair turned grey.

To some Tories, the BBC programme appeared to confirm their worst suspicions about Auntie. Even a moderate Tory like Chris Patten said that BBC stood for the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation. Conservatives were convinced that there was a pinko-liberal infestation in the BBC. At the time of Suez, Sir Anthony Eden said that commies at the BBC had tried to mess up his broadcast by shining lights in his eyes as he spoke live on air.

The MPs who were defamed chose to take legal action. Their libel action succeeded and they were paid damages. Neil subsequently stated that he had made a Nazi salute whilst raising his left fingers to his upper lip to represent a Hitler moustache when he was in Germany merely to ridicule National Socialism. He was cognizant that this constituted an offence under the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany. The imputation that his gesture was expressive of Nazism was preposterous. Neil is certainly no fan of Hitler. Hitler was an anti-smoker and Neil is an indefatigable advocate of smokers’ rights. Tarnishing his reputation as a Nazi was egregiously low and dishonest even by the standards of the BBC.

The libel action was bankrolled by Sir James Goldsmith. Goldsmith was the father of Lord Zac the Conservative politician. In the 1980s Sir James was a stalwart Conservative. He was a self-made billionaire though he had not been born poor:  Sir James was an Old Etonian and his father was a well to do Franco-British hotelier. He recognized in Neil a man of prodigious talent and the uttermost probity. That was why he happily contributed to the fund to clear Neil’s name.

The Spectator columnist Taki also funded Neil’s libel action. Taki Theodorcopalous is an American-educated Greek shipping millionaire of pronounced right wing proclivities. Taki had some fellow feeling of those in legal trouble. In the 1980s he served a few months in prison for accidentally bringing a small quantity of cocaine with him into Heathrow Airport. That could happen to anyone!

David Davis was then a director of the sugar company Tate and Lyle. Incidentally that was where Davis got to know an ex- Scots Guards officer named Iain Duncan Smith who later became an ill-starred leader of the Conservative Party and then a cabinet minister. Davis was a rival of Neil’s in Conservative politics from the 1970s. Nonetheless, Davis and Neil had a good rapport. Davis managed to convince his company to donate to the claimant’s fund. Thus Tate and Lyle became another funder of Neil’s defamation action.

Lord Harris of High Cross also donated around GBP 100 000 to fund Neil’s libel action.

Neil said in his libel case that he was like a Mike Yarwood figure in FCS. Yarwood was then very well known for his impersonations. Neil has a gift for mimicry and often took off politicians and well-known actors. He was known for his impersonations of Enoch Powell, General de Gaulle, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and the actor Frankie Howerd.  Neil cheerily recalled that he had appeared in blackface in 1982 to ridicule the Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin. He had even dressed up in clericals while doing an impersonation of Canon James own while sailing down the Cam in Cambridge. Neil said he had plenty of respectable character witnesses but chief among them would be Norman St John Stevas. St John Stevas was then a Tory MP and he was the only ever person to be President of both the Cambridge Union and the Oxford Union. St John Stevas was gay but whilst an MP he did not feel able to come out. Had he done so it would probably have been terminal for his career.

The Sunday Times offered Neil a chance to give his side of the story. He said that when he gave the sieg heil salute he was simply engaging in a bit of tomfoolery. He noted that Julian Lewis was there and Lewis is Jewish and indeed several of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Lewis recognized what Neil was doing was harmless buffoonery.

The liberal action against the BBC went to trial. Neil was due to be cross-examined by the BBC’s counsel. However, on 21 October 1986 the Director-General of the BBC, Alasdair Milne, decided that the BBC would give in. Milne explained that the Governors of the BBC had ordered him to do so. The BBC paid the legal costs of the claimants which amounted to hundreds of thousands of Pounds. The BBC also paid Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth GBP 20 000 apiece. Howarth was the MP for Aldershot at the time. That sum was more than an MP’s annual salary at the time. On 27 October 1985 the BBC broadcast another edition of Panorama in which the show apologized unstintingly for the false statements it had made traducing the two men.

Some said that the BBC had had its arm twisted by politicians and that witnesses had been threatened. The BBC Board of Governors had wanted the case settled and told the BBC Board of Management to do just that. Many in the BBC doubted the wisdom of caving in. The BBC’s barristers had not had an opportunity to even begin their defence in court when the BBC surrendered.

The National Young Conservatives (NYC) suggested that there had been some behind the scenes pressure. The Chairman of NYC Richard Fuller said it was very odd that the BBC had capitulated as the trial was proceeding pleasingly for them.

Malcolm McAlpine had access to the BBC Governors. Some speculated that he had a hand in the BBC’s curious decision. Malcolm McAlpine was a cousin of Lord Alistair McAlpine. Lord McAlpine was a multimillionaire and treasurer of the Conservative Party. He was a doyen of the right and the Eurosceptic wing of the party. He was therefore a fan of Neil. Indeed in 1992 right wing Tories gathered at Lord McAlpine’s house to celebrate the fact that a Tory wet and Europhile Chris Patten had lost his seat at Bath. The Liberal Democrats had covered Bath with posters saying ‘Let’s flatten Patten’ and they did. The price of failure for Patten was not too bad. He was made Governor-General of Hong Kong and was later elected Chancellor of Oxford University.

Regarding the BBC affair, there were claims that witnesses had been intimidated. There is no suggestion that Neil was involved in this either directly or indirectly. A BBC memorandum said that 17 witnesses had been made to change their testimony. Some of those who were due to testify were Conservatives and were revolted by what they saw at Berlin. Nevertheless, they suddenly claimed not to have seen anything untoward.

Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton thought that the case against Philip Pedley would be pursued. Pedley would not accept the BBC’s offer of accord and satisfaction. Pedley also had some wealthy backers to fund his claim. Richard Fuller vowed to come to his aid.

Jeffrey Archer was then the Deputy Chairman of the Tory Party. The millionaire novelist considered it unwise for Pedley to fight on. The Tory Party had settled the matter. It was risky to continue to battle in the courts. If Pedley lost then it would look very bad for the party. Pedley could not afford the libel action on his own. Without Fuller’s financial support he would be obliged to settle the case. Archer told Fuller it was foolhardy to fund Pedley’s case. But Fuller resisted pressure to withdraw his financial support from his friend.

The Labour Party said that Conservative Central Office (CCO) had orchestrated a cover up and used undue influence to sway the BBC. Labour wanted to question the Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party about the affair: Norman Tebbit.

A Labour politician named Dale Campbell-Savours said he had evidence in a letter from Pedley to John Selwyn Gummer MP. Gummer was a former Party Chairman and was later a cabinet minister under Major. The letter supposedly showed that Tory Central Office had contacted witnesses to persuade them to alter their testimony to the advantage of the claimant.

Norman Tebbit acknowledged that one witness had contacted Tory Central Office but said this was merely because he wanted advice but that CCO had declined to give any as that might seem unethical. Tebbit said that the socialist Campbell-Savours was misusing parliamentary privilege to make false allegations knowingly which otherwise would have been defamatory. Tebbit walked out of the House of Commons chamber without making a further comment.

On 25 October the newspaper reported more evidence of unethical communications with witnesses. Neil then withdrew his action against Pedley. Pedley said that he would not back down. There were still people calling for a full enquiry.

Norman Tebbit made statements about the case but not in the House of Commons chamber. To mislead the House is a resigning matter. Neil said that Tebbit was refusing to address the House on the issue because Tebbit’s statements were misleading. Neil urged the Party Chairman to speak about the matter on the floor of the House. Not everyone in the party was sympathetic to Neil. Some said he had brought it into disrepute.

The Hogan Memorandum was an internal BBC memo which named witnesses who had altered their stories. The Independent newspaper said that there was a recording of a statement by a Conservative witness to the incident. The witness was worried by CCO’s insistence that the Berlin incident had not occurred. CCO was keen that no one substantiate the allegations against Tory MPs.

Mr. Campbell Savours claimed that the Hogan Memorandum proved that the BBC had been threatened. He sent it to Sir Michael Havers who was the Attorney-General and of course a Tory. Havers is the father of the actor Nigel Havers.

The Labour parliamentarian Campbell-Savours said that CCO had striven to meddle with witnesses. It was alleged that CCO had tried to tone down statements made by David Mitchell. Campbell Savours then sent a transcript to the Attorney-General.

Neil had made several statements in the media about his contested visit to Berlin. Some Conservative Party members were supposedly told by CCO to claim that they had not seen Neil goose stepping. Some of the witnesses had initially made such an accusation but had changed their testimony. The theory goes that there was a whip at their back to do so. They were told that it would be deeply unhelpful to the party if they did not retract their earlier statements and if there were no retraction then their careers in the party would come to a juddering halt.  Neil wrote to the Chairman of the Conservative Party in January 1984 stating that he had not goose stepped or performed Nazi salutes ever anywhere.

Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton had brought a libel action against Philip Pedley. They then discontinued the action on the basis that it was exorbitantly expensive, horrifically time consuming and stressful and that this was out of all proportion to the apology that they could possibly obtain from Pedley. On 3 December 1986 Pedley said he would not accept the terms of settlement offered by the claimants. He wanted to case to go to trial.

The judge was Mr. Justice Simon Brown. He ruled that Howarth and Neil were not allowed to claim that Pedley’s statements were libelous and they were ordered to pay his costs.

Mr. Pedley was jubilant. He acted as though it were a vindication and said he retracted not one iota of what he had said. He reiterated his claim that he had never suggested that Howarth and Neil Hamilton were National Socialists but rather that their antics gravely undermined the Conservative Party. As a staunch Conservative he was aghast to see two Tory MPs bringing the party into disrepute with their immature looning. The Young Conservative report dismissed Neil’s behaviour as no more than ‘’eccentricity.’’ Pedley reaffirmed his earlier accusations against the men.

Pedley said that members of the YC Committee had been subjected to poison pen letters and verbal abuse after their names were published in Bulldog which was the newspaper of the Young National Front (a white supremacist party). Pedley claimed that he and others had suffered harassment from private security companies. He was implying that wealthy people had paid for this.

Soon after being elected to Parliament, Neil was made an officer of the backbench committee on trade and industry. The Chairman was a formidable Tory MP named Michael Grylls.

In 1984 there were dozens of coalmines all across the realm. But many of them had exhausted their supply of economically viable coal. Some of them were digging up mud. The UK was importing cheaper coal from Czechoslovakia (a country that is now two). North Sea oil was providing much of the United Kingdom’s energy needs as was imported oil and nuclear energy. The government decided to close down uneconomic coal pits and let the others prosper. Leftists believe that coal mines without any coal should remain open. All miners were public sector employees and therefore paid by the taxpayer. Left wingers argued that the poorest people should pay relatively well-paid miners to dig up mud. Every penny wasted on this was a penny robbed from the NHS and other urgent matters.

In 1984 the Miners’ Strike began. The National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) leader was Arthur Scargill. Scargill had been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) when Stalin was the communist supremo of the world. Scargill was a denier of and a defender of countless communist atrocities all across the globe. He wanted to visit this reign of terror on the United Kingdom. Scargill was one of many unrepentant communists who joined the Labour Party in their bid to abolish democracy and replace it with a totalitarian state. Scargill’s dream was to open concentration camps for political dissidents in the UK but it never came true. Scargill declared a national strike without even holding a ballot of NUM.

There were 180 000 miners in the UK at the time of the Miners’ Strike. Not all miners were members of the NUM. Even then not all NUM miners went on strike because there had been no national ballot. NUM wanted to hold people to ransom.

Mrs. Thatcher had seen this strike coming. The NUM had brought down Heath’s Conservative Government in 1974. Ten years on Thatcher was adamant that she would not allow the NUM to subvert the will of the people again.

The NUM resorted to intimidation. They committed violent crime against the police. They even murdered one man for going to work. The NUM was open about its real aim. It was not about saving jobs. It was about overthrowing the elected government as Scargill said time and time again. Though Scargill was never an MP he was a far more puissant figure on the left than even the leader of the Labour Party.

Coal is also the most polluting fuel. That did not stop leftists who pretend to care about the environment advocating for coal.

Neil was four square behind the government on this one. He believed that Britain must not bend the knee to the bully boy tactics of the NUM.

Labour did not throw its weight behind the strike because there was no national ballot. The far left fulminated that Neil Kinnock was a Judas for not giving unstinting support to their attempt to bring down democracy. Some extremists such as Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn endorsed the NUM’s anti-democratic campaign.

In the end the cause of freedom prevailed. Scargill led his acolytes to an ignominious defeat. There are now only 2 000 coal miners left.

In April 1986 Neil was one of 10 MPs (all of them Conservatives) to vote against Her Majesty’s Government on a bill which meant deeper European integration.

In the 1980s Neil came to know the late George Choudhury-Best who was a Conservative activist in London. Choudhury-Best was an Anglo-India who had shifted from the subcontinent to what he termed the ‘mother country’ some years after India suffered independence. Choudhury-Best disenjoyed Indian independence intensely. He was keenly alive to the manifold benisons that British superintendence had conferred upon the Subcontinent. Choudhury-Best recognized India as Britain’s nursling and was aghast at premature independence and all its concomitant horrors. He was appalled that the rampantly corrupt Congress Party was ruining the country with socialist policies that impeded its economy while becoming a Soviet ally. Communist governments had taken over West Bengal and Kerala. Independence had led to Partition and the murder of over a million people. None of these cataclysms would have befallen India if India had remained beneath Britannia’s benevolent shield for a few more decades.

Neil was not scared of making contentious remarks. In 1987 Frank Dobson the Labour MP and future Health Secretary made a speech about amputees. Neil quipped, ‘’he does not have a leg to stand on.’’ The left wing extremist and IRA supporter Jeremy Corbyn made a speech about the need to increase the state pension. Neil shot back, ‘’some of his IRA friends could be used to get rid of pensioners by shooting them.’’ In fairness, the IRA did kill a lot of pensioners.

Corbyn is the most extreme leftist ever elected to Westminster. He has been on the side of every enemy Britain has had since 1945. Corbyn is a publicist for most of the tyrannies around the world. Comrade Corbyn is an outspoken advocate of oppression and cruelty. He is a champagne socialist. His desire to help those in pauperism does not mean he donates a penny of his own. He is exceedingly generous but only with other people’s money instead. He still owns his house like the selfish capitalist he is.

In the 1980s Enoch Powell was still in Parliament. He was no longer a Tory but sat as an Ulster Unionist representing Down South – as in the southern part of County Down. Neil was an impassioned admirer of Powell. Neil says that he is not a racialist but that Powell was correct inasmuch as unchecked immigration has led to many fraught incidents.

For the left, Powell was a pantomime villain. Socialists students displayed placards bearing the legend ‘’disembowel Enoch Powell’’ when he came to address universities. Compassionate aren’t they these leftists? But Powell’s friends say he was not gargoyle.

Neil was an ardent Thatcherite. Despite his unswerving loyalty he was not rewarded with preferment.

Neil joined the No Turning Back Group. This was a ginger group of Thatcherites. It was founded by Michael Brown MP who turned out to be gay. Brown was in the closet in the 1980s. Other prominent MPs were members of the No Turning Back Group such as Alan Duncan, Peter Lilley, Gerald Howarth and Michael Portillo.

Conservative policy in the 1980s was to phase out leaded petrol. It degraded the environment and had a deleterious effect on the brain. It was linked to a heightened risk of criminality. Neil was dead against ending leaded petrol. He said that it had not been demonstrated that leaded petrol was in any way harmful to people or to the environment. That was an astonishing claim in view of scientific peer reviewed articles proving what leaded petrol does. He noted that it would hurt the economy if leaded petrol was forbidden. It was trademark Neil – swimming against the tide. He is an anti-environmentalist.

In 1985 Neil started to work for Ian Greer Associations. One of the main corporate clients was US Tobacco. Neil was ever the staunch libertarian. Michael Brown worked on this project with him.

As a politician Neil was always his own man. He was resolutely libertarian. In the 1980s a type of tobacco called Skoal Bandits was legally available in the UK. Some demanded it be prohibited because it was said to be very carcinogenic.

Edwina Currie and David Mellor were junior health ministers at the time. They were inclined to prohibit Skoal Bandits.

The House of Commons Select Committee on Standards produced a report concluding that Brown and Neil Hamilton had lobbied minister with a view to persuading them to allow Skoal Bandits. It noted that neither man declared an interest – that he had a financial interest in allowing Skoal Bandits. Neil admitted that he had not declared an interest.

Neil was almost alone in arguing that Skoal Bandits should remain legal because people have the right to take risks if they please. Furthermore, as we have seen with drugs – prohibition never works. Nevertheless, Skoal Bandits were outlawed.

While in the House of Commons, Neil proved himself to be a fearless advocate for liberty.  He was unwavering in defence of the right to smoke and indeed to do as one so pleases with one’s own body. He was the only MP out of 650 to vote against the government’s legislation banning the sale of human organs.

In 1986 Neil was made Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to David Mitchell MP. This was a stepping stone to being a minister.

In November 1989 Neil won the Spectator magazine’s prize for being parliamentary wit of the year. With trademark drollery and self-effacement Neil joked that he believed it for being ‘’parliamentary twit of the year.’ Self-deprecation is one of Neil’s many endearing traits.

While in the House of Commons, Neil spoke up for the Western Goals Institute. Andrew V R Smith was then the head of the Western Goals Institute (WGI). Smith, like Neil, had been in the Monday Club. Reverend Martin Smith (an Ulster Unionist) was also a member. So were several Conservative parliamentarians: Sir Patrick Wall, Nicholas Winterton and Bill Walker. Neil was on the parliamentary advisory board of the WGI.

WGI was committed to the maintenance and furtherance of Western influence in all parts of the globe. Some its members were unabashed about advocating coups d’etats in other countries. It had fraternal links with Latin American juntas that did not win many prizes for human rights. WGI’s ‘muscular’ foreign policy had some saying that mercenaries ought to be hired to effectuate regime change in a manner congenial to British neo-imperialism.

WGI displayed questionable taste when in 1992 it invited Jean-Marie Le Pen to address them. Le Pen was then the leader of le Fronte National which his daughter Marine now heads. Le Pen was almost universally seen as a racist. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a perennial presidential candidate and in 2002 even came runner-up.

WGI also wanted Alessandra Mussolini to speak to them. Miss Mussolini is the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini. She also speaks up for her grandfather’s reputation. She was then a deputy in the Italian Parliament and a member of the European Parliament. She had also made a name for herself posing for ‘hard’ nude photos. La Mussolini spent much of her time in Brussels and Strasbourg singing hymns of praise to Il Duce. Both Le Pen and Mussolini were to speak to fringe meetings of the Tory Conference!  Alessandra Mussolini is a medical doctor but CCO suspected that her oration would not be solely restricted to health policy. An unapologetic apologist for fascism was not exactly the sort of person the Conservative Party considered to be an ideal conference speaker.

Sir Norman Fowler was then Chairman of the Conservative Party. He was incensed at the invitations – he considered fascism to be foul and was deeply worried at how it would ruin the party’s reputation. Fowler emphasized that the Conservative Party was not linked to the WGI. Both Le Pen and Mussolini were banned from entering the country so the meetings did not occur.

In the 1980s South Africa still had the apartheid (apartness) system. This segregated people of different races. The white minority comprised no more than 16% of the population of the Republic of South Africa. Whites virtually monopolized political power. They also owned 87% of the land. By law a white could not sell this land to a non-white person. The Bantustans reserved for black people were largely infertile and devoid of mineral resources. Such structured racial inequality appalled most of the world. Black people were not permitted to be citizens of South Africa. The South African Government used heavy violence to maintain control. The torture of those suspected of trying to overthrow the government was not uncommon. In the 1960s and 1970s there had been two fairly large scale massacres of unarmed black people by the South African Police.

South Africa refused to play sports against non-white players. Therefore South Africa was subject to a sporting boycott. The Springboks did not get to play foreign teams from 1970 till the early 1990s.

Most countries refused to trade with South Africa. The United Kingdom persisted in doing business with South Africa. Neil was one of those Conservatives who was adamantly opposed to sanctions against South Africa. He said he deplored apartheid but this was an internal matter. The United Kingdom happily did business with many far more tyrannical regimes and somehow that was not propping up oppression. In Zimbabwe, the Mugabe regime murdered several thousand people because they belonged to the Ndebele tribe. But the world turned Nelson’s eye to that one because the perpetrator was black. No one called for sanctions on Zimbabwe despite its regime slaughtering far more people than South Africa did. John Major even had the Queen give Mugabe an honorary knighthood!

In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa. It looked like apartheid might be abolished. Some people launched a desperate last ditch effort to preserve the racist system. Mandela later went on to be President of South Africa.

The anti-apartheid movement’s mantra was ‘’disinvest’’. Neil was dead against sanctions in South Africa. His argument was that apartheid was a domestic matter with which the United Kingdom must not interfere. Funnily enough governments that demanded sanctions on South Africa were usually the loudest in denouncing ‘’interference’’ and ‘’neo-colonialism’’ when anyone criticized their often appalling human rights records. Neil said that a moral principle had to be non-selective if it was to be moral at all. It was nonsense to impose sanctions against South Africa if the UK did not do so to black nationalist regimes north of the Limpopo which were often far more hideous than the apartheid government.

Margaret Thatcher had been against sanctions on South Africa on the ground that this would simply further impoverish black people who were already suffering pauperism. Moreover, there was no guarantee that sanctions would lead to political reform. A far smaller country, Cuba, had toughed out sanctions for far longer and its oppressive regime remained intact.

One of the reasons that Neil cited for being opposed to sanctions on South Africa was that this would increase unemployment in the UK. The MPs who demanded that the UK ban all trade with South Africa were usually the same ones who harped on the most about how evil unemployment was. But there they were demanding that their constituents be rendered jobless.

Neil also noted that South Africa was a reliable Cold War ally and the war could turn hot at any moment. The Treaty of Vereeniging which ended the Second South African War in 1902 stated that native affairs (i.e. the rights of black people) was the exclusive competence of the South African Government and the UK was not to interfere in this policy area.

Neil may have been a model for the late Rik Mayall’s character Alan B’stard. B’stard is a conniving self-serving Tory MP of fervently pro-apartheid views, raging vanity who has a sexually insatiable blonde wife. I wonder who that could be? Alan B’stard also drinks champagne and will only drink it if it is South African. This in an era of the anti-apartheid boycott of South African goods. Some say that B’stard was based on a composite of Tory MPs.

Neil worked for Strategy Network International (SNI). This company was founded with the aim of lobbying against sanctions on South Africa and Namibia which was the under South African control. In SNI Neil met Derek Laud. SNI wanted the United Kingdom to break UN Resolution 435 calling for genuine independence for Namibia. Laud and Neil had a mutual friend – Michael Brown MP. Neil was paid GBP 8 000 per annum for his consultancy. That was a very considerable sum considering that the fees for Eton were GBP 10 000 at the time.

SNI managed to have Neil very well treated. He was flown business class to South Africa and put up in five star hotels.

Lady Margaret Thatcher visited the Hamilton’s not so humble abode on at least one occasion.

In July 1990 the Prime Minister appointed Neil as a whip. It was a time of intense controversy over the Community Charge which was commonly called the poll tax. Neil had been fervent in his support for the unpopular measure. This earned him Mrs. T’s gratitude.

In 1990 Thatcher introduced the Community Charge across England and Wales. It was dubbed the Poll Tax. It had been brought into Scotland the year before when the rates were up for review. The Government was horrified that Labour councils had been wasting public money on PC propaganda and nuclear free zones. Mrs. T believed that hardworking people should not have their money squandered on loony left nonsense.

The Community Charge was widely reviled. It was a flat tax payable to one’s local authority. Pensioners and those on benefits paid a lower amount and students were exempt. For the wealthy, the Community Charge was a tax cut. Neil was a firm advocate of the Community Charge. But it was so exceptionally unpopular that Conservative support in the opinion polls dropped to levels not seen again till the dark days of Liz Truss. In Scotland people complained bitterly that the tax was tried out on them before South Britain. This was held to be confirmatory of Scotland’s second class status.

It was easy to evade the Community Charge by taking oneself off the electoral register. Poorer people (mostly Labour voters) were inclined to do so. In which case the Tories would win forever. But Labour ought to like the tax – it had the word community in the name.

Some Conservatives began to think that the Iron Lady was a liability and not an asset. Tory Wets had long wanted to be shot of her. Mrs. T. was adamantine that there would be no compromise on the Community Charge. Full steam ahead with it! The brains behind it was the Honourable William (now Lord) Waldegrave. He was spoken about as PM material. But he lost his seat in 1997 and ended up being sent back to school – to Eton as Provost (i.e. live in head of the board of governors).

In November 1990 Michael Heseltine challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the party and thus the prime ministership. The Chief Whip told Neil that as a whip it behoved him to maintain the strictest neutrality. Neil disregarded this instruction. Whatever he learnt about Heseltine’s campaign he passed on to the Thatcher camp. Neil said to the Prime Minister that she ought to interview each of the Cabinet individually. He thought that they would lack the courage to tell her that they wanted her to resign. However, Neil was wrong and several of them told Thatcher to stand down.

Despite several Cabinet ministers urging Thatcher to step down as PM, Neil pleaded with her to stay on. In a meeting of backbench Tories, Peter Lilley said that Thatcher had had her day. Neil interrupted Lilley and expressed his disdain for Lilley as a faint heart.

On 21 November 1990 Neil and other Thatcherite fanatics met the PM for one last time at Number 10 Downing Street. Thatcher resigned the next day. In the subsequent Tory leadership election there were three candidates.

Michael Heseltine was a Europhile Tory wet who had resigned from the Cabinet in 1986 over the Westland Helicopter Affair. Heseltine pretended it was a principle resignation. In fact the miscalculated thinking the Tories would lose the 1987 election and be could become party leader. This man of raging vanity and vaulting ambition never made it to the top of the greasy pole. He came close though: being Deputy Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997. Heseltine was the son of a Welsh factory owner. He had been to Shrewbsury, Oxford and the Welsh Guards. He was scorned for wearing his Guards tie for more days than he was in the Guards: sixty.

Then there as Douglas Hurd who was also a One Nation Tory and a Europhile but had been loyal to Thatcher. Hurd had been Captain of School at Eton before going up to King’s College, Cambridge and working in the Foreign Office. Hurd played down his poshness saying his pater had only been a tenant farmer. But as the son and grandson of Tory MPs he was a bit too much of a toff.

Lastly there was John Major. Major was seen as a Eurosceptic and a Thatcherite. He also came from a working class background unlike the others. That was perceived to be electorally advantageous. The other candidates were too posh.

Neil cast his ballot for Major. He believed that Major would continue Thatcher’s legacy. Neil was to be bitterly disillusioned.

In 1990 after Thatcher fell it was a pity for Neil was perfervid in support of his Monetarist policies. However, it also presented an opportunity. She had steadfastly refused to promote him from the backbenches.

John Major became Prime Minister. Soon Neil gained promotion. He was made an under parliamentary secretary for corporate affairs in 1992. He then became Minister for Deregulation and Corporate Affairs. This was a brief he relished because was a true believer in the mission. This was a junior ministership. Under each Cabinet minister there are three or four junior ministers. A Cabinet Minister usually has the title Secretary of State. Junior ministers are styled ‘Minister of State’. The next step for Neil would be promotion into the cabinet.

The hot topic was the Treaty of Maastricht. This treaty signed in the Netherlands was to turn the European Economic Community into the European Union. Neil was deeply skeptical about it. He believed that European integration had gone as far as it should. Like Thatcher he believed that the EEC was imposing too much regulation and degrading national sovereignty. He feared that if the EEC became the EU this would aggravate these tendencies. Denmark held a referendum on Maastricht. The Danes voted No in June 1992. Then Denmark held a second referendum and the result was affirmative.

Although Neil had deep misgivings about Maastricht he remained faithful to the Major Administration. Some other Conservative ministers resigned in opposition to Maastricht. Neil beseeched them not to do so.

Neil was sent to meetings of the Council of Ministers of the European Union. He became deeply disillusioned with the European Union (EU). He came to think it was unreformable and hell-bent to removing all national sovereignty.

In the 1990s Neil became involved with a parliamentary lobbyist named Ian Greer. Greer brought a new more pro-active style to lobbying. Mr. Greer was homosexual and Neil was not prejudiced against Greer because of his orientation. This was an era in which homosexuality was still deeply disapproved of by many Tories. No Tory MP came out as gay until Alan Duncan did in 2001. Duncan, the MP for Rutland and Melton, incidentally was another friend of Neil’s.

Harvey Proctor was also a friend of Neil’s. Proctor was a Conservative MP who got into trouble when he had an encounter with a rentboy whom he believed was 21 but turned out to be 17. It was an innocent mistake and could happen to anyone.

On his solicitor’s advice Proctor pleaded guilty to an offence in relation to this. He got a suspended sentence. There is no suggestion that Neil was involved in Mr. Proctor’s encounter with the ill-judged rentboy encounter or was even aware of it. Proctor subsequently left politics and ran a gentlemen’s outfitters. He had always been a shirt lifter!

In 1992 Neil happened to be in Harvey Proctor’s shirt shop when two men assaulted Proctor for homophobic reasons. Neil valiantly came to the defence of his friend. He suffered a broken nose for his pains. The two assailants were later jailed for their attack.

It was in the 1990s that Neil came to know Derek Laud. Laud was a Conservative activist. Unusually for a Tory at the time he was black and born in the United Kingdom to Jamaican immigrant parents and flamboyantly gay. Derek Laud grew up in a family with little money. He joined the Monday Club which was often accused of being anti-black. Laud is also gay. He was selected as a Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the 1997 election. However, he withdrew when allegations of unethical conduct were made against him. This did not stop him being made Joint Master of the new Forest Foxhounds . He was later a Big Brother star. But he was so loathed by his competitor who called himself ‘Science’ – who was also black – that Science said ‘’Laud is the first black person ever who actually makes me want to join the BNP.’’

Laud had written speeches for Thatcher and also for Alan Clark MP. That was despite Clark having said of the Ugandan Asians in 1973, ‘’they must be told ‘you cannot come here because you are not white.’ ’’ Laud was a friend of David Cameron’s. Years later he became so horrified with the ineptitude of Theresa May that he joined the Lib Dems and even stood for them in Cameron’s old seat of Witney, Oxfordshire.

Neil knew an Egyptian tycoon named Mohammed Fayed. Mr. Fayed was best known for owning Britain’s flagship department store: Harrod’s. Fayed was a fraud who could not even tell the truth about his name. The man from Alexandria styled himself Al Fayed – misusing the nobiliary particule. He also gave several contradictory answers about his year of birth. It was proven that he ordered a break-in to a safety deposit box owned by a business rival named Tiny Roland. Fayed had been a Conservative donor. However, he became embittered when his application for British citizenship was refused.

Fayed had grown up in Alexandria as the son of a schoolteacher. They family was higher status than you might expect because most Egyptians were illiterate at the time. Fayed was a very small businessman until the early 1950s. By some miracle he managed to marry a Miss Khasshoggi. She was from a very affluent and well-connected Saudi Arabian family. Admittedly this is because the Saudis became as rich as Crassus. His well got wife opened many doors for him. Before you can say ‘’bribery’’ he had fat contracts in Saudi Arabia. He later served as the honorary consul for one of the most dishonourable dictators in the world – Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti.

Mr. Fayed craved the one thing he never deserved: respectability. He laboured under the misapprehension that gentlemanliness could be bought. But common decency is not a commodity for sale.It was as though Fayed sought to exemplify Oscar Wilde’s dictum – he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Mohammed Fayed was an oleaginous social climber. There was more than a touch of Melmotte from The Way we live now by Anthony Trollope. He purchased the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris. This, Fayed reasoned, brought him closer to the royal family. Then Fayed became the major financial donor to the Royal Windsor Horse Show. This again was a bid to buy some kudos. His donation obliged Her Gracious Majesty to deign to meet him.

Mr. Fayed was of the Mohammedan persuasion. He never pretended to be a pious Muslim. If hirsuteness is indicative of Islamic observance it is notable that Fayed was always clean-shaven. He was partial to spirituous liquor but not to orisons nor did he profess to be a Koranic scholar. There was little anti-Muslim prejudice in the United Kingdom before 9/11. The average Briton knew precious little about Muslims or Islam. Fayed did not try that old chestnut – that he was a victim of anti-Muslim animus. Nor did he say he was hard done by on account of his nationality or ethnicity.

On October 1994 the Guardian newspaper ran a story saying that Tim Smith MP and Neil Hamilton MP had been paid cash by Mr. Fayed for asking questions in Parliament.

Fayed alleged that he had paid Neil and another MP in cash to ask questions in the House of Commons. The shopkeeper said that sometimes cash was handed to the MPs in envelopes and on other occasions money was paid to Ian Greer and was then passed on to the MPs in question. Another Tory MP such as Tim Smith admitted that this was true and on 19 October 1994 he stood down from his ministerial post. Mr. Smith also stated that he would leave Parliament at the next general election. Tim Smith was an Old Harrovian who sat for Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. Notably, Smith was the one who defeated Tony Blair in Blair’s first attempt to enter Parliament: the 1982 by election.

Neil vehemently denied ever taking cash to ask questions. The then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine questioned Neil about the issue. Neil categorically denied ever having any financial relationship with Fayed. Mohammed Fayed boasted ‘’you hire an MP like you hire a taxi.’’ He was so rancorous about being refused British citizenship by a Tory Government that he decided to embarrass the Conservative Party as much as he possibly could. He became a passionate Labour supporter despite not being able to vote. It was solely out of spite – he wanted to give the Tories one in the eye. If Fayed wanted to exact vengeance he certainly succeeded.

Neil initiated libel proceedings against those who had accused him of taking cash for questions. John Major said to Neil that the whirlwind of negative publicity around this was harming the government. He told Neil to resign or he would be dismissed.  On 26 October 1994 Neil was prevailed upon to resign from his government post. Relentless negative publicity about him was damaging the government. The attacks on Neil’s honour continued unabated.

The libel action was against the Guardian newspaper. Ian Greer was Neil’s co-plaintiff in the case. In 1996 the Defamation Act amended the Bill of Rights 1989. This permitted utterances made in Parliament to be questioned in court.

The day before the case was due to be heard the two co-plaintiffs settled saying that they could not afford to pursue the action and there was a conflict of interests. The Guardian then triumphantly published a headline about Neil dubbing him ‘’a liar and a cheat.’’ They were sure that Neil would never sue. Alan Rusbridger was then the editor of the newspaper. He crowed about how the two has capitulated.

On 1 October 1996 – the day that the libel trial would have commenced – Alan Rusbridger and Neil went head to head on Newsnight – a nightly current affairs show on the BBC.

Many scurrilous stories about Neil appeared in the Guardian. The Guardian is of course the sewer of choice for leftist ordure.

To some it appeared that Neil had been a victim of the left wing gutter press. Tories were accustomed to being monstered by scurrilous and scabrous dishonest pinko-liberal hacks.

Sir Gordon Downey was the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. He began an investigation into the allegations against Neil. The investigation came to a conclusion in 1997. Neil said that were the report to be critical of him then he would stand down from Parliament.

Edwina Currie gave evidence to the enquiry. Miss Currie was a fellow Tory but had been a nemesis of Neil’s for many years. She said that when she showed Neil photos of the cancers caused by tobacco this did not sway him at all. Neil said he judged the issue on the merits and not on emotive images. He was perfectly aware that smoking can kill but that people ought to be permitted to make their own decisions regarding health and lifestyle. Neil and Michael Brown MP had been paid GBP 6 000 each and been provided with free hotel stays and lavish dinners by Skoal Bandits in return for seeking to keep their product lawful. In 1989 Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for Health, signed an order banning Skoal Bandits. This was despite Clarke being a lifelong smoker and indeed working as a consultant for British American Tobacco.

Currie’s concern for health was odd. She said that cervical cancer was caused by crisps and northerners. She opined that good Christian people do not catch AIDS. She later resigned in a dispute over salmonella. It was a storm in an egg cup.

What no one knew at the time was that the married Edwina Currie was then having an affair with the also married John Major. They are both so repulsive I do not know which one of them should be more ashamed. In the early 1990s Major was to launch his ill-starred back to basics campaign. His crusade for personal morality came to grief when it was revealed that several Tory MPs had a predeliction for adultery. Had Mrs. Currie revealed than that she was penetrated by Major in the 1980s then it could easily have brought him down as Prime Minister.

Throughout this time Neil was being savaged in the newspapers every single day. Lunchtime O’Booze and Glenda Slagg type columnists always had him in their sights. This unrelenting media campaign depicted Neil as Mr. Sleaze.

Sir Gordon Downey’s report reached damning conclusions about Neil. Downey said that the evidence against Neil in the cash for questions affair was convincing.  It found that Neil had misled Michael Heseltine who was then the President of the Board of Trade and later the Deputy Prime Minister. Neil said that he did not have any financial ties to Ian Greer. Whereas in fact Neil had been paid by Greer on two occasions in 1988 and 1989 and these two sums had added up to GBP 10 000. In fairness this had been five years before Heseltine posed the question to him. In Neil’s mind this was ancient history and it was true in 1994 that he had no financial relationship with Greer at that time.

Neil and his goodwife had stayed in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and in Mr. Fayed’s Scottish castle gratis. Neil had not declared these in the register of members’ interests. Downey found that this was ethically below par and in breach of the Nolan Standards in Public Life.

Michael Brown was in a spot of bother. He had long before acknowledged being paid GBP 8 000 by US Tobacco and not cited it in the Register of Members Interests as he was legally obliged to do. But in the 1990s it emerged that the 40 something MP had been on a Caribbean holiday with a 20 year old man and shared a double bed with him. The gay age of consent was 21 at the time. What Brown was doing was technically illegal. He was not prosecuted. John Major said that homosexuality was no longer a resigning matter. Brown was not ‘out’ at the time. But when the news broke he publicly stated that he was gay.

Michael Brown also lost his seat in the 1997 election. Downey said that if Neil and Tim Smith had still been in Parliament after the election then they should have both been suspended for a long period of time.

Neil fiercely defended himself. He said the report was shoddy and based on hearsay. He accused it of bias. It was not a judicial inquiry, did not have a presumption of innocence and did not require the criminal standard of proof.

Tim Smith said he agreed with the conclusions of the report and sought no further role in public life.

Fayed was a deeply unsavoury character. His wastrel son Dodi Fayed was a fully qualified professional playboy. Dodi was engaged to an American model in 1997 when he began a liaison with the recently divorced Princess Diana. When the Ishmaelite businessman heard that his son had begun an intimate relationship with the princess he was jubilant. This was the establishment validation that he had yearned for with such flagrant indignity. Dodi dropped his fiancée like a hot potato and sent her a few million Pounds to encourage her to go away and shut up.

Dodi’s relationship with Diana lasted all of three weeks. They were together for about 10 of these 21 days. Nonetheless Fayed claimed without any evidence at all that the two were engaged and that Diana was pregnant by Dodi. Several investigations have disconfirmed these outlandish statements. Neil was up against a man with a proven record for outrageous falsity and utter ruthlessness.

Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton had accepted a free weekend in the Paris Ritz Hotel which Fayed owned. They acknowledged that this was true. It emerged that Mrs. Hamilton had even taken postage stamps for free from the hotel.

The Hamilton’s submitted to an exhaustive Revenue and Customs investigation of their finances and tax affairs. They came out of it smelling of roses.

In the June of 1995 Jon Major made a shock announcement. He resigned as leader of the party. But he had not resigned as PM. It was a back me or sack me move. He was fed up to the back teeth of all the carping. His resignation triggered a leadership contest in the Conservative Party. It was hoped by many on the right of the party that Michael Portillo who was Secretary of State for Defence would contest the leadership. Some Portillistas set up a campaign HQ and even installed extra telephone lines. But he did not stand and instead remained in the Cabinet and asked people to vote for Major. John Redwood resigned as Secretary of State for Wales and he stood against Major. Neil remained enamoured of Portillo despite Portillo letting him down in 1995. Indeed in 2001 when Portillo sought the Tory leadership he lost out on getting into the ballot of ordinary party members by one vote. Neil then expressed his sympathy for Portillo and said it was a pity that Portillo had not won.

Neil was bitterly disappointed with Major’s spinelessness and Europhilia. Under Major there was a sense that direction had been lost. He had no vision for the country. He was also as accident prone as can be. Neil lent his full support to Redwood. Redwood was seen to be too right wing. With a D.Phil from Oxford he was clearly and alpha mind but he was distinctly lacking in emotional intelligence. One journalist said that Redwood came across as a space alien in human form. His supporters were accused of being swivel eyed loons and foam flecked fanatics. Tony Marlow in his striped blazer came in for particular execration.

In the end Major won the votes of about 75% of Tory MPs. But he was not to survive as leader of the party for two more years.

In the mid-1990s the Tory Party was mired in allegations of sleaze. The press was extremely hostile to the party. Neil was savaged by the gutter press.

The Guardian is the United Kingdom’s main left wing broadsheet newspaper. The Guardian excoriated Neil as ‘a liar and a cheat’ in a screaming headline. The left wing media had successfully depicted him as Mr. Sleaze. It was a perception that was very difficult to correct because of the Semmelweis Reflex. Once people get a notion in their minds it is all but impossible to disabuse them of this misapprehension even if one presents a mountain of the most irrefragable evidence.

In 1996 Neil and he co-claimant withdrew their libel action. They were panned for this in the press.

Conservative Central Office lent on Neil not to stand in the 1997 election. They said that even if he was innocent he was attracting enormous amounts of hostile press coverage. This was preventing the Conservative message getting out. They asked him if he would please announce that he would not seek re-election for the good of the party. Neil adamantly refused to do so. He was innocent and he would let his constituents vindicate him.

Tatton was the fourth safest Conservative seat in the UK. Neil had won in 1992 by 16 000 votes. His position seemed unassailable in spite of the extremely negative reportage on him in most of the press. But being misportrayed by the media for several years was taking a toll on Neil’s standing in the constituency.

The Parliamentary Standard Commissioner investigated Neil. Neil’s withdrawal of his libel action seemed to some to be confirmatory of his guilt. Some Tory MPs begged him to step aside but he would not budge. In those days CCO had no say whatsoever over whom a local Conservative Association picked as its candidate. Neil is perhaps the single greatest reason why CCO now has the legal power to block local Conservative associations from selecting candidates whom CCO finds uncongenial.

There was much unease in Tatton Conservative Association. Nevertheless, the majority of Tatton Tories stuck with Neil. They believed him to be the victim of a leftist smear campaign. His chief accuser was a pathological liar. Never trust a man who cannot even tell the truth about his own name of year of birth.

In April 1997 it was time for the Tatton Conservative Association to choose their candidate for the upcoming election. 182 Conservatives voted for Neil to be their candidate. 35 voted against him. There were 100 abstentions. That was not the ringing endorsement he wanted. Only 55% of Conservatives in the constituency had voted for him.

There were two other Conservative MPs who were dogged by sleaze allegations. They were Piers Merchant and Allan Stewart. Stewart sat for a seat in Scotland. Merchant had been the President of the Durham Union and by 1997 was the MP for Beckenham in Kent. The married middle aged Tory was having an affair with a 17 year old nightclub hostess named Anna Cox. An ICM poll for the Observer newspaper showed that Merchant and Stewart were both fairly popular in their seats in but that Neil’s popularity had evaporated. But many in Tatton viewed Neil as a slimeball.

For 3 years Neil had braved brutal headlines almost every single day. It proves how indomitable he is that he stood up to such bile from the media.

Jonathan Aitken – the Conservative MP for Thanet – was also facing allegations of taking unethical payments from Mohammed Fayed. At the time the scandal broke he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was spoken of as a future Prime Minister. A 6’4’’ lean marathon runner with chiseled features – he looked like a leader. He had impeccable establishment credentials – he was the son of a Canadian peer who was a war hero; he was the nephew of a newspaper magnate, Aitken also had an Eton and Oxford education behind him.  He had been a Fleet Street journalist and a war correspondent in Vietnam. He had once been the toast of the media for defending the free press and even being willing to risk prison for doing so. Jonathan Aitken was an Anglican lay preacher.  He had even been the boyfriend of Thatcher’s only daughter – Carol. Aitken dumped Carol because he was two-timing her: unbeknownst to Carol he was also going out with a Yugoslavian blonde named Lolicia. Aitken proposed to Lolicia and jilted Carol. People later asked Mrs. Thatcher why should would never give this talented young backbench MP a government post. Margaret Thatcher would never promote Aitken despite the blandishments of his many admirers. Why? He made Carol cry.

He had midwifed arms deals with Saudi Arabia which had netted him millions. Some felt that his eagerness to sell weapons to a cruel Islamist tyranny flew in the face of his much vaunted Christian faith. Saudi Arabia did not allow Christian worship. Anyone caught with a Bible or conducting prayer meetings would spend years in a fetid dungeon. The Saudi Government promoted anti-Christian forces in Sudan and the Philippines. How could a Christian defend such a regime? It seemed that Aitken had no conscience. He had a moral standard. His arms deal commission fee was a very high moral standard. Somehow money salved his qualms. His sexual infidelity did not sit well with his pharisaical posturing either.

A documentary called Jonathan of Arabia suggested that he had pimped for Arab princelings. The relentless press attacks in Aitken led to him eventually agreeing to resign. His presence in Cabinet was at the very least a distraction from the government’s message.

Aitken insisted he had not done so and he had paid for his stay in the Paris Ritz which was then owned by the Egyptian grocer. Mr. Aitken claimed his daughter and his Yugoslav wife Lolicia were with him Paris at the material time.  Aitken unwisely took out a libel action against the Guardian newspaper. Aitken pressured his teenage daughter into perjurious statements to help him out of a tight corner. In the end Guardian journalists were able to obtain records that proved that Mrs. Aitken and her daughter had lodged in a hotel in Switzerland on the night in question and thus could not possibly have been in Paris.

Jonathan Aitken swore on the Holy Bible before testifying in court. As he was a self-professed Christian who often preached in the Church of England it is particularly horrifying that he profaned the Christian faith by perjuring himself when he had sworn on the Good Book to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. His statements in court were proven to be false.

The Guardian later celebrated Aitken’s downfall. The headline was He lied and lied and lied.

Luke Harding is the Guardian scribbler who make Aitken his quarry over several years. He published a deeply disobliging biography of the Conservative cabinet minister. Aitken had the unenviable distinction of being the first politician to have a biography of him published titled The Liar.

Aitken was later sent down for perjury. His memoir Pride and Perjury is a riveting read and gives a sense of what the era was like for doom-stricken Tories. Aitken had always been a practicing Anglican. He really found Jesus anew in prison. When he came out he went to Oxford forty years after taking his first degree. Aitken was later ordained a Church of England priest.

In 1997 the election was called. The BBC journalist Martin Bell stood against Neil. Bell was then famous for his reportage from Yugoslavia in the midst of its wars. He had been shot whilst finishing a broadcast. This had made him a public hero. Bell was seen as the voice of reason and unpolitical. The media coverage of Martin Bell’s campaign was entirely favourable. His campaign was helped by the presence of his outstandingly nubile blonde daughter. Bell insisted on wearing a white suit throughout the campaign as if it were indicative of his purity. There was a media circus around him. Labour and the Lib Dems knew they had little chance of taking Tatton even though the press was almost universally negative towards Neil. But Labour and the Lib Dems knew that the Tories could lose the seat. Labour and the Lib Dems therefore withdrew their candidates. This gave Bell a clear run.

Had Labour and the Lib Dems not withdrawn their candidates then Neil would very likely have retained the seat albeit narrowly. Conversely, had Bell not stood but Labour and the Lib Dems fielded candidates then again it is highly probable that Neil would still have saved his seat but again not by a large margin.

Bell stood as the anti-corruption candidate. Neil disliked this label intensely and said it was deeply disingenuous. He wanted to ask Bell a question on camera. Neil sought out his challenger. Bell and Neil met each other on Knutsford Common and had a famous exchange filmed by the TV cameras. Neil’s insouciance was incredible. Neil said that by Martin Bell calling himself ‘anti-corruption’ this unmistakably implied that Neil was corrupt. Christine harangued Martin Bell. This transformed her from an unknown into a celebrity. Neil was remarkably restrained and courteous. Bell said he was independent and not anti-corruption. He extended the presumption of innocence to Neil. Neil then welcomed Bell as an independent candidate.

Labour possibly committed a grave blunder in withdrawing its candidate in Tatton. For Labour, Neil was a gift that kept on giving. As long as Neil was an MP the newspapers would be full of the headline ‘’Tory sleaze.’’ But if he was booted out of Parliament then he would no longer be so closely associated with the party. Strangely, Neil was worth more to Labour in Parliament than out of it. It was actually in Labour’s interests for Neil to win his seat. Depriving the Conservatives of one more seat was of negligible importance in an election where Labour was predicted to win and did win a staggering majority.

Bill Roach was a local celebrity from his role in the long running soap opera Coronation Street. He turned up to campaign for Neil. Neil still had friends in high places.

In the wee hours of 2 May the result was announced by the returning officer. Neil’s massive majority had been overturned. Bell beat him by a staggering 11 000 votes. It was a swing of an unprecedented 48%. Martin Bell won an unprecedented 60% of the vote. No one in Tatton had ever won by that much. There were three ‘independent conservatives’ who also stood as well as the usual collection of loonies who stand in high profile seats.

Martin Bell was Britain’s first independent MP in decades. Neil remained ever defiant. He swore he would be back in Parliament one day.

Bell served one term as MP for Tatton. He vowed he would not seek a second one. In 2001 he stood in Brentwood and Ongar against another Conservative. Bell said this was because the local Conservative Association had been taken over by a religious cult. It was staggering that he stood against a Conservative again when there were many pathological liars on the Labour benches – mainly Tony Blair. This time Bell was unsuccessful.

On 3 July 1997 the Downey report was published. It said that Neil had taken cash for questions. It specifically said that Neil had even been paid in brown paper envelopes. The Independent newspaper reported on it extensively. It suggested that the new Tory supremo William Hague expel Neil from his party if the Tories were ever to expunge the disgrace that clung to them.

The Downey Report savaged Michael Grylls and Michael Brown. Michael Grylls was an ex Royal Marines officer and then the MP for Chertsey and the father of Bear Grylls who is now Chief Scout.

The issue of Neil Hamilton remained divisive for several years in the constituency. In 1999 George Osborne sought to be selected as the Conservative candidate for the seat. The 28 year old Osborne was the heir to a wallpaper fortune. He had been educated at St Paul’s and Oxford. After a stint as a struggling political journalist he had worked for Tory Central Office. He found it prudent not to voice an opinion on Neil Hamilton. Some association members remained devoted to Neil. There were others who reviled him. Osborne went on to be elected in 2001. He later served as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Out of Parliament

John Major resigned as leader of the Conservative Party immediately after the electoral defeat. He stayed on in a caretaker capacity until such time as a replacement could be elected. William Hague was duly elected leader in June 1997. Hague was one of the youngest Tory MPs aged only 35. He was also the former Secretary of State for Wales. Hague was then dating a civil servant in the Welsh Office: Ffion. These days this would be considered deeply inappropriate. His Welsh connection did not endear him to Neil Hamilton.

Hague believed that the party badly needed to move on from the scandal-struck Major years. He implored Neil not to attend the 1997 conference. The Conservatives needed him there like they needed a hole in the head. Neil bowed to Hague’s entreaty and agreed not to show his face at the party conference.

On 9 May 1997 – five days after he lost his seat – Neil was on Have I Got News for You. Angus Deayton was the host of the penal game show. Deayton wore a white suit for the only ever time – it was redolent of Martin Bell’s white suit that he famously sported in the Tatton election. The Hamilton’s were paid their fee in brown paper envelopes. Neil hit back, ‘’I’ve found its much better making political jokes than being one.’’

Neil chose not to return to practice at the bar. He was sick of what he called ‘’a constipated profession’’ and said he would not be able to contain himself when dealing with judges – he would tell members of the bench what he really thought of them. What Neil and Christine did have was an awful lot of publicity. They started to monetize this.

In 1999 the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) invited Neil and Christine to be guests of honour at their termly dinner. OUCA was well known for holding ‘OUCA-holic’ events. The President of the Association was an eccentric alcoholic high camp homosexual of reactionary leanings named Steven Philip Doody. The boozy dinner went well enough. They then repaired to Steven’s set of rooms in Balliol College, Oxford for the after party. They were all well-oiled!

The Oxford Student newspaper published an article on the after party in Balliol. The headlined proclaimed ‘OUCA lurch to Reich wing.’

The after party involved choruses of songs in questionable taste such as a song to the melody of ‘Dashing through the snow’. The lyrics go: ‘dashing through the Reich/ In a black Mercedes benz/ killing lots of kikes/ rat a tat at at/ Mow ze buggers down/ Oh what fun it is to be/ ze SS in ze town/ Oh lebensraum/ lebensraum…’ This revolting song joking about the Holocaust was not considered ideal publicity for the new and inclusive Conservative Party. No one has said that Neil or Christine ever participated in singing these anti-Semitic songs or even knew the lyrics.

Christine by her own admission goes for anything in trousers. There was a law undergraduate from Christ Church named Will Goodhand. Christine and Will got along very well indeed! They snogged. On seeing this some Oxonians said, ‘’do it again for the camera.’’ The canoodling couple happily obliged. At the time Will was 19 and Christine was 50. So she was a bit young by Will’s standards!

The photo was sold to the Sun newspaper for several thousand pounds. That was a very tidy sum in 1999. Bear in mind undergraduate fees were GBP 1 000 per annum back then.

‘A minging Tory snog’ was the headline splashed across the front page of the Sun. Will Goodhand was seeing snogging Chirstine Hamilton.

The Hamiltons said those who had stooped so low as to sell this photo to the Sun ought to be ‘osctracised.’ Mrs. Hamilton commented that ‘’if he thinks that was a snog then he has a lot to learn.’’

Will Goodhand went along with the Sun and posed for photos with a Page Three girl. The article said he took her on a date punting and to dinner. The latter part is not true but they paid for Will to dine on his own. Will was later an unsuccessful Conservative parliamentary candidate and a semi-successful radio DJ.

On 16 January 1997 Mohammed Fayed went on the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches. Fayed said that Neil had been given cash payments totally GBP 110 000 over several years and had been given Harrod’s gift vouchers free of charge as well as being allowed to stay at the Paris Ritz for free on a long weekend in 1987. All this was in payment for Neil asking questions for Fayed in the House of Commons. Neil always admitted that he had stayed in the Paris Ritz Hotel at Fayed’s expense but insisted that there was no impropriety involved in accepting the free hospitality.

In 1999 Martin Bell MP went to address the Oxford Union. His predecessor as the MP for Tatton decided to surprise Mr. Bell. Neil is a life member of the Cambridge Union. There is reciprocity of membership or one might even say mutuality between the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union. Neil and Christine attended the meeting and sat in the front row much to Bell’s chagrin. He was egregiously discombobulated to see them there. At the Union Neil’s old chum Fr David Johnson entertained him royally. The late Fr Johnson was then on the Standing Committee of the Oxford Union. He was its oldest ever member aged 45.

On 31 July 1998 Neil’s libel action was given a court listing. Though Neil was a barrister himself he chose not to defend himself. Defamation was not his area of law. He had many supporters who contributed most liberally to his legal fighting fund.

Neil still had friends in high places. Lord Harris of High Cross donated to Neil Hamilton’s libel action fund as he had done in 1984. Taki contributed to his legal costs as did Lord Harris of High Cross. The Earl of Portsmouth also contributed. Gerald Howarth MP contributed as did Gyles Brandreth (former Tory MP for Chester and television show presenter), the right wing curmudgeon journalist Simon Heffer, Lord Bell and Peter Clarke. There were only 165 Tory MPs left in 1997 and 40 of them contributed to the fighting fund. That was a staggering level of support given the wall to wall vitriol against Neil in the popular press. Over GBP 410 000 was raised. Libel is an astonishingly expensive business. A single day in court with a junior barrister will set you back at least several thousand pounds.

Defamation cases can be heard by a judge or by a jury. If the parties cannot agree which way the case will be tried then the judge shall determine which means of trying the case will be serve the interests of justice. The trouble with a jury is that Neil’s name had been dragged through the mire for years before the case opened. Therefore many jurors may have been prejudiced against him. The press had been traducing him and it would be very hard for jurors to put this out of their minds.

If Neil won the case his reputation would be restored, he would win hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation and he could get his seat back. Neil and Christine were bullish about their chances of winning. That is suggestive of innocence. Why would they stake everything on it if they were culpable?

In November 1999 the trial began. The judge had to ascertain that the jury was not biased. Fayed owned Fulham Football Club. He asked if there were any Fulham supporters on the jury. To public amusement it emerged that none of them were Fulham fans.

In the case Fayed was asked why he called himself Al Fayed when his surname was actually ‘Fayed’. ‘’Call me Al Capone if you liked’’ he quipped to gales of laughter.

Fayed repeated his claim in court that Neil had been paid cash in brown paper envelopes sometimes these were handed to Neil by Fayed’s staff and sometime the payments were made via Ian Greer.  Neil repeated his denial that he had ever accepted an ob from Fayed, either directly or via an intermediary but said it was true that he had stayed in Fayed’s hotel for free. The counsel for Neil said that Fayed’s false statements had ruined Neil’s good name.

Fayed hired the foremost QC of the day: George Carman. Mohammed Fayed was in the witness box against Neil. The case lasted 6 weeks. Jonathan Aitken is another former Conservative MP who was hit with sleaze allegations. Aitken described being cross-examined by Carman as being ‘’carmanised.’’ Carman is the only barrister whose name became a verb! He was a fearsome advocate. Carman had had his old university friend Jeremy Thorpe sensationally acquitted of conspiracy to murder in 1979. Thorpe was the erstwhile leader of the Liberal Party.

Neil and Christine were both cross-examined by the fearsome George Carman QC. Carman QC asked Neil if he had been corrupt in 1989 when he asked Mobil Oil for GBP 10 000 to table an amendment on a finance bill. Neil was then on the House of Commons Select Committee on Finance.

George Carman QC the continued to cross examine Neil. Neil would usually gave lengthy answers that to some gave an impression of chicanery. Carman would then snort contumeliously, ‘’you finished?’’ Surprisingly the judge did not reprimand Carman for such ungentlemanly conduct. But Neil’s loquacity appeared to be his undoing. It seemed to have a negative impact on the jury’s view of him.

There was some sympathy for Fayed so soon after his son’s death. The public, particularly in London, was still egregiously anti-Conservative. This may have prejudiced the jury.

On 21 December 1999 the jury found for Fayed on the basis of justification. His utterances regarding Neil were held to be substantially veracious. Neil was branded corrupt.

Neil and his wife came out of the Royal Courts of Justice. They appeared as though they were gazing into hell. He had bet the bank on winning the case and restoring his reputation and political career. Now he was doomed. Down into the abyss he would have to go. Some people would have been driven to suicide by this calamity.

Neil appealed and lost. He sought leave to appeal again this time to the House of the Lords which at the time functioned as the Supreme Court. Leave was denied.

On 27 May 2001 Neil declared bankruptcy. This was because he was unable to pay his legal fees and Fayed’s costs. These amounted to a staggering GBP 3 million. Being a bankrupt this forfended practicing at the bar or being an MP. Neil vowed that Fayed would not get a penny. All his earnings went to his goodwife because she was not bankrupt. He was discharged from bankruptcy three years later.

On 30 March 2000 Neil went on Da Ali G Show which was then brand new. It was hosted by Sacha Baron-Cohen in his persona of Ali G – a racially ambivalent shell suit wearing educationally subnormal rude boy, capo of the West Staines Massive who poses as a petty drug dealer but in fact comes from a boringly bourgeois background. In it Ali G proffers a cannabis cigarette to Neil which he happily smoked.

In a later edition of Da Ali G Show the guest was Mohammed Fayed. In it Ali G asked the Egyptian shopkeeper what he would say to Neil Hamilton if Neil were there. Fayed replied, ‘’Nothing. To me he is nothing.’’ Ali G then claimed that Neil had said he had seen Fayed wearing women’s lingerie. Fayed denied it and said ‘’he is the one who is doing that. He is very well known for that.’’ Ironically Neil did appear in ladies undergarments years later as part of a theatrical production. That was the Rocky Horror Show where he wore high heels and a basque.

There were still some political groups who were keen to hear from Neil. The Springbok Club invited Neil to address them. The club was for South Africans resident in the Home Counties. They displayed the apartheid era South African colours. Mr. Hamilton said he was pleased to speak in front of the ‘’true flag of South Africa.’’ Leftists took it as an endorsement of racialism.

After 2001 the Hamilton’s had to rebuild their financial position. They appeared on numerous quiz shows. They were on celebrity ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ to raise money for charity. When they underperformed Christine was visibly distressed at having let down needy people.

The couple appeared on posh nosh and other shows.

Neil and Christine traveled to the Republic of Ireland because they were invited on The Late, Late Show. The show was the most popular chat show on Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE) which is the Irish Republic’s principal channel. On RTE they were interviewed by the late Gay Byrne. Gabriel ‘Gay’ Bryne was Ireland’s foremost presenter for decades. Before going on air the couple had addressed the Law Society of University College Dublin (UCD). There were plenty UCD law undergraduates in the studio audience and they afforded the Hamilton’s a very hearty welcome.

Neil wrote an enthralling booked titled Great Political Eccentrics. He also penned another engrossing tome called Politics’ Strangest Characters. Did Neil write whereof he knew? He has never been accused of normality.

The Hamilton’s sold their Cheshire home for GBP 1.25 million. That was a very tidy sum at the time more like GBP 3 million in the values of 2023.

Upon selling their Cheshire domicile the Hamilton’s shifted to Hullavington, Wiltshire in October 2004.

In When Louis Met the Hamilton’s, Neil said that he and Christine were ‘’professional objects of curiosity.’’ Some said they were a circus act.

While on When Louis Met the Hamilton’s, Neil is show exercising in Hyde Park. As he said himself he was not bad for a 51 year old man. He has never been fat.

In some shows Neil seemed himself. He was confident and garrulous as usual. On other shows he appeared to be stiff and inhibited. No all media suited him.

MacIntyre is a show fronted by an eponymous Dubliner. Mr. MacIntyre had Neil on his show when he was helping the police. They winkled out wanted criminals by sending them letters saying they had won a competition and were due to be awarded a prize. As Neil was so often seen on game shows his presence lent this cover story some credibility.

Christine acquired herself a richly deserved reputation for being an outrageous flirt. No man was safe! Women of Britain: lock up your sons! And fathers and grandfathers. In spite of her pantherine sexuality, in fairness to her, no one has ever suggested that her behaviour has gone beyond mere coquetry.

Christine and Neil often appeared in pantomimes. It turned out that they had an exceptional gift for acting. They became a stable of quiz shows. They were on the Weakest Link hosted by Anne Robinson and on Ready Steady Cook. Neil competed on a celebrity edition of Mastermind on 26 December 2004. In 2005 Neil went on 18 Stone of Idiot and he danced in a Perspex box while the morbidly obese comedian Johnny Vegas and someone else poured buckets of fish over him. The price of political failure was not too high!

The couple appeared on Loose Women. Neil said the secret of his marriage’s success was ‘’I find we get on very well if I do exactly as I am told.’’

The Guardian dubbed Neil ‘’an all-purpose Z list celebrity.’’ He was perceived as an unpolitical figure. But the Noughties he was famous for being famous. He may never has asked cash for questions. By 2000 he was being questioned for cash.

Christine Hamilton went on Have I got news for you? The satirical news quiz show. The host mercilessly lampooned the Hamilton’s. It paid their fee in brown paper envelopes. This was an allusion to how Fayed claimed he had paid Neil.

Louis Theroux then did a show called ‘when Louis met’ and he usually encountered extraordinary freaks. Louis Theroux is the British born son of the celebrated American travel writer Paul Theorux. Louis is a skinny, bespectacled, so self-assured that he is soft-spoken and unassuming chap who was educated at Westminster and Oxford. He is a man over whom women swoon.  In 2000 he did one with Neil and Christine Hamilton.

Neil blazed a trail. He was the very first ex-politician to become a star of reality TV. Since then others have sought to reinvent themselves as media figures.

In 2003 Nadine Milroy-Sloan, the false accuser, was awarded a three year prison sentence. It was a disgracefully light sentence bearing in mind the far longer sentence that would have been given to Neil had he been wrongfully convicted. She was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Max Clifford who had represented Miss Milroy-Sloan paid Neil a sum of money in compensation. Part of the agreement was that the figure be kept secret.

Milroy-Sloan was a habitual liar. In 2014 she was again imprisoned for falsely accusing her ex-boyfriend of threatening her with a sword.

In the summer of 2000 Neil and Christine Hamilton was falsely accused of the rape of a woman. On 10 August 2001 the couple was arrested pursuant to a rape investigation.

Christine said that this accusation was ‘’lies on stilts’’. Indeed the couple had probative evidence that they were miles away from the scene of the alleged crime at the material time. They were dining with Derek Laud who corroborated their alibi. When the investigation started the couple were being filmed for When Louis met the Hamilton’s which was part of a series wherein Louis Theroux met interesting freaks At first Louis was entirely unaware of the rape allegation. In the back of a Range Rover Neil said that they had a story for Louis and most people would charge him extra for it but that they were giving it to Louis for free when Neil dropped a bombshell saying that they had been false accused of rape.

 The Sunday Times wrote ‘’they deserve less sympathy than most’’ but acknowledged that the couple had been blackguarded. Christine read the article aloud on the reality TV show When Louis met the Hamilton’s.

Their calumniator was subsequently awarded a three year prison sentence. The publicist who did most to disseminate these utterly bogus claims was Max Clifford. Clifford was a Labour donor who later went to prison for sex crimes.

Neil and Christine went into writing.

 Great British political eccentrics is a very readable book by Neil. He is a soi-disant eccentric. In it he featured Nabbaro, Screaming Lord Sutch, Roy Jenkins and others. Neil had little sympathy for Lord Roy Jenkins whom he lampooned. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead was a Welsh Labourite who sat for an English seat. He was the Home Secretary who shepherded through a piece of legislation that has killed over ten million British children. He later split from Labour to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). His splitting the anti-Tory vote handed the entire 1980s to the Conservative Party. Thanks Roy! He later became Chancellor of Oxford University.

Neil later wrote a thoroughly engrossing tome called Politics’ Strangest Characters. In this book he mused on the curious case of Treibitsch Lincoln. The weird and wonderful Lincoln was born into a Jewish family in Hungary. After studying at the Royal Hungarian Academic of Dramatic art he moved to the United Kingdom. He managed to have himself selected as a Liberal candidate in 1910 and was returned to Parliament. He sat there only between January and December 1910. 1910 is the only year bar 1974 in which the United Kingdom held two general elections. Lincoln’s story grew ever more bizarre. He ended up in Tibet in the 1940s where he died – possibly poisoned by German agents.

Christine published a tome titled the bumper book of Great British battleaxes.

Neil appeared in numerous shows. They have acted in pantomimes.

In 2002 the Hamilton’s resigned from the Conservative and Unionist Party after 35 years of stalwart service. They joined the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Nigel Farage was then one of the most prominent UKIP Members of the European Parliament. Farage recalled luncheon with the Hamilton’s. He claimed that half way through he felt a hand on his knee. It was Christine! She was a notorious man eater. It is a fate that befell even me. She ruffled my hair and twittered ‘’oh what a lovely boy you are.’’

Christine forged a media career in her own right. She has been a columnist and a television reviewer. She has been on countless talk shows. She was a star turn in I’m a celebrity get me out of here wherein she was exiled to the Australian jungle for a few weeks.

In 2003 the Hamilton’s were invited to address the sixth form of Oundle School. Their car broke down and they were unable to make it. The school wanted them so badly that it arranged another occasion for them to speak. In his oration Neil said that there was a certain level below which support for the Conservatives would not go. Rock bottom was about 30%. He made disobliging remarks about Conservative leaders – Hague and Iain Duncan Smith IDS. IDS was such a lamentable choice for leader that people joked his initials stood for ‘’in deep shit.’’

Ironically Neil had far more influence outside Parliament than he had inside it.

UKIP was keen that a household name stand for Parliament. Neil and Christine declined to do so. They said ‘’we’ve done politics.’’ They needed to earn some money and buy themselves a decent house. This they eventually succeeded in doing. They purchased a home in Wiltshire.

In 2004 Neil and Christine attended an event in Oxford to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of D Day. The fete was held in the, alas and alack, now defunct pub called the Far from the Madding Crowd on Friar’s Entry. It was organized by Rev Fr David Johnson. Present were fifty persons including the Canadian High Commissioner (‘’call me Mel’’) and the morbidly obese and bearded Luxembourgish Ambassador straight from central casting.

Neil is never short of an opinion. He said he exalts David Lloyd George as the first Welshman to rise to the office of Prime Minister and one who made the political weather for a generation. That is despite Neil disagreeing with Lloyd George’s collectivist policies which paved the way for socialism.

Tony Blair attracts particular hostility and disdain from Neil. He scorns Blair’s so called ethical foreign policy and believe that Iraq War was calamitous.

In 2006 the Hamilton’s released a song for the Football World Cup. It was titled ‘England are Jolly Dee’. That was notwithstanding neither of them caring a fig about the sport and Neil is not actually English. Nor were either of them remotely musical. Full marks for effort!

In 2008 Neil and Christine founded Vixen Consultants Limited. This dealt with their media appearance. It trades under the name of Vixen Consultants. Neil is company secretary.

By the 2010s the Hamilton’s star was waning. The days of the 1990s when they had wall to wall coverage (whether wanted or unwanted) were over. They were all but unknown to the junior generation. It was at this point that Neil decided to throw his hat into the political ring once more.

In September 2011 Neil went to UKIP’s autumn conference. Nigel Farage was then leading the party. Farage endorsed him to stand for election to the National Executive Committee of the party. Neil was elected on 1 November 2011. He then served as deputy chairman of UKIP. Neil later became campaign director in April 2014. In May 2014 he sought to be elected in Wandsworth London Borough Council. He stood for St Mary’s ward. There were 9 candidates and Neil came a distant 8^th. London is not fertile soil for UKIP. The British capital is one of the most ardently Europhile areas in the country.

Arron Banks was the main UKIP financial backer. In private emails he dubbed Neil ‘’a corrupt old Tory’’

In 2014 Neil provoked wrath once again when he said that decent BNP voters were turning to UKIP. The British National Party as recently as the 1990s was an openly white supremacist party which sought to deprive non-white Britons of their British citizenship and expel them. It had denied the Holocaust and stoked odium against Muslims. Some say there is no such thing as a decent BNP voter. But it is an objective statement of fact that quite a few people who formerly voted BNP then cast their ballots for UKIP.

On 5 May 2016 Neil stood to be a member of what was then styled the National Assembly for Wales. UKIP was riding high because of the Brexit referendum. Neil was elected as a list Member of the Senedd (MS) for Mid and West Wales. Senedd is the Welsh word for ‘parliament’. He soon became the leader of the UKIP faction in the Welsh Assembly. The Welsh Assembly was subsequently renamed the Welsh Parliament in 2020. 7 UKIP MS’s were elected to the Welsh Assembly in 2016. All of them came in via the regional list system. UKIP never had anyone elected to Cardiff for a constituency.

Just five days after being elected to the Welsh Assembly, Neil was elected leader of UKIP in the assembly. He ousted Nathan Gill. Farage was the leader of the party and criticized the move. UKIP should not be fighting UKIP. Neil said Farage should not interfere in an internal Welsh matter and said that Farage was throwing a tantrum. Neil reminded the public that Farage was a Member of the European Parliament for South-East England and had never even stood for election in Wales.

In that legislature Neil continued to vocalise his forthright views. He said he was immensely gratified to be serving in the Land of my fathers – calling to mind the Welsh patriotic song. He was the only MS not to reside in the principality. Bigots tried to exploit this to portray him as somehow an alien and unfit to represent a region of Wales.

Nathan Gill was so dischuffed at being ousted by Neil that Gill left UKIP. He sat as an independent.

Neil made a barnstorming maiden speech in the Welsh Assembly. He also dubbed Kirsty Williams and Leanne Wood ‘’concubines’’ and said they were in a harem. Feminists were not best pleased. The talentless ex-social worker Leanne Wood was a Plaid Cymru MS and later became leader of the party. Stroppy, far left, eurofanatic, politically correct, anti-monarchist, bigoted and viciously intolerant – la Wood was not exactly Neil’s cup of cha.

A loony leftist MS named Eluned Morgan said that Brexit would hurt the poorest most. Neil Hamilton unkindly blurted out ‘’suicide’s an option.’’ The Presiding Officer called upon Neil to say sorry. He declined to do so, ‘’what is there to apologise for? What was unparliamentary about the remark?’’ In the end he said, ‘’I apologise for whatever remark I am supposed to have made.’’

Neil courted controversy in 2018 by speaking up for the late Enoch Powell. Powell had been the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South-West and later an Ulster Unionist MP for Down South. Powell was notorious for his 1968 Rivers of Blood oration in which he said that non-white immigration was an existential threat to the United Kingdom. Powell was defended by Neil and said that Powell was no ghoul. Neil said that while large scale racial violence that Powell had forecast had not transpired, Powell was correct inasmuch as social change had been wrought by mass immigration and it was unwanted by most of the UK populace. Neil said that Powell was right to speak up for ordinary people when the elite chose to disregard these well-founded concerns.

Leanne Wood then denounced Neil saying that he was keeping racism alive. A Labour assemblyman said that Neil’s remarks were outrageous.

In 2019 Neil stood in a by-election in Newport West. He came third and polled a respectable 8.6%. Newport West had been a Labour seat for a century.

In 2020 the BLM movement began to demand that some statutes be taken down in Wales when the statute was a likeness of someone who had been involved in the slave trade. BLM wanted a statue of Mr. Pickton removed from Cardiff City Hall and Pickton Street renamed. They also sought the removal of another statue in Carmarthen. To Neil’s eternal credit he refused to be morally blackmailed by the racism industry.

Neil vociferously argued that the statue ought to remain in situ and that Pickton Street retain its name. He denounced BLM as Marxist and said it aimed at the erasure of Wales’ heritage. BLM proposed to put a statue of George Floyd in room of Pickton. Floyd was murdered by the police in the USA. Neil accused Floyd of being a drug peddler.

Unfortunately there is a rising tide of far left bigots demanding the abolition of British national pride. Neil set his face like flint against these socialists seditionists.

In 2020 Freddy Vachha, the UKIP leader, was forced out. Neil became acting leader of UKIP. He later became its substantive leader.

In 2021 Neil was the only UKIP representative other than local councilors.

In 2021 in the election to the Welsh Parliament, Neil chose not to seek re-election in Mid and West Wales. Instead he stood in South Wales East. It was possible a mistake. He was top of UKIP’s regional list.

BBC Wales held a main leaders’ debate. However. They did not invite the UKIP leader on saying that it was a minor party. Neil was invited to speak in a minor leaders’ debate alongside the leaders of the Green Party and Reform UK.

Neil stood in Islwyn. This was the onetime Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s former bailiwick. But Hamilton performed worse than the other Neil! He polled only 507 votes – coming 6^th.

All UKIP politicians failed to be elected to the Welsh Parliament.

In 2018 Neil was himself pushed out as UKIP leader in the Welsh Assembly. He was supplanted by Caroline Jones.

In 2018 the then leader of UKIP Gerard Batten said that a vote would be held to elect the UKIP leader in Wales. Whoever won would lead the party’s delegation in the Welsh Assembly and would be the Cymric voice of the party. Gareth Bennett MS, Miss Jones and Neil Hamilton all contested it. Bennett won. Nonetheless, Hamilton said he respected Bennett and would cooperate with him.

On 12 September 2020 Neil was elected leader of the UK Independence Party. He won 498 votes out of 631. That meant 79% of the total vote. He defeated John Poynton. Membership had collapsed. Most talented and ambitious UKIPers had decamped to the newly founded Brexit Party (now called Reform UK). That included the sometime leader of UKIP – Nigel Farage.

When Neil took over UKIP was in poor shape. The membership had fallen off a cliff. Its finances were shocking. As Brexit had happened it seemed that UKIP had lost its raison d’etre. People were bored rigid of the EU issue. But Neil insisted that the Tory Brexit had been half-hearted at best. In spite of Neil’s most valiant efforts, UKIP is largely a one man band. It has trouble garnering much media attention. Neil does his level best to keep the UKIP show on the road. But the membership is elderly, donations are paltry and public opinion is shifting towards seeking readmission to the EU. In truth the party shall probably not long survive him.

In 2021 Neil was ‘liberated’ in his own words from the Welsh Parliament.

In 2022 he attended the memorial service of Fr. David Johnson.

When Brexit came Neil believed that the United Kingdom had benefitted precious little therefrom. He wanted a hard Brexit and argued that the United Kingdom has not used its Brexit freedoms fully. Nonetheless, he was impressed by Boris Johnson’s drive and ambition. Neil has thought aloud about rejoining the Conservative Party but concluded, ‘’I am a bit long in the tooth to do that.’’

The UKIP position on Ukraine is that Ukraine must free itself from Russian aggression and tyranny. The United Kingdom must back Kyiv to the hilt.

Neil expressed his disagreement with reparations for slavery. He said it is ludicrous. He also disagrees with taking down statues of those who trafficked in slaves. This would lead to the razing of all Roman architecture.

By 2022 Christine had had enough of being in the media spotlight. She voiced her desire to leave all that behind and to finally regain some privacy. A quarter of a century as a public figure has been more than enough.

One of the happiest and most marvelous things Neil has achieved and the thing that has sustained him through many disasters, is his marriage. Adversity appears only to have drawn the couple closer when it would have sundered many other marriages. It is surely one of the most resoundingly successful celebrity marriages of the present day. The Hamilton’s have plenty of sworn enemies. But even their most implacable foes have never accused the Hamilton’s of being unfaithful to the marital bed. What extraordinary serendipity that these star crossed lovers should have met so young

Did Neil ask cash for questions? He has never wavered in his denials in over 29 years. Perhaps finally he ought to be believed.

A peerage for this political titan is long overdue.

Neil Hamilton

His own man?

Showman?

Questions for cash?

The greatest prime minister we never had.

National treasure

Hero

Saviour

Genius of Brexit

Neil Hamilton is one of the most famous or perhaps infamous ex-MPs of modern times. Though he was a passionate parliamentarian it is a curious twist of fate that he had achieved far greater sway once he lost his seat. Barrister, university lecturer, journalist, campaigner, MP, Assembly Member, teacher, quiz show contestant, talk show guest, actor, interviewer, controversialist, contarian, transvestite, bon vivant, author, media factotum extraordinaire and all round national treasure – Neil is truly one of a kind. Ebullient, amiable, affable, gallant, garrulous, telegenic, bankrupt, bankable, intelligent, elegant, avaricious, dapper, debonair, sanguine, bonhomous, irrepressible, innovative, opinionated, outspoken, unbreakable, querulous, quixotic, resilient, unflappable, enervating, disputatious, shameless, faithful, always immaculately attired and seldom captious – Neil is a man of many parts. I have long been adazzle by his gifts and his chequered story. How can one possibly do justice to such a multitalented man whose life has had such triumphs and such travails? There has scarcely be a dull moment.

Notwithstanding being brutalized by the left wing gutter press for years, Neil never once lost his composure. He defied the insults and rose above them. He never resorts to vulgarities. Throughout his travails, ever bore himself with a dignity that it would profit others to study.

Given the slings and arrows of outrageous reportage that Neil suffered it is inexplicable that he never resorted to contumely or Anglo-Saxonisms. He is a man not given to wild emotion.

A man of prodigious gifts and endless energy yet he never achieved the high ministerial office to which he aspired. He was too incautious, farouche and perhaps unembarrassable for his own good. As one ex-Tory MP said to me of Neil, ‘’he had no sense of danger’’. Neil is certainly no Westminster cardboard cut-out.

For 20 years Neil was one of Britain’s most colourful and instantly recognizable characters. That is all the more surprising given that he is undemonstrative. He is not visually arresting. Neither unusually tall nor short – Neil is not obese nor skinny. His dress sense is a little old fashioned. Yet somehow he garnered endless media attention – much of it unsought and even unwanted.

Tatton was the constituency that Neil graced with his presence from 1983 to 1997. It would be fair to say that he is not universally adored in his former Cheshire stomping ground. He later brought levity and controversy to the once staid National Assembly for Wales. He now enjoys an uncharacteristically quiet retirement in rural Wiltshire

Neil’s political career was dogged by allegations of cash for questions that refused to go away. He made some powerful enemies. A meretricious Egyptian billionaire Mohammed Fayed was a deadly foe of his. The Guardian newspaper was hellbent on bringing Neil down. Most of Fleet Street was extremely hostile to Neil in the 1990s. A lesser man would have cracked under the strain. Seeing vicious headlines about his splashed across the front pages of several newspaper day after day was more than enough to destroy the average person. But Neil is so much more than a mere normal man.

The 1997 election was a seismic shift from Conservative to Labour. But during Labour’s landslide election one seat attracted more media coverage than any other. That was Tatton where Neil stood and lost.

There was a time in the late 90s and early Noughties when Neil Hamilton was a household name. You could not turn on your telly without seeing Neil and Christine.

Background

Mostyn Neil Hamilton was born on 9 March 1949 in the United Kingdom. He has always been known by his middle name: Neil. Mostyn is a place in Wales and perhaps significantly this name is de-emphasised like Neil’s Welsh heritage.

It was in 4 Trelyn, Lane, Fleur de-Lis that Neil was born. The house was that of Neil’s paternal aunt. Fleur de-Lis that boasts being Neil’s birthplace. It is in the district of Bedwellty in Monmouthshire. It is not far from the small town of Blackwood. Monmouthshire a county that has passed back and forth between Wales and England. It is the most anglicized part of Wales. The illegitimate son of Charles II was styled the Duke of Monmouth: he of the ill-fated 1685 Rebellion. But apart from that Monmouth and Monmouthshire are names one seldom hears.

Some doubted that Monmouth is Welsh at all. The Welsh Guards once advertised for recruits saying they must be from Wales or Monmouthshire impliedly saying that Monmouthshire is not in Wales. When Neil was eleven they moved to Ammanford, Carmarthen. Neil never particularly stressed his Welsh identity. He was always a committed unionist.

Bedwellty has now been assigned to the County of Gwent.

Neil was born is very close to Abertillery: a rock solid Labour constituency that he was to contest 15 years later. His birthplace is also close to other places that are legendary for their socialist fervor: Islwyn and Ebbw Vale. The latter being the seat of Welsh Labour’s most famous son Nye Bevan and later the seat of the sometime leader of the Labour Party: Michael Foot. Bedwellty became part of the Islwyn constituency that was later represented by Neil Kinnock who was leader the Labour Party from 1983-92. Kinnock was known as the Welsh windbag for his verbose and tedious oratory. He and Neil Hamilton were not in sympathy. When Kinnock was sent upstairs to the House of Lords he styled himself Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty.

The appeal of Labour to those in coalmining communities is not hard to understand. Before Labour was founded as the Labour Representation Committee in 1894 conditions for most people in South Wales were grim indeed. It was one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the United Kingdom. Most people left school at 12. Men toiled for decades in horrific conditions underground for poverty pay. Coal mining was extraordinarily dangerous. Shafts collapsed and sometimes there were gas explosions. Dozens were killed every years and many were injured. Many of the injured could not afford treatment. There was no disability benefit. Workhouses still existed. The aristocrats who owned the coalmines were filthy rich despite not doing a day’s work. It all seemed grossly unjust. Labour promised to make life better for the great majority of people who were poor. There was an awful lot of avoidable suffering and Labour wanted to alleviate this. The Conservatives and Liberals offered no such solutions. Their MPs were mostly upper class or middle class. By contrast Labour MPs of that generation were usually identifiably working class. By the time Neil was born Labour was building the welfare state. It had made life significantly better for the majority of people. Back then 65% of people called themselves working class. Class identity was strong. People aligned behind political parties often on a class basis.

Disraeli’s dictum is that the Church of England is the Tory Party at prayer. This was never accurate but there was a grain of truth to it. Note that for centuries the Anglican Church in Wales was known as the Church of England. This irked many as disrespectful to Wales.  It is now called the Church in Wales not the Church of Wales. By the time of Neil’s birth most Welsh people were Nonconformists of some stripe or other: Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists or even like David Lloyd George – Disciples of Christ. Very few working class Welsh people were Church of England. Being an active Nonconformist correlated with voting for Labour, the Liberals or even Plaid Cymru (the Party of Wales). The Church of England was said by Disraeli to be the Tory Party at prayer. This was inaccurate but contained a grain of truth.

The Hamilton’s lived in Wales where coalmining was the main industry. Neil’s father was the chief engineer for a mining company. Both his grandfathers had been down the mines. Though conditions in the pits were often ghastly it was relative handsomely remunerated. It was danger money.

The surname Hamilton relates to a town in the Scots Lowlands: Hamilton. There is indeed a Duke of Hamilton. There is a surname ‘Hamill’ as well.

The Britain that Neil grew up in was very different from today. In 1949 under 1% of the population was non-white. In Wales it was more like 0.1% and in Carmarthen even less than that. Back then being Irish was considered to be ethnically diverse. Most people had never eaten rice other than in rice pudding. Indian and Chinese restaurants were all but unknown. The Second World War was still a very recent memory. Almost all items were still rationed. The British Empire was extant and was assumed to have long way yet to run. There was National Service. This meant that young men had to do two years in the army, Royal Navy, Royal Marines or RAF. There were exemptions for conscientious objectors, the disabled, parliamentary candidates and doctors. Doctors could perform their service by providing medical care in the colonies. Before the Suez Crisis of 1956, the British Empire was assumed to have a long way yet to run. Men only a few years older than Neil did National Service but it was phased out in 1963 so Neil did not have to do it.

Labour had won a sweeping victory in 1945. Labour’s Attorney-general Sir Hartley Shawcross said, ‘’we are the masters now and not just for now but for a very long time to come.’’ It was widely forecast that the Conservatives would be out of office for a generation. It was to general astonishment that the Tories won office again in 1951. That was only by fluke since Labour won more votes but the vagaries of the first past the post system awarded more seats to the Conservative and Unionist Party.

In Neil’s childhood the Cold War was at its height. Capitalism was seriously questioned. There was thought to be a strong chance that communism would triumph.

The 1950s was a time of austerity at first. The United Kingdom was decidedly bland compared to today. It was only just recovering from the war. But rationing was being phased out the UK entered a sustained economic boom. Unemployment was very low, inflation was low and consumer goods were becoming ever more affordable. Strikes almost never occurred. Cars and televisions came within reach for the middle class. The working class had disposable incomes like never before. To people who remembered the Great Depression and the Second World War, the 1950s seemed splendid. The Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told people ‘’you’ve never had it so good.’’ Supermac was right. Yet relative poverty still existed. Foreign holidays were the preserve of the few, nay, the very few. Most Britons had never been on a plane. The remotest villages still did not have electricity in the 1950s. Most people still kept their houses warm in winter with coal and logs crackling on the hearth. Central heating was not the norm until the 1960s.

Despite the economy growing, 1950s Britain was monochromatic compared to today. Many Britishers thought that there was a better life to be had in sunnier climes. They had the automatic right to immigrate to Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. There was even the assisted passage scheme. The UK Government even sent orphans to Australia. Why was Britain trying to get rid of its people as it brought in people from the ‘New Commonwealth’ of Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Kenya? The Commonwealth was very much the frame of reference. Few Britons thought of themselves as being European.

Unemployment was so low in fact that there was a paucity of workers in some regions and in certain sectors of the economy. This caused the Conservative Government to invite immigration from the Commonwealth and indeed colonies which back then still existed. Her Majesty’s Government specifically asked people from Caribbean countries and South Asia to move to the United Kingdom to work. One of those Conservative cabinet ministers who invited doctors and nurses from the West Indies to come and work in the UK was a certain John Enoch Powell!

Neil had grandparents living in Portsmouth.

Neil grew up in one of the most overwhelmingly pro-Labour areas of the UK. Neil was a born dissident. He loathed the idea that the state would control everything. Growing up in a small town run by a smug, corrupt and self-serving Labour council he saw the Conservatives as representing liberty. At the age of 15 Neil joined the Conservative and Unionist Party. It was a highly unusual move. It proves he is broadminded and even has moral courage. Labour had just come into office under Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. But was already a convinced anti-socialist. Neil has always been notable for his utter fealty to the House of Windsor.

Although Neil is Welsh he was brought up in an Anglophone family. He later learnt some Welsh though as he says himself he can only make ‘’a fair stab’’ at speaking the language. When he was at school Welsh was hardly ever taught. His education was conducted exclusively through the medium of English.

Something of Neil’s character may have come from him growing up middle class in a very working class town. His family was much better off than many of their neighbours. He regularly went to England to visit relatives. This emphasized in him the oneness of the United Kingdom. Therefore his Conservatism and his Unionism were not swimming against the tide quite as much as one may have imagined.

Growing up in a small town can induce the small town mentality. But it can also do the opposite. Neil is not timid and embraces cosmopolitanism.

As soon as Neil opened his mouth it was plain that he was given to ‘yappin’ to use the Cymro-English colloquialism. He was to make his life by talking.

At school Neil did well academically. However, he was no sportsman. His eccentricities did not make him popular. He was unafraid and paid a price for his outspokenness.  Despite attending a state school he did not acquire a Welsh accent but spoke Received Pronunciation. The only state educated Welshman who speaks with that accent from Neil’s generation is a Swansea grammar school boy – Michael Howard. Lord Howard was a Tory Home Secretary and later Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

Neil passed his 11+. In those days children sat this exam in English and Maths. The top 20% went to grammar school and had some chance of going to university. In a grammar school pupils were taught subjects such as the sciences, ancient languages, modern languages and humanities subjects. They would sit Ordinary levels (O levels). They were the equivalent of GCSEs but were harder than ‘A’ levels are now. Then pupils could sit A levels aged 18. A levels were extremely challenging. Even a D grade was hard to get.

In 1963 only 4% of people went to university. But universities were expanding rapidly in the 1960s.

Those who did not pass the 11+ (80% of the population) went to a secondary modern where they would do some English and Maths and learn trades like woodwork, metalwork, sewing, cookery and suchlike before leaving school aged 16. Most people in the 1960s left school without any qualifications at all. There were plenty of jobs that did not require qualifications such as being a factory worker, farm labourer, navvy, janitor, joiner, shipbuilder, construction worker, miner, cleaner, shop assistant and so on. The UK still had a lot of mines, factories and shipyards in those days.

Though Wales was made about rugby, Neil was no rugger bugger. Nor indeed was he great shakes at any sport. He was often found with his nose in a book.

Amman Valley Grammar School was there Neil was educated. He did his O levels and A levels there.

University

University College Wales, Aberystwyth had the inestimable honour of educating Neil Hamilton. He is surely Aberystwyth’s most illustrious graduate. There he read economics and politics.

Many undergraduates professed the cloying and stultifying socialism of the Welsh section of the Labour Party. There were also blood red commies. Some of them adulated the most prolific mass murderers of all time such as Mao Zedong and Stalin. It was all in the name of compassion of course. For some leftists these communist tyrants were messianic.

The 1960s was a time of change. 60s teenagers were ‘’children of the revolution’’ as the song said. It was the era of the counterculture, the sexual revolution, flower power, hippies and the anti-war movement. Some couples started to live together before marriage. Unwed pregnancy was no longer quite as scandalous as it had been a decade earlier. Times they were a-changing, as Bob Dylan sang. But even then the counterculture was perhaps as not strongly felt in rural Wales as it was in Swinging London. Through all this upheaval Neil made a name for himself as a young fogey. Some young men grew their hair down to their shoulders and wore shaggy beards but Neil was always short back and sides and was always clean-shaven. He has always been delightfully contra mundum.

Neil was a baby boomer. Those born in the late 1940s are said to be a very optimistic generation. That is because from their birth life got better and better for decades. It was only when such people neared the age of 30 that the Western World started to encounter serious problems and stagnation.

By the 1960s the UK had emerged from the shadow of the Second World War. It appeared to be a time of rampant consumerism. Car ownership quadrupled in the decade. Items that had once been the preserve of only the middle class had become affordable for working class people – telephones and televisions.

The Vietnam Conflict war raging. The Cold War as at its height. There was an ideological clash in Britain too between left and right. Labour was officially on the side of the Free World in the Cold War. But there was a significant faction within Labour that did not support the Free World and felt more than a little sympathy for communist tyrannies. Many communists had joined the Labour Party. They were Trotskyites, Stalinists and Maoists. These comrades thought that the free market was evil, capitalism must be smashed and the Cold War was the West’s fault. Labour was forever enfeebling Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.

The prospect of nuclear war hung over the world like a sword of Damocles. The Cuban Missile Crisis had been but a few years before in 1963. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament organized ban the bomb marches. Quite a few Labour Party members wanted the United Kingdom to engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament and leave the UK vulnerable to a nuclear Holocaust without any means to defend itself.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of late 1960s radicalism was its vandalism. It wanted to tear down. Radical enmity towards Western civilization was all the more shocking because of the totalitarians that it looked to. Such nihilism horrified even Labour moderates.

When Neil went up to university there was a Labour Government. A short, soft-spoken, pensive, podgy, pipe-smoking Yorkshireman named Harold Wilson was Prime Minister. Though Labour had won a landslide majority in 1966 it became deeply unpopular just one year later when the Pound Sterling was severely devalued. The United Kingdom was withdrawing from South Arabia (Yemen). There were sanctions on Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) because of its Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Britain had twice been rejected in its bid to join the European Economic Community. There were protests and rising tensions in Northern Ireland.

The Conservative and Unionist Party was led by the uncharismatic bachelor Edward Heath. Heath’s uptight manner, uninspiring personality, wooden oratory and emotional unintelligence led one Tory image maker to say ‘’we have to try to turn Ted into a human being.’’ It proved to be mission impossible. Edward Heath was square in face and square in personality.

While Neil was at university, in the summer of 1969, Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales in a magnificent ceremony in Caernarvon Castle. The Secretary of State for Wales, George Thomas MP, had spoken some of the ceremony in Welsh. Thomas George Thomas went by his middle name ‘George’ but was jocularly known as ‘’Tommy Twice’’. George Thomas was later to go on to be Speaker of the House of Commons and was ennobled as Lord Tonypandy – taking the name of his quondam South Wales constituency that was not far from Neil’s natal place. As Lord Tonypandy was a passionate royalist and a committed euroscpetic he was one of the few Labour politicians whom Neil held in high regard.

The investiture of the Prince of Wales was an occasion for Her Britannic Majesty to come to Wales. That was something that did not happen all that often. In the 1960s celebrity culture was only just starting. The House of Windsor was still unquestioningly exalted by almost everyone in the United Kingdom. The 20 year old Prince Charles was held in high esteem.  All the Welsh notables attended eminent persons from across the Commonwealth of Nations were there.

Her Majesty Queen had dubbed her firstborn son Prince of Wales. There had been no Prince of Wales for decades before that. The investiture simply strengthened Neil’s monarchist convictions. There was a handful of racist Anglophobic ultra-nationalist headbangers in Wales who objected to the prince. They tried to ruin the wonderful day for all decent people. But His Royal Highness Prince Charles went on a five day tour of the Principality and was very rapturously received by his mother’s adoring subjects. It seemed to confirm just how popular the monarchy was.

The same separatist bigots in Wales had been trying to wreck the solemnity of God Save the Queen when it was sung at Cardiff Arms Park before rugby matches by jeering through it. It was grossly insulting to the average Welshman who was a fervent British patriot. Coming so soon after the Second World War it was also spitting on the grave of Welshmen who had valiantly laid down their lives for the United Kingdom. These shameful tantrums by separatists in Wales underscored to Neil how distasteful, small-minded and spiteful separatism is. He has always been a firm unionist.

Some of the separatists in Wales turned violent and called themselves the Free Wales Army (FWA). Fortunately they did not manage to kill a single person.

Neil has always punctured the pretensions of these anti-democratic separatists who professed to speak for Wales.

Back then some youngsters affected grunge. But not Neil. He often wore a smart tweed jacket or blazer even on the weekend and he began sport bowties. It is a confection that never left him. He has always been an aesthete. Who has ever see him dress down?

Neil took a degree in 1970.

He was also a mad monarchist.

He later took an MA in the economics and politics in 1975.

Neil was a well-known member of the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS). He joined in 1968 and left in 1974. He was elected to represent FCS. In this capacity he went to Italy to attend a conference of Movimiento Sociale Italiano (MSI). MSI was largely regarded as a continuation of the Fascist Party. Some joked that MSI stood for Mussolini Sei Immortale (‘’Mussolini you are immortal’’). This error of judgement did not harm Neil’s career overmuch. Conservative abhor fascism as a racist and totalitarian species of socialism. Fascism is about social engineering and the abolition of liberty. It is a creed that is profoundly anti-conservative.

In the 1960s there was a spirited debate surrounding the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC was the precursor to the European Union (EU). The EEC was often known was the ‘common market’ to make it seem less threatening. Young and hip people tended to be Europhiles. Neil perhaps typically decided to be a Eurosceptic. He was in the Anti-Common Market League (ACML). Many in that organisations believe that the Commonwealth of Nations was still a force in the world. If the United Kingdom acceded to the EEC it would be abandoning the Commonwealth. ACML warned of a European Parliament, British law been subordinate to European law, the European Court of Justice overriding Her Majesty’s courts, the European Commission functioning in effect as a cabinet and the advent of a European single currency. The predictions of the ACML were dismissed as deranged jeremiads. But ACML turned out to be a Cassandra.

Always independent minded and never attune to the zeitgeist, Neil called for large scale privatization. This was very audacious at the height of Butskellism. Butskellism comes from the names of the two post war Chancellors of the Exchequer Richard Austen (‘’Rab’’_ Butler who was a Conservative and Hugh Gaitskell who was a Labour man. Butskellism suggested that there was a consensus – a mélange of socialism and capitalism. The mixed economy appeared to be the Aristotelean mean. Harold Macmillan had argued for this via media since the 1930s and later published a book on it The Middle Way. Few dared question such shibboleths at the time. In a sense Neil was a decade ahead of his party’s thinking. He was a Thatcherite before even Thatcher herself! He had no truck with the flabby compromises of Butskellism. Neil never does anything by half measures.

In the early 1970s France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and West Germany were all more prosperous than the UK. Remember in those days Germany was divided into East and West. The argument ran that these countries were all members of the EEC. If the United Kingdom were to join then it too could share in this. Italy was in the EEC but lagged behind. Denmark and the Republic of Ireland were also in accession talks with Brussels. Could joining the EEC bring the Northern Ireland conflict to an end? As it turns out there was fat chance of that.

In 1973 the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community. Neil was adamantly against. In 1975 a referendum under the Labour Government of Harold Wilson ratified the British Government’s decision post-factum. Neil then bowed to the will of the people and said that the EEC had achieved his acceptance. Decades later Europhiles were not so democratic when a referendum did not go their way.

The British Conservative Monday Club was very much on the right of the Tory Party.  Its foes – and they were legion – called it racist and far right. The Monday Club had that name because of the Monday in 1961 in which Harold Macmillan had addressed the South African Parliament. Macmillan’s oration in Cape Town was known as the ‘winds of change’ speech. In it he said there was a wind of change blowing through Africa and adjustments needed to be made in view of this. ‘Like it or not the growth of nationalism is a political fact.’ Macmillan’s message was that the white minority in South Africa could no longer keep power to the exclusion of the 80%+ of the populace who were of other races. Macmillan was delivering a message on behalf of the Commonwealth of Nations. The multiracial Commonwealth was growing louder in its denunciations of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial discrimination. Macmillan’s speech had not been cleared in advance with the South African Government. The Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was present in the chamber when Macmillan delivered his address. Verwoerd was called upon to respond. The Dutch-born politician was aghast and professed himself almost speechless and what he considered to be an astoundingly breach of protocol and an unwarranted intrusion into South Africa’s domestic affairs. The Monday Club was founded in opposition to Macmillan’s policy. It argued that majority rule was premature in Rhodesia (now named Zimbabwe) and South Africa. It thought that Tory policy had been generally limp wristed for decades and needed to become far firmer.

The Monday Club said that apartheid should be supported and that the United Kingdom should recognise the illegal white minority regime in Rhodesia as a legitimate government. The Monday Club called for funding for voluntary repatriation of our Commonwealth cousins. It said that non-white British citizens should be offered money to ‘go home.’ In fairness the law provided such funding right up until well into the years of Tony Blair’s administration. Very few ethnic minority Britons took up the offer. The Monday Club was vociferously anti-socialist. It also demanded the annihilation of the IRA. As the majority of people wanted the death penalty to be restored the Monday Club said it was democratic and logical that the supreme sanction be brought back. At best it was Toryism on steroids. Others called it crypto-fascist.

There was much polemic against the Monday Club. People inveighed against it as being an apologist for the white supremacist regime in Pretoria. To be fair, there was a measure of veracity in that accusation.

Neil noted the hypocrisy and emptiness of this self-regarding moralizing about South Africa. Virtually every country in Africa was undemocratic. Yet only one was singled out for a chorus of execration. And that was for manifestly racist reasons. It was because the South African Government was white. People put Nelson Mandela on a pedestal. Who was the Mandela of Zaire or Ethiopia or Chad or Uganda or a host of other slaughterhouse states all across the continent? No political prisoner would last 28 months incarceration in another African country let alone 28 years. This tu quoque argument did not convince many.

Neil contested the chairmanship of FCS but was defeated by David Davis. Davis was then at Warwick University studying Business. He went on to be a prominent Tory leadership contender and cabinet minister.

Seeking gainful employment, Neil found work as a teacher at St John’s College in Southsea in 1973. That was near his grandparents.  While teaching he read for the bar. In 1978 Neil found a new job at Hatfield Polytechnic in Hertfordshire. It is now called the University of Hertfordshire. Neil continued to teach there part-time as a struggling junior barrister. He gave up teaching in July 1982 and concentrated fully on the bar.

At Cambridge, Neil founded the Eldon League. It was named in honour of the notoriously reactionary early 19^th century Lord Chancellor – the Earl of Eldon. Born plain ‘John Scott’, Lord Eldon was the son of a highly successful Newcastle coal merchant. He then matriculated at University College, Oxford. He was a Tory ultra. He said that representative government was the opposite of what the United Kingdom had. Eldon was never happier than when awarding political dissidents 14 years transportation to Australia with penal servitude or indeed sentencing malfeasants to hang. He vigorously defended slavery and said that grand larceny should be punished by death even in the case of children. He is ridiculed in Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy ‘Eldon big ears had on.’ Astonishingly he has statuary honour in his old Oxford college. By a curious coincidence this is also Shelley’s college (University College, Oxford) and he is also honoured with a fine marble statue.

The Eldon League was a decidedly unserious right wing drinking club. They held picnics and garden parties. The Eldonians would spray each other with champagne and engage in suchlike jolly japes. They celebrated such crucial events as the King of Swaziland’s birthday. It attracted a quaint and faintly fruitcake crowd. They published a jocular manifesto demanding that plastic be outlawed and internal combustion engines be abandoned. Insofar as possible the only used train and horse drawn carriages as their conveyances when travelling to and from Eldonian events. It was seen as being against the entire 20^th century. Its member dressed up in anachronistic garb. Neil styled himself by the characteristically antiquated title of Imperial Prior. The Eldon League was a menagerie of eccentrics. But in it, for once, Neil did not seem like an odd fish.

Neil’s atavism was perhaps not quite as unusual as it might seem. In the 1970s a show aired on television called Good Old Days. In the show people went to the theatre togged out in Edwardian clobber. They were treated to pre-First World music hall acts. Some of the elderly theatregoers will have been children in the Edwardian era. In the 1970s Britain was on the skids. The empire had been dissolved. Inflation eroded incomes, there was rising unemployment, rising crime and sinking national self-belief.  The country was palsied by strikes. There had been the three day weeks because coal was in such short supply that for a couple of months workplaces could only be provided with three days’ worth of electricity each week. There seemed to be no end to the cycle of stagnation and turmoil. The Ulster Conflict was raging with no end in sight. In Caledonia and in Cymru separatist sentiment had metastisised. Entry into the EEC had been deeply divisive.  The United Kingdom was the sick man of Europe. It seemed apt that Britain treat itself to one last dose of nostalgia for its zenith.

Whilst he was an undergraduate Neil was an active Conservative. At a young Conservative conference he met a lady of his age named Christine Holman. Miss Holman was a doctor’s daughter who was then studying sociology at the University of York. A romance blossomed. They have been inseparable ever since. Their motto is – we do things together.

Unlike Neil, Christine had grown up in one of the most fiercely Conservative places in the realm: rural Hampshire. She was a doctor’s daughter and spoke RP as one might expect someone to do who belonged to the southern English upper middle class.

While at York, Christine made some friends for life. They were Harvey Proctor and Michael Brown – about whom more later.

Christine worked as a secretary for a number of Conservative MPs. For a while she worked for Sir Gerald Nabarro. He was known for extravagant handlebar moustache and his stentorian voice with which he boomed out his outrageously racist beliefs: ‘’how would you like your daughter to marry a big buck n****** with the prospect of coffee coloured grandchildren?’’  Standing 6’4’’ and well-built, Nabarro was a former army physical fitness instructor and was unfailingly perfectly turned out in tailor made Saville Row suits. He had the most extraordinary presence. Sir Gerald and had become a self-made millionaire as a timber merchant. Gerald Nabarro’s voice was said to have been the loudest in the British army. And that’s really saying something! His saloon bar prejudices did his political career a power of good in the West Midlands.  That was Enoch Powell country. He love the monarchy and despised undergraduates. The permissive society was a particular bugbear of his.

Gerald Nabbaro was once had up in court on suspicion of dangerous driving. He was acquitted on the basis that it was not him but his secretary who was driving. Nabarro’s revolting racialism did not add lustre to the Tory diadem. In mitigation one might plead that he was a man of his era. Such rebarbative views were not uncommon in the 1960s. Moreover, the Latin word for black was more of a conversational word than a racial slur at the time.

Nabarro’s racist screeds are perhaps even more surprising considering that he belonged to a much persecuted ethnic minority himself. He was Jewish. But that Christine chose to work for him out of all the Conservative MPs shows poor judgement on her part. Was it not at the very least ethically suboptimal to work for a man who expectorated such detestable racial invective? How did his racist outbursts make the beleaguered black community feel? How did his loathing of mixed race children make them feel? Surely his racist diatribe aggravated racial animus, playground bullying and even heavy violence against non-white people in the United Kingdom.

In 1974 Neil was selected as a Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate. He stood in Abertillery. This seat was in the mining area of South Wales. Of the 650 odd seats in the United Kingdom this was Labour’s safest. The result may be guessed. It was a dry run for a marginal seat next time.

Upon graduation Neil taught history for a while. He then decided that he wished to be called to the bar.

Neil went up to Cambridge to read law. Is college was Corpus Christi. As he already had a degree he was able to take a truncated programme. He did the two year course and received and LL.M. Even Neil’s worst enemy does not doubt his intellect.

While at Cambridge, Neil was active in the Cambridge Union. That is the debating society of Cambridge University.

In 1977 Neil was at the Tory Conference when it was addressed by a 16 year old Yorkshire schoolboy named William Hague. Ambitious young Tories were chanting ‘’bastard, bastard’’ because they were emerald with envy. What a flying start this boy had. Who could ever compete with that – addressing the conference aged only 16! Hague was to go on to be leader of the party and Foreign Secretary.

After 1976 the United Kingdom was led – or rather misled – by a Labour Prime Minister named James Callaghan. ‘Sunny Jim’ as his few fans called him was an amiable and ineffectual figure presiding over what one newspaper called ‘mounting chaos.’ There was strike after strike and seemingly endless inflation. James Callaghan came across as a kindly but pathetic grandfather. The public was thoroughly fed up after the Winter of Discontent – the strikes in late 1978 into early 1979. Notoriously as the gravediggers’ union took ‘industrial action’ for several weeks we could not even bury the dead.

As a wag noted, Callaghan was an Englishman with an Irish name who sat for a Welsh seat. Neil Hamilton is a Welshman with a Scottish name who sat for an English seat.

In 1979 Neil was selected as the Conservative candidate for Bradford North. It was a Labour seat but a marginal one. Bradford did not have a large Pakistani community at the time. British-Pakistanis tend heavily towards Labour. As the Labour Government was reviled for its lassitude, incompetence and decrepitude there was a very considerable chance that Neil could win in Bradford North. But in God’s Own County it a significant handicap that he was not a Yorkshireman. Yorkshire folk tend to regard those born outside the white rose county as an inferior breed. As he joked, ‘’I fought Bradford North and Bradford North fought back.’’

Called to the bar in 1979, Neil began his practice desultorily.

When he came down from Cambridge, Neil read for the bar. He was duly called to the bar. He practised in property law and taxation law. It was a lucrative area of practice.

In the 1980s there was some Thatcherite oomph. Inflation was falling. Consumerism was on the rise. The economy was growing at least in southern England – the Tory heartland. In the rest of the UK there was rising unemployment. It was the decade of big hair and small government. In 1982 the United Kingdom defeated Argentine aggression against the Falklands.

In the early 1980s Neil was the European and Parliamentary Director of the Institute of Directors.

In 1982 Argentina launched an illegal and unprovoked invasion of the Falkland Islands. That was despite almost everyone in the Crown Dependency wishing to remain British. Her Majesty’s Armed Forces duly liberated them. Neil was strongly of the belief that it was right to fight for freedom. He cannot be called a chauvinist or militarist. Some left wingers such as Tam Dalzell said that the Falklanders should be handed over to the fascist junta.

On 12 March 1983 Neil got some very good news. He was adopted as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Tatton. It was one of the safest Conservative constituencies in the realm. Neil’s luck was redoubled when two months later there was an early election.

Christine was the secretary of Michael Grylls MP for Chertsey at the time. You can guess which party he was in!

Into politics

Neil was always sartorially retro. Dressing as though he were born two generations earlier perhaps expressed a yearning for Britain’s imperial zenith. He never quite coincided with people of his age and region. Neil liked to wear three piece suits and had a taste for tweed. He often sported millinery long after it was fashionable.

In 1983 Tatton became vacant. This was a rock solid Conservative constituency in Cheshire. Neil had himself selected. His predecessor as the Tory MP was a most distinguished financial journalist. Tatton was a seat that seemed to be impossible to lose. The seat had previously been called Knutsford after another large town within its bounds. It has been in Conservative hands for decades.

In those days a Tory candidate other 30 without a wife would be looked askance at. If a man over the age of 30 had not taken to wife was he a womanizer? Or even worse, was he what they would then have called ‘queer’? 95% of Tory MPs being male back then and same sex marriage was not thought of. Neil was able to assure Tatton Tories that he was affianced to a young lady of the most unimpeachable Conservative credentials. She had been secretary to the most ferociously right wing Member of the Commons: Sir Gerald Nabarro.

Neil was so confident of winning Tatton that five days before polling day he found time to get married to Mary Christine Holman. Like Neil, Christine is always known by her middle name. The couple married in Cornwall. The happy couple was joined in holy matrimony by the Reverend Father David Johnson. Neil had known David when they were up at Cambridge together. David had been President of the Cambridge Union Society. Johnson was an overdressed, acerbic, vertically challenged, foul mouthed, alcoholic of pronounced racist views and homosexual habits. Fr. Johnson had known Neil at Cambridge. The couple chose not to have children.

Neil was enamoured of the Prime Minister. To him Mrs. Thatcher was Gloriana. He never once criticized her.

1983 was a bumper year for the Conservative Party. With Maggie Thatcher as Prime Minister and Britain buoyed up after victory in the Falklands and Labour in hoc to the loony left the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Neil romped home in Tatton. Finally his childhood dream was realized. It must have made for quite a honeymoon!

Neil and Christine bought a house in Tatton to show their commitment to the seat. Neil had to show his face at every bun fight in the constituency: village fetes, Christmas carol services, Remembrance Day wreath laying and suchlike.

No sooner had Neil’s political career begun than he nearly ended it. It was a pattern of unwisdom that we was due to repeat. Neil went on a controversial visit to Berlin in 1983. Thay was just a few months after he was elected to Parliament. Some schoolboy high jinks occurred. That is putting the kindest possible interpretation on it. Some said that japes might be excusable in an adolescent but in a politician they were unforgivable.

Later a TV documentary was broadcast in 1984 entitled Maggie’s Militant Tendency on a programme called Panorama. It focused on Neil’s contentious visit to what was then West Germany. The programme also revealed Neil’s address to the MSI in 1972. It described his time in the Eldon League and the Monday Club. The programme documented his friendship with George Kennedy Young. Kennedy Young was once Director of Britain’s external intelligence agency: MI6. Some viewed him as far right. He was Chair of the Society for Individual Freedom – a strange position for a spy.

It said that there were some Conservative MPs who were Nazis. It was a leftist media plot to smear the party and pretend that the Tories were infiltrated by anti-democratic elements in the same way that Labour was. The programme alleged that Neil Hamilton had given a straight arm salute in Berlin while fooling around in 1983. Neil was on the trip with Gerald Howarth MP and an activist named Philip Pedley. Pedley had once been Chair of the National Young Conservatives. Neil said his reputation had been besmirched by the BBC. Socialist scribblers on Fleet Street took up the story. They were very delighted to traduce Conservative MPs.

Neil later wrote about the programme, ‘’It was an extremely damaging libel and I was extremely concerned about its impact on my career.’’ That is unsurprising. Perhaps this is when his black hair turned grey.

To some Tories, the BBC programme appeared to confirm their worst suspicions about Auntie. Even a moderate Tory like Chris Patten said that BBC stood for the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation. Conservatives were convinced that there was a pinko-liberal infestation in the BBC. At the time of Suez, Sir Anthony Eden said that commies at the BBC had tried to mess up his broadcast by shining lights in his eyes as he spoke live on air.

The MPs who were defamed chose to take legal action. Their libel action succeeded and they were paid damages. Neil subsequently stated that he had made a Nazi salute whilst raising his left fingers to his upper lip to represent a Hitler moustache when he was in Germany merely to ridicule National Socialism. He was cognizant that this constituted an offence under the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany. The imputation that his gesture was expressive of Nazism was preposterous. Neil is certainly no fan of Hitler. Hitler was an anti-smoker and Neil is an indefatigable advocate of smokers’ rights. Tarnishing his reputation as a Nazi was egregiously low and dishonest even by the standards of the BBC.

The libel action was bankrolled by Sir James Goldsmith. Goldsmith was the father of Lord Zac the Conservative politician. In the 1980s Sir James was a stalwart Conservative. He was a self-made billionaire though he had not been born poor:  Sir James was an Old Etonian and his father was a well to do Franco-British hotelier. He recognized in Neil a man of prodigious talent and the uttermost probity. That was why he happily contributed to the fund to clear Neil’s name.

The Spectator columnist Taki also funded Neil’s libel action. Taki Theodorcopalous is an American-educated Greek shipping millionaire of pronounced right wing proclivities. Taki had some fellow feeling of those in legal trouble. In the 1980s he served a few months in prison for accidentally bringing a small quantity of cocaine with him into Heathrow Airport. That could happen to anyone!

David Davis was then a director of the sugar company Tate and Lyle. Incidentally that was where Davis got to know an ex- Scots Guards officer named Iain Duncan Smith who later became an ill-starred leader of the Conservative Party and then a cabinet minister. Davis was a rival of Neil’s in Conservative politics from the 1970s. Nonetheless, Davis and Neil had a good rapport. Davis managed to convince his company to donate to the claimant’s fund. Thus Tate and Lyle became another funder of Neil’s defamation action.

Lord Harris of High Cross also donated around GBP 100 000 to fund Neil’s libel action.

Neil said in his libel case that he was like a Mike Yarwood figure in FCS. Yarwood was then very well known for his impersonations. Neil has a gift for mimicry and often took off politicians and well-known actors. He was known for his impersonations of Enoch Powell, General de Gaulle, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and the actor Frankie Howerd.  Neil cheerily recalled that he had appeared in blackface in 1982 to ridicule the Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin. He had even dressed up in clericals while doing an impersonation of Canon James own while sailing down the Cam in Cambridge. Neil said he had plenty of respectable character witnesses but chief among them would be Norman St John Stevas. St John Stevas was then a Tory MP and he was the only ever person to be President of both the Cambridge Union and the Oxford Union. St John Stevas was gay but whilst an MP he did not feel able to come out. Had he done so it would probably have been terminal for his career.

The Sunday Times offered Neil a chance to give his side of the story. He said that when he gave the sieg heil salute he was simply engaging in a bit of tomfoolery. He noted that Julian Lewis was there and Lewis is Jewish and indeed several of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Lewis recognized what Neil was doing was harmless buffoonery.

The liberal action against the BBC went to trial. Neil was due to be cross-examined by the BBC’s counsel. However, on 21 October 1986 the Director-General of the BBC, Alasdair Milne, decided that the BBC would give in. Milne explained that the Governors of the BBC had ordered him to do so. The BBC paid the legal costs of the claimants which amounted to hundreds of thousands of Pounds. The BBC also paid Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth GBP 20 000 apiece. Howarth was the MP for Aldershot at the time. That sum was more than an MP’s annual salary at the time. On 27 October 1985 the BBC broadcast another edition of Panorama in which the show apologized unstintingly for the false statements it had made traducing the two men.

Some said that the BBC had had its arm twisted by politicians and that witnesses had been threatened. The BBC Board of Governors had wanted the case settled and told the BBC Board of Management to do just that. Many in the BBC doubted the wisdom of caving in. The BBC’s barristers had not had an opportunity to even begin their defence in court when the BBC surrendered.

The National Young Conservatives (NYC) suggested that there had been some behind the scenes pressure. The Chairman of NYC Richard Fuller said it was very odd that the BBC had capitulated as the trial was proceeding pleasingly for them.

Malcolm McAlpine had access to the BBC Governors. Some speculated that he had a hand in the BBC’s curious decision. Malcolm McAlpine was a cousin of Lord Alistair McAlpine. Lord McAlpine was a multimillionaire and treasurer of the Conservative Party. He was a doyen of the right and the Eurosceptic wing of the party. He was therefore a fan of Neil. Indeed in 1992 right wing Tories gathered at Lord McAlpine’s house to celebrate the fact that a Tory wet and Europhile Chris Patten had lost his seat at Bath. The Liberal Democrats had covered Bath with posters saying ‘Let’s flatten Patten’ and they did. The price of failure for Patten was not too bad. He was made Governor-General of Hong Kong and was later elected Chancellor of Oxford University.

Regarding the BBC affair, there were claims that witnesses had been intimidated. There is no suggestion that Neil was involved in this either directly or indirectly. A BBC memorandum said that 17 witnesses had been made to change their testimony. Some of those who were due to testify were Conservatives and were revolted by what they saw at Berlin. Nevertheless, they suddenly claimed not to have seen anything untoward.

Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton thought that the case against Philip Pedley would be pursued. Pedley would not accept the BBC’s offer of accord and satisfaction. Pedley also had some wealthy backers to fund his claim. Richard Fuller vowed to come to his aid.

Jeffrey Archer was then the Deputy Chairman of the Tory Party. The millionaire novelist considered it unwise for Pedley to fight on. The Tory Party had settled the matter. It was risky to continue to battle in the courts. If Pedley lost then it would look very bad for the party. Pedley could not afford the libel action on his own. Without Fuller’s financial support he would be obliged to settle the case. Archer told Fuller it was foolhardy to fund Pedley’s case. But Fuller resisted pressure to withdraw his financial support from his friend.

The Labour Party said that Conservative Central Office (CCO) had orchestrated a cover up and used undue influence to sway the BBC. Labour wanted to question the Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party about the affair: Norman Tebbit.

A Labour politician named Dale Campbell-Savours said he had evidence in a letter from Pedley to John Selwyn Gummer MP. Gummer was a former Party Chairman and was later a cabinet minister under Major. The letter supposedly showed that Tory Central Office had contacted witnesses to persuade them to alter their testimony to the advantage of the claimant.

Norman Tebbit acknowledged that one witness had contacted Tory Central Office but said this was merely because he wanted advice but that CCO had declined to give any as that might seem unethical. Tebbit said that the socialist Campbell-Savours was misusing parliamentary privilege to make false allegations knowingly which otherwise would have been defamatory. Tebbit walked out of the House of Commons chamber without making a further comment.

On 25 October the newspaper reported more evidence of unethical communications with witnesses. Neil then withdrew his action against Pedley. Pedley said that he would not back down. There were still people calling for a full enquiry.

Norman Tebbit made statements about the case but not in the House of Commons chamber. To mislead the House is a resigning matter. Neil said that Tebbit was refusing to address the House on the issue because Tebbit’s statements were misleading. Neil urged the Party Chairman to speak about the matter on the floor of the House. Not everyone in the party was sympathetic to Neil. Some said he had brought it into disrepute.

The Hogan Memorandum was an internal BBC memo which named witnesses who had altered their stories. The Independent newspaper said that there was a recording of a statement by a Conservative witness to the incident. The witness was worried by CCO’s insistence that the Berlin incident had not occurred. CCO was keen that no one substantiate the allegations against Tory MPs.

Mr. Campbell Savours claimed that the Hogan Memorandum proved that the BBC had been threatened. He sent it to Sir Michael Havers who was the Attorney-General and of course a Tory. Havers is the father of the actor Nigel Havers.

The Labour parliamentarian Campbell-Savours said that CCO had striven to meddle with witnesses. It was alleged that CCO had tried to tone down statements made by David Mitchell. Campbell Savours then sent a transcript to the Attorney-General.

Neil had made several statements in the media about his contested visit to Berlin. Some Conservative Party members were supposedly told by CCO to claim that they had not seen Neil goose stepping. Some of the witnesses had initially made such an accusation but had changed their testimony. The theory goes that there was a whip at their back to do so. They were told that it would be deeply unhelpful to the party if they did not retract their earlier statements and if there were no retraction then their careers in the party would come to a juddering halt.  Neil wrote to the Chairman of the Conservative Party in January 1984 stating that he had not goose stepped or performed Nazi salutes ever anywhere.

Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton had brought a libel action against Philip Pedley. They then discontinued the action on the basis that it was exorbitantly expensive, horrifically time consuming and stressful and that this was out of all proportion to the apology that they could possibly obtain from Pedley. On 3 December 1986 Pedley said he would not accept the terms of settlement offered by the claimants. He wanted to case to go to trial.

The judge was Mr. Justice Simon Brown. He ruled that Howarth and Neil were not allowed to claim that Pedley’s statements were libelous and they were ordered to pay his costs.

Mr. Pedley was jubilant. He acted as though it were a vindication and said he retracted not one iota of what he had said. He reiterated his claim that he had never suggested that Howarth and Neil Hamilton were National Socialists but rather that their antics gravely undermined the Conservative Party. As a staunch Conservative he was aghast to see two Tory MPs bringing the party into disrepute with their immature looning. The Young Conservative report dismissed Neil’s behaviour as no more than ‘’eccentricity.’’ Pedley reaffirmed his earlier accusations against the men.

Pedley said that members of the YC Committee had been subjected to poison pen letters and verbal abuse after their names were published in Bulldog which was the newspaper of the Young National Front (a white supremacist party). Pedley claimed that he and others had suffered harassment from private security companies. He was implying that wealthy people had paid for this.

Soon after being elected to Parliament, Neil was made an officer of the backbench committee on trade and industry. The Chairman was a formidable Tory MP named Michael Grylls.

In 1984 there were dozens of coalmines all across the realm. But many of them had exhausted their supply of economically viable coal. Some of them were digging up mud. The UK was importing cheaper coal from Czechoslovakia (a country that is now two). North Sea oil was providing much of the United Kingdom’s energy needs as was imported oil and nuclear energy. The government decided to close down uneconomic coal pits and let the others prosper. Leftists believe that coal mines without any coal should remain open. All miners were public sector employees and therefore paid by the taxpayer. Left wingers argued that the poorest people should pay relatively well-paid miners to dig up mud. Every penny wasted on this was a penny robbed from the NHS and other urgent matters.

In 1984 the Miners’ Strike began. The National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) leader was Arthur Scargill. Scargill had been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) when Stalin was the communist supremo of the world. Scargill was a denier of and a defender of countless communist atrocities all across the globe. He wanted to visit this reign of terror on the United Kingdom. Scargill was one of many unrepentant communists who joined the Labour Party in their bid to abolish democracy and replace it with a totalitarian state. Scargill’s dream was to open concentration camps for political dissidents in the UK but it never came true. Scargill declared a national strike without even holding a ballot of NUM.

There were 180 000 miners in the UK at the time of the Miners’ Strike. Not all miners were members of the NUM. Even then not all NUM miners went on strike because there had been no national ballot. NUM wanted to hold people to ransom.

Mrs. Thatcher had seen this strike coming. The NUM had brought down Heath’s Conservative Government in 1974. Ten years on Thatcher was adamant that she would not allow the NUM to subvert the will of the people again.

The NUM resorted to intimidation. They committed violent crime against the police. They even murdered one man for going to work. The NUM was open about its real aim. It was not about saving jobs. It was about overthrowing the elected government as Scargill said time and time again. Though Scargill was never an MP he was a far more puissant figure on the left than even the leader of the Labour Party.

Coal is also the most polluting fuel. That did not stop leftists who pretend to care about the environment advocating for coal.

Neil was four square behind the government on this one. He believed that Britain must not bend the knee to the bully boy tactics of the NUM.

Labour did not throw its weight behind the strike because there was no national ballot. The far left fulminated that Neil Kinnock was a Judas for not giving unstinting support to their attempt to bring down democracy. Some extremists such as Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn endorsed the NUM’s anti-democratic campaign.

In the end the cause of freedom prevailed. Scargill led his acolytes to an ignominious defeat. There are now only 2 000 coal miners left.

In April 1986 Neil was one of 10 MPs (all of them Conservatives) to vote against Her Majesty’s Government on a bill which meant deeper European integration.

In the 1980s Neil came to know the late George Choudhury-Best who was a Conservative activist in London. Choudhury-Best was an Anglo-India who had shifted from the subcontinent to what he termed the ‘mother country’ some years after India suffered independence. Choudhury-Best disenjoyed Indian independence intensely. He was keenly alive to the manifold benisons that British superintendence had conferred upon the Subcontinent. Choudhury-Best recognized India as Britain’s nursling and was aghast at premature independence and all its concomitant horrors. He was appalled that the rampantly corrupt Congress Party was ruining the country with socialist policies that impeded its economy while becoming a Soviet ally. Communist governments had taken over West Bengal and Kerala. Independence had led to Partition and the murder of over a million people. None of these cataclysms would have befallen India if India had remained beneath Britannia’s benevolent shield for a few more decades.

Neil was not scared of making contentious remarks. In 1987 Frank Dobson the Labour MP and future Health Secretary made a speech about amputees. Neil quipped, ‘’he does not have a leg to stand on.’’ The left wing extremist and IRA supporter Jeremy Corbyn made a speech about the need to increase the state pension. Neil shot back, ‘’some of his IRA friends could be used to get rid of pensioners by shooting them.’’ In fairness, the IRA did kill a lot of pensioners.

Corbyn is the most extreme leftist ever elected to Westminster. He has been on the side of every enemy Britain has had since 1945. Corbyn is a publicist for most of the tyrannies around the world. Comrade Corbyn is an outspoken advocate of oppression and cruelty. He is a champagne socialist. His desire to help those in pauperism does not mean he donates a penny of his own. He is exceedingly generous but only with other people’s money instead. He still owns his house like the selfish capitalist he is.

In the 1980s Enoch Powell was still in Parliament. He was no longer a Tory but sat as an Ulster Unionist representing Down South – as in the southern part of County Down. Neil was an impassioned admirer of Powell. Neil says that he is not a racialist but that Powell was correct inasmuch as unchecked immigration has led to many fraught incidents.

For the left, Powell was a pantomime villain. Socialists students displayed placards bearing the legend ‘’disembowel Enoch Powell’’ when he came to address universities. Compassionate aren’t they these leftists? But Powell’s friends say he was not gargoyle.

Neil was an ardent Thatcherite. Despite his unswerving loyalty he was not rewarded with preferment.

Neil joined the No Turning Back Group. This was a ginger group of Thatcherites. It was founded by Michael Brown MP who turned out to be gay. Brown was in the closet in the 1980s. Other prominent MPs were members of the No Turning Back Group such as Alan Duncan, Peter Lilley, Gerald Howarth and Michael Portillo.

Conservative policy in the 1980s was to phase out leaded petrol. It degraded the environment and had a deleterious effect on the brain. It was linked to a heightened risk of criminality. Neil was dead against ending leaded petrol. He said that it had not been demonstrated that leaded petrol was in any way harmful to people or to the environment. That was an astonishing claim in view of scientific peer reviewed articles proving what leaded petrol does. He noted that it would hurt the economy if leaded petrol was forbidden. It was trademark Neil – swimming against the tide. He is an anti-environmentalist.

In 1985 Neil started to work for Ian Greer Associations. One of the main corporate clients was US Tobacco. Neil was ever the staunch libertarian. Michael Brown worked on this project with him.

As a politician Neil was always his own man. He was resolutely libertarian. In the 1980s a type of tobacco called Skoal Bandits was legally available in the UK. Some demanded it be prohibited because it was said to be very carcinogenic.

Edwina Currie and David Mellor were junior health ministers at the time. They were inclined to prohibit Skoal Bandits.

The House of Commons Select Committee on Standards produced a report concluding that Brown and Neil Hamilton had lobbied minister with a view to persuading them to allow Skoal Bandits. It noted that neither man declared an interest – that he had a financial interest in allowing Skoal Bandits. Neil admitted that he had not declared an interest.

Neil was almost alone in arguing that Skoal Bandits should remain legal because people have the right to take risks if they please. Furthermore, as we have seen with drugs – prohibition never works. Nevertheless, Skoal Bandits were outlawed.

While in the House of Commons, Neil proved himself to be a fearless advocate for liberty.  He was unwavering in defence of the right to smoke and indeed to do as one so pleases with one’s own body. He was the only MP out of 650 to vote against the government’s legislation banning the sale of human organs.

In 1986 Neil was made Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to David Mitchell MP. This was a stepping stone to being a minister.

In November 1989 Neil won the Spectator magazine’s prize for being parliamentary wit of the year. With trademark drollery and self-effacement Neil joked that he believed it for being ‘’parliamentary twit of the year.’ Self-deprecation is one of Neil’s many endearing traits.

While in the House of Commons, Neil spoke up for the Western Goals Institute. Andrew V R Smith was then the head of the Western Goals Institute (WGI). Smith, like Neil, had been in the Monday Club. Reverend Martin Smith (an Ulster Unionist) was also a member. So were several Conservative parliamentarians: Sir Patrick Wall, Nicholas Winterton and Bill Walker. Neil was on the parliamentary advisory board of the WGI.

WGI was committed to the maintenance and furtherance of Western influence in all parts of the globe. Some its members were unabashed about advocating coups d’etats in other countries. It had fraternal links with Latin American juntas that did not win many prizes for human rights. WGI’s ‘muscular’ foreign policy had some saying that mercenaries ought to be hired to effectuate regime change in a manner congenial to British neo-imperialism.

WGI displayed questionable taste when in 1992 it invited Jean-Marie Le Pen to address them. Le Pen was then the leader of le Fronte National which his daughter Marine now heads. Le Pen was almost universally seen as a racist. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a perennial presidential candidate and in 2002 even came runner-up.

WGI also wanted Alessandra Mussolini to speak to them. Miss Mussolini is the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini. She also speaks up for her grandfather’s reputation. She was then a deputy in the Italian Parliament and a member of the European Parliament. She had also made a name for herself posing for ‘hard’ nude photos. La Mussolini spent much of her time in Brussels and Strasbourg singing hymns of praise to Il Duce. Both Le Pen and Mussolini were to speak to fringe meetings of the Tory Conference!  Alessandra Mussolini is a medical doctor but CCO suspected that her oration would not be solely restricted to health policy. An unapologetic apologist for fascism was not exactly the sort of person the Conservative Party considered to be an ideal conference speaker.

Sir Norman Fowler was then Chairman of the Conservative Party. He was incensed at the invitations – he considered fascism to be foul and was deeply worried at how it would ruin the party’s reputation. Fowler emphasized that the Conservative Party was not linked to the WGI. Both Le Pen and Mussolini were banned from entering the country so the meetings did not occur.

In the 1980s South Africa still had the apartheid (apartness) system. This segregated people of different races. The white minority comprised no more than 16% of the population of the Republic of South Africa. Whites virtually monopolized political power. They also owned 87% of the land. By law a white could not sell this land to a non-white person. The Bantustans reserved for black people were largely infertile and devoid of mineral resources. Such structured racial inequality appalled most of the world. Black people were not permitted to be citizens of South Africa. The South African Government used heavy violence to maintain control. The torture of those suspected of trying to overthrow the government was not uncommon. In the 1960s and 1970s there had been two fairly large scale massacres of unarmed black people by the South African Police.

South Africa refused to play sports against non-white players. Therefore South Africa was subject to a sporting boycott. The Springboks did not get to play foreign teams from 1970 till the early 1990s.

Most countries refused to trade with South Africa. The United Kingdom persisted in doing business with South Africa. Neil was one of those Conservatives who was adamantly opposed to sanctions against South Africa. He said he deplored apartheid but this was an internal matter. The United Kingdom happily did business with many far more tyrannical regimes and somehow that was not propping up oppression. In Zimbabwe, the Mugabe regime murdered several thousand people because they belonged to the Ndebele tribe. But the world turned Nelson’s eye to that one because the perpetrator was black. No one called for sanctions on Zimbabwe despite its regime slaughtering far more people than South Africa did. John Major even had the Queen give Mugabe an honorary knighthood!

In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa. It looked like apartheid might be abolished. Some people launched a desperate last ditch effort to preserve the racist system. Mandela later went on to be President of South Africa.

The anti-apartheid movement’s mantra was ‘’disinvest’’. Neil was dead against sanctions in South Africa. His argument was that apartheid was a domestic matter with which the United Kingdom must not interfere. Funnily enough governments that demanded sanctions on South Africa were usually the loudest in denouncing ‘’interference’’ and ‘’neo-colonialism’’ when anyone criticized their often appalling human rights records. Neil said that a moral principle had to be non-selective if it was to be moral at all. It was nonsense to impose sanctions against South Africa if the UK did not do so to black nationalist regimes north of the Limpopo which were often far more hideous than the apartheid government.

Margaret Thatcher had been against sanctions on South Africa on the ground that this would simply further impoverish black people who were already suffering pauperism. Moreover, there was no guarantee that sanctions would lead to political reform. A far smaller country, Cuba, had toughed out sanctions for far longer and its oppressive regime remained intact.

One of the reasons that Neil cited for being opposed to sanctions on South Africa was that this would increase unemployment in the UK. The MPs who demanded that the UK ban all trade with South Africa were usually the same ones who harped on the most about how evil unemployment was. But there they were demanding that their constituents be rendered jobless.

Neil also noted that South Africa was a reliable Cold War ally and the war could turn hot at any moment. The Treaty of Vereeniging which ended the Second South African War in 1902 stated that native affairs (i.e. the rights of black people) was the exclusive competence of the South African Government and the UK was not to interfere in this policy area.

Neil may have been a model for the late Rik Mayall’s character Alan B’stard. B’stard is a conniving self-serving Tory MP of fervently pro-apartheid views, raging vanity who has a sexually insatiable blonde wife. I wonder who that could be? Alan B’stard also drinks champagne and will only drink it if it is South African. This in an era of the anti-apartheid boycott of South African goods. Some say that B’stard was based on a composite of Tory MPs.

Neil worked for Strategy Network International (SNI). This company was founded with the aim of lobbying against sanctions on South Africa and Namibia which was the under South African control. In SNI Neil met Derek Laud. SNI wanted the United Kingdom to break UN Resolution 435 calling for genuine independence for Namibia. Laud and Neil had a mutual friend – Michael Brown MP. Neil was paid GBP 8 000 per annum for his consultancy. That was a very considerable sum considering that the fees for Eton were GBP 10 000 at the time.

SNI managed to have Neil very well treated. He was flown business class to South Africa and put up in five star hotels.

Lady Margaret Thatcher visited the Hamilton’s not so humble abode on at least one occasion.

In July 1990 the Prime Minister appointed Neil as a whip. It was a time of intense controversy over the Community Charge which was commonly called the poll tax. Neil had been fervent in his support for the unpopular measure. This earned him Mrs. T’s gratitude.

In 1990 Thatcher introduced the Community Charge across England and Wales. It was dubbed the Poll Tax. It had been brought into Scotland the year before when the rates were up for review. The Government was horrified that Labour councils had been wasting public money on PC propaganda and nuclear free zones. Mrs. T believed that hardworking people should not have their money squandered on loony left nonsense.

The Community Charge was widely reviled. It was a flat tax payable to one’s local authority. Pensioners and those on benefits paid a lower amount and students were exempt. For the wealthy, the Community Charge was a tax cut. Neil was a firm advocate of the Community Charge. But it was so exceptionally unpopular that Conservative support in the opinion polls dropped to levels not seen again till the dark days of Liz Truss. In Scotland people complained bitterly that the tax was tried out on them before South Britain. This was held to be confirmatory of Scotland’s second class status.

It was easy to evade the Community Charge by taking oneself off the electoral register. Poorer people (mostly Labour voters) were inclined to do so. In which case the Tories would win forever. But Labour ought to like the tax – it had the word community in the name.

Some Conservatives began to think that the Iron Lady was a liability and not an asset. Tory Wets had long wanted to be shot of her. Mrs. T. was adamantine that there would be no compromise on the Community Charge. Full steam ahead with it! The brains behind it was the Honourable William (now Lord) Waldegrave. He was spoken about as PM material. But he lost his seat in 1997 and ended up being sent back to school – to Eton as Provost (i.e. live in head of the board of governors).

In November 1990 Michael Heseltine challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the party and thus the prime ministership. The Chief Whip told Neil that as a whip it behoved him to maintain the strictest neutrality. Neil disregarded this instruction. Whatever he learnt about Heseltine’s campaign he passed on to the Thatcher camp. Neil said to the Prime Minister that she ought to interview each of the Cabinet individually. He thought that they would lack the courage to tell her that they wanted her to resign. However, Neil was wrong and several of them told Thatcher to stand down.

Despite several Cabinet ministers urging Thatcher to step down as PM, Neil pleaded with her to stay on. In a meeting of backbench Tories, Peter Lilley said that Thatcher had had her day. Neil interrupted Lilley and expressed his disdain for Lilley as a faint heart.

On 21 November 1990 Neil and other Thatcherite fanatics met the PM for one last time at Number 10 Downing Street. Thatcher resigned the next day. In the subsequent Tory leadership election there were three candidates.

Michael Heseltine was a Europhile Tory wet who had resigned from the Cabinet in 1986 over the Westland Helicopter Affair. Heseltine pretended it was a principle resignation. In fact the miscalculated thinking the Tories would lose the 1987 election and be could become party leader. This man of raging vanity and vaulting ambition never made it to the top of the greasy pole. He came close though: being Deputy Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997. Heseltine was the son of a Welsh factory owner. He had been to Shrewbsury, Oxford and the Welsh Guards. He was scorned for wearing his Guards tie for more days than he was in the Guards: sixty.

Then there as Douglas Hurd who was also a One Nation Tory and a Europhile but had been loyal to Thatcher. Hurd had been Captain of School at Eton before going up to King’s College, Cambridge and working in the Foreign Office. Hurd played down his poshness saying his pater had only been a tenant farmer. But as the son and grandson of Tory MPs he was a bit too much of a toff.

Lastly there was John Major. Major was seen as a Eurosceptic and a Thatcherite. He also came from a working class background unlike the others. That was perceived to be electorally advantageous. The other candidates were too posh.

Neil cast his ballot for Major. He believed that Major would continue Thatcher’s legacy. Neil was to be bitterly disillusioned.

In 1990 after Thatcher fell it was a pity for Neil was perfervid in support of his Monetarist policies. However, it also presented an opportunity. She had steadfastly refused to promote him from the backbenches.

John Major became Prime Minister. Soon Neil gained promotion. He was made an under parliamentary secretary for corporate affairs in 1992. He then became Minister for Deregulation and Corporate Affairs. This was a brief he relished because was a true believer in the mission. This was a junior ministership. Under each Cabinet minister there are three or four junior ministers. A Cabinet Minister usually has the title Secretary of State. Junior ministers are styled ‘Minister of State’. The next step for Neil would be promotion into the cabinet.

The hot topic was the Treaty of Maastricht. This treaty signed in the Netherlands was to turn the European Economic Community into the European Union. Neil was deeply skeptical about it. He believed that European integration had gone as far as it should. Like Thatcher he believed that the EEC was imposing too much regulation and degrading national sovereignty. He feared that if the EEC became the EU this would aggravate these tendencies. Denmark held a referendum on Maastricht. The Danes voted No in June 1992. Then Denmark held a second referendum and the result was affirmative.

Although Neil had deep misgivings about Maastricht he remained faithful to the Major Administration. Some other Conservative ministers resigned in opposition to Maastricht. Neil beseeched them not to do so.

Neil was sent to meetings of the Council of Ministers of the European Union. He became deeply disillusioned with the European Union (EU). He came to think it was unreformable and hell-bent to removing all national sovereignty.

In the 1990s Neil became involved with a parliamentary lobbyist named Ian Greer. Greer brought a new more pro-active style to lobbying. Mr. Greer was homosexual and Neil was not prejudiced against Greer because of his orientation. This was an era in which homosexuality was still deeply disapproved of by many Tories. No Tory MP came out as gay until Alan Duncan did in 2001. Duncan, the MP for Rutland and Melton, incidentally was another friend of Neil’s.

Harvey Proctor was also a friend of Neil’s. Proctor was a Conservative MP who got into trouble when he had an encounter with a rentboy whom he believed was 21 but turned out to be 17. It was an innocent mistake and could happen to anyone.

On his solicitor’s advice Proctor pleaded guilty to an offence in relation to this. He got a suspended sentence. There is no suggestion that Neil was involved in Mr. Proctor’s encounter with the ill-judged rentboy encounter or was even aware of it. Proctor subsequently left politics and ran a gentlemen’s outfitters. He had always been a shirt lifter!

In 1992 Neil happened to be in Harvey Proctor’s shirt shop when two men assaulted Proctor for homophobic reasons. Neil valiantly came to the defence of his friend. He suffered a broken nose for his pains. The two assailants were later jailed for their attack.

It was in the 1990s that Neil came to know Derek Laud. Laud was a Conservative activist. Unusually for a Tory at the time he was black and born in the United Kingdom to Jamaican immigrant parents and flamboyantly gay. Derek Laud grew up in a family with little money. He joined the Monday Club which was often accused of being anti-black. Laud is also gay. He was selected as a Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the 1997 election. However, he withdrew when allegations of unethical conduct were made against him. This did not stop him being made Joint Master of the new Forest Foxhounds . He was later a Big Brother star. But he was so loathed by his competitor who called himself ‘Science’ – who was also black – that Science said ‘’Laud is the first black person ever who actually makes me want to join the BNP.’’

Laud had written speeches for Thatcher and also for Alan Clark MP. That was despite Clark having said of the Ugandan Asians in 1973, ‘’they must be told ‘you cannot come here because you are not white.’ ’’ Laud was a friend of David Cameron’s. Years later he became so horrified with the ineptitude of Theresa May that he joined the Lib Dems and even stood for them in Cameron’s old seat of Witney, Oxfordshire.

Neil knew an Egyptian tycoon named Mohammed Fayed. Mr. Fayed was best known for owning Britain’s flagship department store: Harrod’s. Fayed was a fraud who could not even tell the truth about his name. The man from Alexandria styled himself Al Fayed – misusing the nobiliary particule. He also gave several contradictory answers about his year of birth. It was proven that he ordered a break-in to a safety deposit box owned by a business rival named Tiny Roland. Fayed had been a Conservative donor. However, he became embittered when his application for British citizenship was refused.

Fayed had grown up in Alexandria as the son of a schoolteacher. They family was higher status than you might expect because most Egyptians were illiterate at the time. Fayed was a very small businessman until the early 1950s. By some miracle he managed to marry a Miss Khasshoggi. She was from a very affluent and well-connected Saudi Arabian family. Admittedly this is because the Saudis became as rich as Crassus. His well got wife opened many doors for him. Before you can say ‘’bribery’’ he had fat contracts in Saudi Arabia. He later served as the honorary consul for one of the most dishonourable dictators in the world – Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti.

Mr. Fayed craved the one thing he never deserved: respectability. He laboured under the misapprehension that gentlemanliness could be bought. But common decency is not a commodity for sale.It was as though Fayed sought to exemplify Oscar Wilde’s dictum – he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Mohammed Fayed was an oleaginous social climber. There was more than a touch of Melmotte from The Way we live now by Anthony Trollope. He purchased the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris. This, Fayed reasoned, brought him closer to the royal family. Then Fayed became the major financial donor to the Royal Windsor Horse Show. This again was a bid to buy some kudos. His donation obliged Her Gracious Majesty to deign to meet him.

Mr. Fayed was of the Mohammedan persuasion. He never pretended to be a pious Muslim. If hirsuteness is indicative of Islamic observance it is notable that Fayed was always clean-shaven. He was partial to spirituous liquor but not to orisons nor did he profess to be a Koranic scholar. There was little anti-Muslim prejudice in the United Kingdom before 9/11. The average Briton knew precious little about Muslims or Islam. Fayed did not try that old chestnut – that he was a victim of anti-Muslim animus. Nor did he say he was hard done by on account of his nationality or ethnicity.

On October 1994 the Guardian newspaper ran a story saying that Tim Smith MP and Neil Hamilton MP had been paid cash by Mr. Fayed for asking questions in Parliament.

Fayed alleged that he had paid Neil and another MP in cash to ask questions in the House of Commons. The shopkeeper said that sometimes cash was handed to the MPs in envelopes and on other occasions money was paid to Ian Greer and was then passed on to the MPs in question. Another Tory MP such as Tim Smith admitted that this was true and on 19 October 1994 he stood down from his ministerial post. Mr. Smith also stated that he would leave Parliament at the next general election. Tim Smith was an Old Harrovian who sat for Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. Notably, Smith was the one who defeated Tony Blair in Blair’s first attempt to enter Parliament: the 1982 by election.

Neil vehemently denied ever taking cash to ask questions. The then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine questioned Neil about the issue. Neil categorically denied ever having any financial relationship with Fayed. Mohammed Fayed boasted ‘’you hire an MP like you hire a taxi.’’ He was so rancorous about being refused British citizenship by a Tory Government that he decided to embarrass the Conservative Party as much as he possibly could. He became a passionate Labour supporter despite not being able to vote. It was solely out of spite – he wanted to give the Tories one in the eye. If Fayed wanted to exact vengeance he certainly succeeded.

Neil initiated libel proceedings against those who had accused him of taking cash for questions. John Major said to Neil that the whirlwind of negative publicity around this was harming the government. He told Neil to resign or he would be dismissed.  On 26 October 1994 Neil was prevailed upon to resign from his government post. Relentless negative publicity about him was damaging the government. The attacks on Neil’s honour continued unabated.

The libel action was against the Guardian newspaper. Ian Greer was Neil’s co-plaintiff in the case. In 1996 the Defamation Act amended the Bill of Rights 1989. This permitted utterances made in Parliament to be questioned in court.

The day before the case was due to be heard the two co-plaintiffs settled saying that they could not afford to pursue the action and there was a conflict of interests. The Guardian then triumphantly published a headline about Neil dubbing him ‘’a liar and a cheat.’’ They were sure that Neil would never sue. Alan Rusbridger was then the editor of the newspaper. He crowed about how the two has capitulated.

On 1 October 1996 – the day that the libel trial would have commenced – Alan Rusbridger and Neil went head to head on Newsnight – a nightly current affairs show on the BBC.

Many scurrilous stories about Neil appeared in the Guardian. The Guardian is of course the sewer of choice for leftist ordure.

To some it appeared that Neil had been a victim of the left wing gutter press. Tories were accustomed to being monstered by scurrilous and scabrous dishonest pinko-liberal hacks.

Sir Gordon Downey was the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. He began an investigation into the allegations against Neil. The investigation came to a conclusion in 1997. Neil said that were the report to be critical of him then he would stand down from Parliament.

Edwina Currie gave evidence to the enquiry. Miss Currie was a fellow Tory but had been a nemesis of Neil’s for many years. She said that when she showed Neil photos of the cancers caused by tobacco this did not sway him at all. Neil said he judged the issue on the merits and not on emotive images. He was perfectly aware that smoking can kill but that people ought to be permitted to make their own decisions regarding health and lifestyle. Neil and Michael Brown MP had been paid GBP 6 000 each and been provided with free hotel stays and lavish dinners by Skoal Bandits in return for seeking to keep their product lawful. In 1989 Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for Health, signed an order banning Skoal Bandits. This was despite Clarke being a lifelong smoker and indeed working as a consultant for British American Tobacco.

Currie’s concern for health was odd. She said that cervical cancer was caused by crisps and northerners. She opined that good Christian people do not catch AIDS. She later resigned in a dispute over salmonella. It was a storm in an egg cup.

What no one knew at the time was that the married Edwina Currie was then having an affair with the also married John Major. They are both so repulsive I do not know which one of them should be more ashamed. In the early 1990s Major was to launch his ill-starred back to basics campaign. His crusade for personal morality came to grief when it was revealed that several Tory MPs had a predeliction for adultery. Had Mrs. Currie revealed than that she was penetrated by Major in the 1980s then it could easily have brought him down as Prime Minister.

Throughout this time Neil was being savaged in the newspapers every single day. Lunchtime O’Booze and Glenda Slagg type columnists always had him in their sights. This unrelenting media campaign depicted Neil as Mr. Sleaze.

Sir Gordon Downey’s report reached damning conclusions about Neil. Downey said that the evidence against Neil in the cash for questions affair was convincing.  It found that Neil had misled Michael Heseltine who was then the President of the Board of Trade and later the Deputy Prime Minister. Neil said that he did not have any financial ties to Ian Greer. Whereas in fact Neil had been paid by Greer on two occasions in 1988 and 1989 and these two sums had added up to GBP 10 000. In fairness this had been five years before Heseltine posed the question to him. In Neil’s mind this was ancient history and it was true in 1994 that he had no financial relationship with Greer at that time.

Neil and his goodwife had stayed in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and in Mr. Fayed’s Scottish castle gratis. Neil had not declared these in the register of members’ interests. Downey found that this was ethically below par and in breach of the Nolan Standards in Public Life.

Michael Brown was in a spot of bother. He had long before acknowledged being paid GBP 8 000 by US Tobacco and not cited it in the Register of Members Interests as he was legally obliged to do. But in the 1990s it emerged that the 40 something MP had been on a Caribbean holiday with a 20 year old man and shared a double bed with him. The gay age of consent was 21 at the time. What Brown was doing was technically illegal. He was not prosecuted. John Major said that homosexuality was no longer a resigning matter. Brown was not ‘out’ at the time. But when the news broke he publicly stated that he was gay.

Michael Brown also lost his seat in the 1997 election. Downey said that if Neil and Tim Smith had still been in Parliament after the election then they should have both been suspended for a long period of time.

Neil fiercely defended himself. He said the report was shoddy and based on hearsay. He accused it of bias. It was not a judicial inquiry, did not have a presumption of innocence and did not require the criminal standard of proof.

Tim Smith said he agreed with the conclusions of the report and sought no further role in public life.

Fayed was a deeply unsavoury character. His wastrel son Dodi Fayed was a fully qualified professional playboy. Dodi was engaged to an American model in 1997 when he began a liaison with the recently divorced Princess Diana. When the Ishmaelite businessman heard that his son had begun an intimate relationship with the princess he was jubilant. This was the establishment validation that he had yearned for with such flagrant indignity. Dodi dropped his fiancée like a hot potato and sent her a few million Pounds to encourage her to go away and shut up.

Dodi’s relationship with Diana lasted all of three weeks. They were together for about 10 of these 21 days. Nonetheless Fayed claimed without any evidence at all that the two were engaged and that Diana was pregnant by Dodi. Several investigations have disconfirmed these outlandish statements. Neil was up against a man with a proven record for outrageous falsity and utter ruthlessness.

Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton had accepted a free weekend in the Paris Ritz Hotel which Fayed owned. They acknowledged that this was true. It emerged that Mrs. Hamilton had even taken postage stamps for free from the hotel.

The Hamilton’s submitted to an exhaustive Revenue and Customs investigation of their finances and tax affairs. They came out of it smelling of roses.

In the June of 1995 Jon Major made a shock announcement. He resigned as leader of the party. But he had not resigned as PM. It was a back me or sack me move. He was fed up to the back teeth of all the carping. His resignation triggered a leadership contest in the Conservative Party. It was hoped by many on the right of the party that Michael Portillo who was Secretary of State for Defence would contest the leadership. Some Portillistas set up a campaign HQ and even installed extra telephone lines. But he did not stand and instead remained in the Cabinet and asked people to vote for Major. John Redwood resigned as Secretary of State for Wales and he stood against Major. Neil remained enamoured of Portillo despite Portillo letting him down in 1995. Indeed in 2001 when Portillo sought the Tory leadership he lost out on getting into the ballot of ordinary party members by one vote. Neil then expressed his sympathy for Portillo and said it was a pity that Portillo had not won.

Neil was bitterly disappointed with Major’s spinelessness and Europhilia. Under Major there was a sense that direction had been lost. He had no vision for the country. He was also as accident prone as can be. Neil lent his full support to Redwood. Redwood was seen to be too right wing. With a D.Phil from Oxford he was clearly and alpha mind but he was distinctly lacking in emotional intelligence. One journalist said that Redwood came across as a space alien in human form. His supporters were accused of being swivel eyed loons and foam flecked fanatics. Tony Marlow in his striped blazer came in for particular execration.

In the end Major won the votes of about 75% of Tory MPs. But he was not to survive as leader of the party for two more years.

In the mid-1990s the Tory Party was mired in allegations of sleaze. The press was extremely hostile to the party. Neil was savaged by the gutter press.

The Guardian is the United Kingdom’s main left wing broadsheet newspaper. The Guardian excoriated Neil as ‘a liar and a cheat’ in a screaming headline. The left wing media had successfully depicted him as Mr. Sleaze. It was a perception that was very difficult to correct because of the Semmelweis Reflex. Once people get a notion in their minds it is all but impossible to disabuse them of this misapprehension even if one presents a mountain of the most irrefragable evidence.

In 1996 Neil and he co-claimant withdrew their libel action. They were panned for this in the press.

Conservative Central Office lent on Neil not to stand in the 1997 election. They said that even if he was innocent he was attracting enormous amounts of hostile press coverage. This was preventing the Conservative message getting out. They asked him if he would please announce that he would not seek re-election for the good of the party. Neil adamantly refused to do so. He was innocent and he would let his constituents vindicate him.

Tatton was the fourth safest Conservative seat in the UK. Neil had won in 1992 by 16 000 votes. His position seemed unassailable in spite of the extremely negative reportage on him in most of the press. But being misportrayed by the media for several years was taking a toll on Neil’s standing in the constituency.

The Parliamentary Standard Commissioner investigated Neil. Neil’s withdrawal of his libel action seemed to some to be confirmatory of his guilt. Some Tory MPs begged him to step aside but he would not budge. In those days CCO had no say whatsoever over whom a local Conservative Association picked as its candidate. Neil is perhaps the single greatest reason why CCO now has the legal power to block local Conservative associations from selecting candidates whom CCO finds uncongenial.

There was much unease in Tatton Conservative Association. Nevertheless, the majority of Tatton Tories stuck with Neil. They believed him to be the victim of a leftist smear campaign. His chief accuser was a pathological liar. Never trust a man who cannot even tell the truth about his own name of year of birth.

In April 1997 it was time for the Tatton Conservative Association to choose their candidate for the upcoming election. 182 Conservatives voted for Neil to be their candidate. 35 voted against him. There were 100 abstentions. That was not the ringing endorsement he wanted. Only 55% of Conservatives in the constituency had voted for him.

There were two other Conservative MPs who were dogged by sleaze allegations. They were Piers Merchant and Allan Stewart. Stewart sat for a seat in Scotland. Merchant had been the President of the Durham Union and by 1997 was the MP for Beckenham in Kent. The married middle aged Tory was having an affair with a 17 year old nightclub hostess named Anna Cox. An ICM poll for the Observer newspaper showed that Merchant and Stewart were both fairly popular in their seats in but that Neil’s popularity had evaporated. But many in Tatton viewed Neil as a slimeball.

For 3 years Neil had braved brutal headlines almost every single day. It proves how indomitable he is that he stood up to such bile from the media.

Jonathan Aitken – the Conservative MP for Thanet – was also facing allegations of taking unethical payments from Mohammed Fayed. At the time the scandal broke he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was spoken of as a future Prime Minister. A 6’4’’ lean marathon runner with chiseled features – he looked like a leader. He had impeccable establishment credentials – he was the son of a Canadian peer who was a war hero; he was the nephew of a newspaper magnate, Aitken also had an Eton and Oxford education behind him.  He had been a Fleet Street journalist and a war correspondent in Vietnam. He had once been the toast of the media for defending the free press and even being willing to risk prison for doing so. Jonathan Aitken was an Anglican lay preacher.  He had even been the boyfriend of Thatcher’s only daughter – Carol. Aitken dumped Carol because he was two-timing her: unbeknownst to Carol he was also going out with a Yugoslavian blonde named Lolicia. Aitken proposed to Lolicia and jilted Carol. People later asked Mrs. Thatcher why should would never give this talented young backbench MP a government post. Margaret Thatcher would never promote Aitken despite the blandishments of his many admirers. Why? He made Carol cry.

He had midwifed arms deals with Saudi Arabia which had netted him millions. Some felt that his eagerness to sell weapons to a cruel Islamist tyranny flew in the face of his much vaunted Christian faith. Saudi Arabia did not allow Christian worship. Anyone caught with a Bible or conducting prayer meetings would spend years in a fetid dungeon. The Saudi Government promoted anti-Christian forces in Sudan and the Philippines. How could a Christian defend such a regime? It seemed that Aitken had no conscience. He had a moral standard. His arms deal commission fee was a very high moral standard. Somehow money salved his qualms. His sexual infidelity did not sit well with his pharisaical posturing either.

A documentary called Jonathan of Arabia suggested that he had pimped for Arab princelings. The relentless press attacks in Aitken led to him eventually agreeing to resign. His presence in Cabinet was at the very least a distraction from the government’s message.

Aitken insisted he had not done so and he had paid for his stay in the Paris Ritz which was then owned by the Egyptian grocer. Mr. Aitken claimed his daughter and his Yugoslav wife Lolicia were with him Paris at the material time.  Aitken unwisely took out a libel action against the Guardian newspaper. Aitken pressured his teenage daughter into perjurious statements to help him out of a tight corner. In the end Guardian journalists were able to obtain records that proved that Mrs. Aitken and her daughter had lodged in a hotel in Switzerland on the night in question and thus could not possibly have been in Paris.

Jonathan Aitken swore on the Holy Bible before testifying in court. As he was a self-professed Christian who often preached in the Church of England it is particularly horrifying that he profaned the Christian faith by perjuring himself when he had sworn on the Good Book to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. His statements in court were proven to be false.

The Guardian later celebrated Aitken’s downfall. The headline was He lied and lied and lied.

Luke Harding is the Guardian scribbler who make Aitken his quarry over several years. He published a deeply disobliging biography of the Conservative cabinet minister. Aitken had the unenviable distinction of being the first politician to have a biography of him published titled The Liar.

Aitken was later sent down for perjury. His memoir Pride and Perjury is a riveting read and gives a sense of what the era was like for doom-stricken Tories. Aitken had always been a practicing Anglican. He really found Jesus anew in prison. When he came out he went to Oxford forty years after taking his first degree. Aitken was later ordained a Church of England priest.

In 1997 the election was called. The BBC journalist Martin Bell stood against Neil. Bell was then famous for his reportage from Yugoslavia in the midst of its wars. He had been shot whilst finishing a broadcast. This had made him a public hero. Bell was seen as the voice of reason and unpolitical. The media coverage of Martin Bell’s campaign was entirely favourable. His campaign was helped by the presence of his outstandingly nubile blonde daughter. Bell insisted on wearing a white suit throughout the campaign as if it were indicative of his purity. There was a media circus around him. Labour and the Lib Dems knew they had little chance of taking Tatton even though the press was almost universally negative towards Neil. But Labour and the Lib Dems knew that the Tories could lose the seat. Labour and the Lib Dems therefore withdrew their candidates. This gave Bell a clear run.

Had Labour and the Lib Dems not withdrawn their candidates then Neil would very likely have retained the seat albeit narrowly. Conversely, had Bell not stood but Labour and the Lib Dems fielded candidates then again it is highly probable that Neil would still have saved his seat but again not by a large margin.

Bell stood as the anti-corruption candidate. Neil disliked this label intensely and said it was deeply disingenuous. He wanted to ask Bell a question on camera. Neil sought out his challenger. Bell and Neil met each other on Knutsford Common and had a famous exchange filmed by the TV cameras. Neil’s insouciance was incredible. Neil said that by Martin Bell calling himself ‘anti-corruption’ this unmistakably implied that Neil was corrupt. Christine harangued Martin Bell. This transformed her from an unknown into a celebrity. Neil was remarkably restrained and courteous. Bell said he was independent and not anti-corruption. He extended the presumption of innocence to Neil. Neil then welcomed Bell as an independent candidate.

Labour possibly committed a grave blunder in withdrawing its candidate in Tatton. For Labour, Neil was a gift that kept on giving. As long as Neil was an MP the newspapers would be full of the headline ‘’Tory sleaze.’’ But if he was booted out of Parliament then he would no longer be so closely associated with the party. Strangely, Neil was worth more to Labour in Parliament than out of it. It was actually in Labour’s interests for Neil to win his seat. Depriving the Conservatives of one more seat was of negligible importance in an election where Labour was predicted to win and did win a staggering majority.

Bill Roach was a local celebrity from his role in the long running soap opera Coronation Street. He turned up to campaign for Neil. Neil still had friends in high places.

In the wee hours of 2 May the result was announced by the returning officer. Neil’s massive majority had been overturned. Bell beat him by a staggering 11 000 votes. It was a swing of an unprecedented 48%. Martin Bell won an unprecedented 60% of the vote. No one in Tatton had ever won by that much. There were three ‘independent conservatives’ who also stood as well as the usual collection of loonies who stand in high profile seats.

Martin Bell was Britain’s first independent MP in decades. Neil remained ever defiant. He swore he would be back in Parliament one day.

Bell served one term as MP for Tatton. He vowed he would not seek a second one. In 2001 he stood in Brentwood and Ongar against another Conservative. Bell said this was because the local Conservative Association had been taken over by a religious cult. It was staggering that he stood against a Conservative again when there were many pathological liars on the Labour benches – mainly Tony Blair. This time Bell was unsuccessful.

On 3 July 1997 the Downey report was published. It said that Neil had taken cash for questions. It specifically said that Neil had even been paid in brown paper envelopes. The Independent newspaper reported on it extensively. It suggested that the new Tory supremo William Hague expel Neil from his party if the Tories were ever to expunge the disgrace that clung to them.

The Downey Report savaged Michael Grylls and Michael Brown. Michael Grylls was an ex Royal Marines officer and then the MP for Chertsey and the father of Bear Grylls who is now Chief Scout.

The issue of Neil Hamilton remained divisive for several years in the constituency. In 1999 George Osborne sought to be selected as the Conservative candidate for the seat. The 28 year old Osborne was the heir to a wallpaper fortune. He had been educated at St Paul’s and Oxford. After a stint as a struggling political journalist he had worked for Tory Central Office. He found it prudent not to voice an opinion on Neil Hamilton. Some association members remained devoted to Neil. There were others who reviled him. Osborne went on to be elected in 2001. He later served as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Out of Parliament

John Major resigned as leader of the Conservative Party immediately after the electoral defeat. He stayed on in a caretaker capacity until such time as a replacement could be elected. William Hague was duly elected leader in June 1997. Hague was one of the youngest Tory MPs aged only 35. He was also the former Secretary of State for Wales. Hague was then dating a civil servant in the Welsh Office: Ffion. These days this would be considered deeply inappropriate. His Welsh connection did not endear him to Neil Hamilton.

Hague believed that the party badly needed to move on from the scandal-struck Major years. He implored Neil not to attend the 1997 conference. The Conservatives needed him there like they needed a hole in the head. Neil bowed to Hague’s entreaty and agreed not to show his face at the party conference.

On 9 May 1997 – five days after he lost his seat – Neil was on Have I Got News for You. Angus Deayton was the host of the penal game show. Deayton wore a white suit for the only ever time – it was redolent of Martin Bell’s white suit that he famously sported in the Tatton election. The Hamilton’s were paid their fee in brown paper envelopes. Neil hit back, ‘’I’ve found its much better making political jokes than being one.’’

Neil chose not to return to practice at the bar. He was sick of what he called ‘’a constipated profession’’ and said he would not be able to contain himself when dealing with judges – he would tell members of the bench what he really thought of them. What Neil and Christine did have was an awful lot of publicity. They started to monetize this.

In 1999 the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) invited Neil and Christine to be guests of honour at their termly dinner. OUCA was well known for holding ‘OUCA-holic’ events. The President of the Association was an eccentric alcoholic high camp homosexual of reactionary leanings named Steven Philip Doody. The boozy dinner went well enough. They then repaired to Steven’s set of rooms in Balliol College, Oxford for the after party. They were all well-oiled!

The Oxford Student newspaper published an article on the after party in Balliol. The headlined proclaimed ‘OUCA lurch to Reich wing.’

The after party involved choruses of songs in questionable taste such as a song to the melody of ‘Dashing through the snow’. The lyrics go: ‘dashing through the Reich/ In a black Mercedes benz/ killing lots of kikes/ rat a tat at at/ Mow ze buggers down/ Oh what fun it is to be/ ze SS in ze town/ Oh lebensraum/ lebensraum…’ This revolting song joking about the Holocaust was not considered ideal publicity for the new and inclusive Conservative Party. No one has said that Neil or Christine ever participated in singing these anti-Semitic songs or even knew the lyrics.

Christine by her own admission goes for anything in trousers. There was a law undergraduate from Christ Church named Will Goodhand. Christine and Will got along very well indeed! They snogged. On seeing this some Oxonians said, ‘’do it again for the camera.’’ The canoodling couple happily obliged. At the time Will was 19 and Christine was 50. So she was a bit young by Will’s standards!

The photo was sold to the Sun newspaper for several thousand pounds. That was a very tidy sum in 1999. Bear in mind undergraduate fees were GBP 1 000 per annum back then.

‘A minging Tory snog’ was the headline splashed across the front page of the Sun. Will Goodhand was seeing snogging Chirstine Hamilton.

The Hamiltons said those who had stooped so low as to sell this photo to the Sun ought to be ‘osctracised.’ Mrs. Hamilton commented that ‘’if he thinks that was a snog then he has a lot to learn.’’

Will Goodhand went along with the Sun and posed for photos with a Page Three girl. The article said he took her on a date punting and to dinner. The latter part is not true but they paid for Will to dine on his own. Will was later an unsuccessful Conservative parliamentary candidate and a semi-successful radio DJ.

On 16 January 1997 Mohammed Fayed went on the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches. Fayed said that Neil had been given cash payments totally GBP 110 000 over several years and had been given Harrod’s gift vouchers free of charge as well as being allowed to stay at the Paris Ritz for free on a long weekend in 1987. All this was in payment for Neil asking questions for Fayed in the House of Commons. Neil always admitted that he had stayed in the Paris Ritz Hotel at Fayed’s expense but insisted that there was no impropriety involved in accepting the free hospitality.

In 1999 Martin Bell MP went to address the Oxford Union. His predecessor as the MP for Tatton decided to surprise Mr. Bell. Neil is a life member of the Cambridge Union. There is reciprocity of membership or one might even say mutuality between the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union. Neil and Christine attended the meeting and sat in the front row much to Bell’s chagrin. He was egregiously discombobulated to see them there. At the Union Neil’s old chum Fr David Johnson entertained him royally. The late Fr Johnson was then on the Standing Committee of the Oxford Union. He was its oldest ever member aged 45.

On 31 July 1998 Neil’s libel action was given a court listing. Though Neil was a barrister himself he chose not to defend himself. Defamation was not his area of law. He had many supporters who contributed most liberally to his legal fighting fund.

Neil still had friends in high places. Lord Harris of High Cross donated to Neil Hamilton’s libel action fund as he had done in 1984. Taki contributed to his legal costs as did Lord Harris of High Cross. The Earl of Portsmouth also contributed. Gerald Howarth MP contributed as did Gyles Brandreth (former Tory MP for Chester and television show presenter), the right wing curmudgeon journalist Simon Heffer, Lord Bell and Peter Clarke. There were only 165 Tory MPs left in 1997 and 40 of them contributed to the fighting fund. That was a staggering level of support given the wall to wall vitriol against Neil in the popular press. Over GBP 410 000 was raised. Libel is an astonishingly expensive business. A single day in court with a junior barrister will set you back at least several thousand pounds.

Defamation cases can be heard by a judge or by a jury. If the parties cannot agree which way the case will be tried then the judge shall determine which means of trying the case will be serve the interests of justice. The trouble with a jury is that Neil’s name had been dragged through the mire for years before the case opened. Therefore many jurors may have been prejudiced against him. The press had been traducing him and it would be very hard for jurors to put this out of their minds.

If Neil won the case his reputation would be restored, he would win hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation and he could get his seat back. Neil and Christine were bullish about their chances of winning. That is suggestive of innocence. Why would they stake everything on it if they were culpable?

In November 1999 the trial began. The judge had to ascertain that the jury was not biased. Fayed owned Fulham Football Club. He asked if there were any Fulham supporters on the jury. To public amusement it emerged that none of them were Fulham fans.

In the case Fayed was asked why he called himself Al Fayed when his surname was actually ‘Fayed’. ‘’Call me Al Capone if you liked’’ he quipped to gales of laughter.

Fayed repeated his claim in court that Neil had been paid cash in brown paper envelopes sometimes these were handed to Neil by Fayed’s staff and sometime the payments were made via Ian Greer.  Neil repeated his denial that he had ever accepted an ob from Fayed, either directly or via an intermediary but said it was true that he had stayed in Fayed’s hotel for free. The counsel for Neil said that Fayed’s false statements had ruined Neil’s good name.

Fayed hired the foremost QC of the day: George Carman. Mohammed Fayed was in the witness box against Neil. The case lasted 6 weeks. Jonathan Aitken is another former Conservative MP who was hit with sleaze allegations. Aitken described being cross-examined by Carman as being ‘’carmanised.’’ Carman is the only barrister whose name became a verb! He was a fearsome advocate. Carman had had his old university friend Jeremy Thorpe sensationally acquitted of conspiracy to murder in 1979. Thorpe was the erstwhile leader of the Liberal Party.

Neil and Christine were both cross-examined by the fearsome George Carman QC. Carman QC asked Neil if he had been corrupt in 1989 when he asked Mobil Oil for GBP 10 000 to table an amendment on a finance bill. Neil was then on the House of Commons Select Committee on Finance.

George Carman QC the continued to cross examine Neil. Neil would usually gave lengthy answers that to some gave an impression of chicanery. Carman would then snort contumeliously, ‘’you finished?’’ Surprisingly the judge did not reprimand Carman for such ungentlemanly conduct. But Neil’s loquacity appeared to be his undoing. It seemed to have a negative impact on the jury’s view of him.

There was some sympathy for Fayed so soon after his son’s death. The public, particularly in London, was still egregiously anti-Conservative. This may have prejudiced the jury.

On 21 December 1999 the jury found for Fayed on the basis of justification. His utterances regarding Neil were held to be substantially veracious. Neil was branded corrupt.

Neil and his wife came out of the Royal Courts of Justice. They appeared as though they were gazing into hell. He had bet the bank on winning the case and restoring his reputation and political career. Now he was doomed. Down into the abyss he would have to go. Some people would have been driven to suicide by this calamity.

Neil appealed and lost. He sought leave to appeal again this time to the House of the Lords which at the time functioned as the Supreme Court. Leave was denied.

On 27 May 2001 Neil declared bankruptcy. This was because he was unable to pay his legal fees and Fayed’s costs. These amounted to a staggering GBP 3 million. Being a bankrupt this forfended practicing at the bar or being an MP. Neil vowed that Fayed would not get a penny. All his earnings went to his goodwife because she was not bankrupt. He was discharged from bankruptcy three years later.

On 30 March 2000 Neil went on Da Ali G Show which was then brand new. It was hosted by Sacha Baron-Cohen in his persona of Ali G – a racially ambivalent shell suit wearing educationally subnormal rude boy, capo of the West Staines Massive who poses as a petty drug dealer but in fact comes from a boringly bourgeois background. In it Ali G proffers a cannabis cigarette to Neil which he happily smoked.

In a later edition of Da Ali G Show the guest was Mohammed Fayed. In it Ali G asked the Egyptian shopkeeper what he would say to Neil Hamilton if Neil were there. Fayed replied, ‘’Nothing. To me he is nothing.’’ Ali G then claimed that Neil had said he had seen Fayed wearing women’s lingerie. Fayed denied it and said ‘’he is the one who is doing that. He is very well known for that.’’ Ironically Neil did appear in ladies undergarments years later as part of a theatrical production. That was the Rocky Horror Show where he wore high heels and a basque.

There were still some political groups who were keen to hear from Neil. The Springbok Club invited Neil to address them. The club was for South Africans resident in the Home Counties. They displayed the apartheid era South African colours. Mr. Hamilton said he was pleased to speak in front of the ‘’true flag of South Africa.’’ Leftists took it as an endorsement of racialism.

After 2001 the Hamilton’s had to rebuild their financial position. They appeared on numerous quiz shows. They were on celebrity ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ to raise money for charity. When they underperformed Christine was visibly distressed at having let down needy people.

The couple appeared on posh nosh and other shows.

Neil and Christine traveled to the Republic of Ireland because they were invited on The Late, Late Show. The show was the most popular chat show on Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE) which is the Irish Republic’s principal channel. On RTE they were interviewed by the late Gay Byrne. Gabriel ‘Gay’ Bryne was Ireland’s foremost presenter for decades. Before going on air the couple had addressed the Law Society of University College Dublin (UCD). There were plenty UCD law undergraduates in the studio audience and they afforded the Hamilton’s a very hearty welcome.

Neil wrote an enthralling booked titled Great Political Eccentrics. He also penned another engrossing tome called Politics’ Strangest Characters. Did Neil write whereof he knew? He has never been accused of normality.

The Hamilton’s sold their Cheshire home for GBP 1.25 million. That was a very tidy sum at the time more like GBP 3 million in the values of 2023.

Upon selling their Cheshire domicile the Hamilton’s shifted to Hullavington, Wiltshire in October 2004.

In When Louis Met the Hamilton’s, Neil said that he and Christine were ‘’professional objects of curiosity.’’ Some said they were a circus act.

While on When Louis Met the Hamilton’s, Neil is show exercising in Hyde Park. As he said himself he was not bad for a 51 year old man. He has never been fat.

In some shows Neil seemed himself. He was confident and garrulous as usual. On other shows he appeared to be stiff and inhibited. No all media suited him.

MacIntyre is a show fronted by an eponymous Dubliner. Mr. MacIntyre had Neil on his show when he was helping the police. They winkled out wanted criminals by sending them letters saying they had won a competition and were due to be awarded a prize. As Neil was so often seen on game shows his presence lent this cover story some credibility.

Christine acquired herself a richly deserved reputation for being an outrageous flirt. No man was safe! Women of Britain: lock up your sons! And fathers and grandfathers. In spite of her pantherine sexuality, in fairness to her, no one has ever suggested that her behaviour has gone beyond mere coquetry.

Christine and Neil often appeared in pantomimes. It turned out that they had an exceptional gift for acting. They became a stable of quiz shows. They were on the Weakest Link hosted by Anne Robinson and on Ready Steady Cook. Neil competed on a celebrity edition of Mastermind on 26 December 2004. In 2005 Neil went on 18 Stone of Idiot and he danced in a Perspex box while the morbidly obese comedian Johnny Vegas and someone else poured buckets of fish over him. The price of political failure was not too high!

The couple appeared on Loose Women. Neil said the secret of his marriage’s success was ‘’I find we get on very well if I do exactly as I am told.’’

The Guardian dubbed Neil ‘’an all-purpose Z list celebrity.’’ He was perceived as an unpolitical figure. But the Noughties he was famous for being famous. He may never has asked cash for questions. By 2000 he was being questioned for cash.

Christine Hamilton went on Have I got news for you? The satirical news quiz show. The host mercilessly lampooned the Hamilton’s. It paid their fee in brown paper envelopes. This was an allusion to how Fayed claimed he had paid Neil.

Louis Theroux then did a show called ‘when Louis met’ and he usually encountered extraordinary freaks. Louis Theroux is the British born son of the celebrated American travel writer Paul Theorux. Louis is a skinny, bespectacled, so self-assured that he is soft-spoken and unassuming chap who was educated at Westminster and Oxford. He is a man over whom women swoon.  In 2000 he did one with Neil and Christine Hamilton.

Neil blazed a trail. He was the very first ex-politician to become a star of reality TV. Since then others have sought to reinvent themselves as media figures.

In 2003 Nadine Milroy-Sloan, the false accuser, was awarded a three year prison sentence. It was a disgracefully light sentence bearing in mind the far longer sentence that would have been given to Neil had he been wrongfully convicted. She was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Max Clifford who had represented Miss Milroy-Sloan paid Neil a sum of money in compensation. Part of the agreement was that the figure be kept secret.

Milroy-Sloan was a habitual liar. In 2014 she was again imprisoned for falsely accusing her ex-boyfriend of threatening her with a sword.

In the summer of 2000 Neil and Christine Hamilton was falsely accused of the rape of a woman. On 10 August 2001 the couple was arrested pursuant to a rape investigation.

Christine said that this accusation was ‘’lies on stilts’’. Indeed the couple had probative evidence that they were miles away from the scene of the alleged crime at the material time. They were dining with Derek Laud who corroborated their alibi. When the investigation started the couple were being filmed for When Louis met the Hamilton’s which was part of a series wherein Louis Theroux met interesting freaks At first Louis was entirely unaware of the rape allegation. In the back of a Range Rover Neil said that they had a story for Louis and most people would charge him extra for it but that they were giving it to Louis for free when Neil dropped a bombshell saying that they had been false accused of rape.

 The Sunday Times wrote ‘’they deserve less sympathy than most’’ but acknowledged that the couple had been blackguarded. Christine read the article aloud on the reality TV show When Louis met the Hamilton’s.

Their calumniator was subsequently awarded a three year prison sentence. The publicist who did most to disseminate these utterly bogus claims was Max Clifford. Clifford was a Labour donor who later went to prison for sex crimes.

Neil and Christine went into writing.

 Great British political eccentrics is a very readable book by Neil. He is a soi-disant eccentric. In it he featured Nabbaro, Screaming Lord Sutch, Roy Jenkins and others. Neil had little sympathy for Lord Roy Jenkins whom he lampooned. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead was a Welsh Labourite who sat for an English seat. He was the Home Secretary who shepherded through a piece of legislation that has killed over ten million British children. He later split from Labour to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). His splitting the anti-Tory vote handed the entire 1980s to the Conservative Party. Thanks Roy! He later became Chancellor of Oxford University.

Neil later wrote a thoroughly engrossing tome called Politics’ Strangest Characters. In this book he mused on the curious case of Treibitsch Lincoln. The weird and wonderful Lincoln was born into a Jewish family in Hungary. After studying at the Royal Hungarian Academic of Dramatic art he moved to the United Kingdom. He managed to have himself selected as a Liberal candidate in 1910 and was returned to Parliament. He sat there only between January and December 1910. 1910 is the only year bar 1974 in which the United Kingdom held two general elections. Lincoln’s story grew ever more bizarre. He ended up in Tibet in the 1940s where he died – possibly poisoned by German agents.

Christine published a tome titled the bumper book of Great British battleaxes.

Neil appeared in numerous shows. They have acted in pantomimes.

In 2002 the Hamilton’s resigned from the Conservative and Unionist Party after 35 years of stalwart service. They joined the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Nigel Farage was then one of the most prominent UKIP Members of the European Parliament. Farage recalled luncheon with the Hamilton’s. He claimed that half way through he felt a hand on his knee. It was Christine! She was a notorious man eater. It is a fate that befell even me. She ruffled my hair and twittered ‘’oh what a lovely boy you are.’’

Christine forged a media career in her own right. She has been a columnist and a television reviewer. She has been on countless talk shows. She was a star turn in I’m a celebrity get me out of here wherein she was exiled to the Australian jungle for a few weeks.

In 2003 the Hamilton’s were invited to address the sixth form of Oundle School. Their car broke down and they were unable to make it. The school wanted them so badly that it arranged another occasion for them to speak. In his oration Neil said that there was a certain level below which support for the Conservatives would not go. Rock bottom was about 30%. He made disobliging remarks about Conservative leaders – Hague and Iain Duncan Smith IDS. IDS was such a lamentable choice for leader that people joked his initials stood for ‘’in deep shit.’’

Ironically Neil had far more influence outside Parliament than he had inside it.

UKIP was keen that a household name stand for Parliament. Neil and Christine declined to do so. They said ‘’we’ve done politics.’’ They needed to earn some money and buy themselves a decent house. This they eventually succeeded in doing. They purchased a home in Wiltshire.

In 2004 Neil and Christine attended an event in Oxford to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of D Day. The fete was held in the, alas and alack, now defunct pub called the Far from the Madding Crowd on Friar’s Entry. It was organized by Rev Fr David Johnson. Present were fifty persons including the Canadian High Commissioner (‘’call me Mel’’) and the morbidly obese and bearded Luxembourgish Ambassador straight from central casting.

Neil is never short of an opinion. He said he exalts David Lloyd George as the first Welshman to rise to the office of Prime Minister and one who made the political weather for a generation. That is despite Neil disagreeing with Lloyd George’s collectivist policies which paved the way for socialism.

Tony Blair attracts particular hostility and disdain from Neil. He scorns Blair’s so called ethical foreign policy and believe that Iraq War was calamitous.

In 2006 the Hamilton’s released a song for the Football World Cup. It was titled ‘England are Jolly Dee’. That was notwithstanding neither of them caring a fig about the sport and Neil is not actually English. Nor were either of them remotely musical. Full marks for effort!

In 2008 Neil and Christine founded Vixen Consultants Limited. This dealt with their media appearance. It trades under the name of Vixen Consultants. Neil is company secretary.

By the 2010s the Hamilton’s star was waning. The days of the 1990s when they had wall to wall coverage (whether wanted or unwanted) were over. They were all but unknown to the junior generation. It was at this point that Neil decided to throw his hat into the political ring once more.

In September 2011 Neil went to UKIP’s autumn conference. Nigel Farage was then leading the party. Farage endorsed him to stand for election to the National Executive Committee of the party. Neil was elected on 1 November 2011. He then served as deputy chairman of UKIP. Neil later became campaign director in April 2014. In May 2014 he sought to be elected in Wandsworth London Borough Council. He stood for St Mary’s ward. There were 9 candidates and Neil came a distant 8^th. London is not fertile soil for UKIP. The British capital is one of the most ardently Europhile areas in the country.

Arron Banks was the main UKIP financial backer. In private emails he dubbed Neil ‘’a corrupt old Tory’’

In 2014 Neil provoked wrath once again when he said that decent BNP voters were turning to UKIP. The British National Party as recently as the 1990s was an openly white supremacist party which sought to deprive non-white Britons of their British citizenship and expel them. It had denied the Holocaust and stoked odium against Muslims. Some say there is no such thing as a decent BNP voter. But it is an objective statement of fact that quite a few people who formerly voted BNP then cast their ballots for UKIP.

On 5 May 2016 Neil stood to be a member of what was then styled the National Assembly for Wales. UKIP was riding high because of the Brexit referendum. Neil was elected as a list Member of the Senedd (MS) for Mid and West Wales. Senedd is the Welsh word for ‘parliament’. He soon became the leader of the UKIP faction in the Welsh Assembly. The Welsh Assembly was subsequently renamed the Welsh Parliament in 2020. 7 UKIP MS’s were elected to the Welsh Assembly in 2016. All of them came in via the regional list system. UKIP never had anyone elected to Cardiff for a constituency.

Just five days after being elected to the Welsh Assembly, Neil was elected leader of UKIP in the assembly. He ousted Nathan Gill. Farage was the leader of the party and criticized the move. UKIP should not be fighting UKIP. Neil said Farage should not interfere in an internal Welsh matter and said that Farage was throwing a tantrum. Neil reminded the public that Farage was a Member of the European Parliament for South-East England and had never even stood for election in Wales.

In that legislature Neil continued to vocalise his forthright views. He said he was immensely gratified to be serving in the Land of my fathers – calling to mind the Welsh patriotic song. He was the only MS not to reside in the principality. Bigots tried to exploit this to portray him as somehow an alien and unfit to represent a region of Wales.

Nathan Gill was so dischuffed at being ousted by Neil that Gill left UKIP. He sat as an independent.

Neil made a barnstorming maiden speech in the Welsh Assembly. He also dubbed Kirsty Williams and Leanne Wood ‘’concubines’’ and said they were in a harem. Feminists were not best pleased. The talentless ex-social worker Leanne Wood was a Plaid Cymru MS and later became leader of the party. Stroppy, far left, eurofanatic, politically correct, anti-monarchist, bigoted and viciously intolerant – la Wood was not exactly Neil’s cup of cha.

A loony leftist MS named Eluned Morgan said that Brexit would hurt the poorest most. Neil Hamilton unkindly blurted out ‘’suicide’s an option.’’ The Presiding Officer called upon Neil to say sorry. He declined to do so, ‘’what is there to apologise for? What was unparliamentary about the remark?’’ In the end he said, ‘’I apologise for whatever remark I am supposed to have made.’’

Neil courted controversy in 2018 by speaking up for the late Enoch Powell. Powell had been the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South-West and later an Ulster Unionist MP for Down South. Powell was notorious for his 1968 Rivers of Blood oration in which he said that non-white immigration was an existential threat to the United Kingdom. Powell was defended by Neil and said that Powell was no ghoul. Neil said that while large scale racial violence that Powell had forecast had not transpired, Powell was correct inasmuch as social change had been wrought by mass immigration and it was unwanted by most of the UK populace. Neil said that Powell was right to speak up for ordinary people when the elite chose to disregard these well-founded concerns.

Leanne Wood then denounced Neil saying that he was keeping racism alive. A Labour assemblyman said that Neil’s remarks were outrageous.

In 2019 Neil stood in a by-election in Newport West. He came third and polled a respectable 8.6%. Newport West had been a Labour seat for a century.

In 2020 the BLM movement began to demand that some statutes be taken down in Wales when the statute was a likeness of someone who had been involved in the slave trade. BLM wanted a statue of Mr. Pickton removed from Cardiff City Hall and Pickton Street renamed. They also sought the removal of another statue in Carmarthen. To Neil’s eternal credit he refused to be morally blackmailed by the racism industry.

Neil vociferously argued that the statue ought to remain in situ and that Pickton Street retain its name. He denounced BLM as Marxist and said it aimed at the erasure of Wales’ heritage. BLM proposed to put a statue of George Floyd in room of Pickton. Floyd was murdered by the police in the USA. Neil accused Floyd of being a drug peddler.

Unfortunately there is a rising tide of far left bigots demanding the abolition of British national pride. Neil set his face like flint against these socialists seditionists.

In 2020 Freddy Vachha, the UKIP leader, was forced out. Neil became acting leader of UKIP. He later became its substantive leader.

In 2021 Neil was the only UKIP representative other than local councilors.

In 2021 in the election to the Welsh Parliament, Neil chose not to seek re-election in Mid and West Wales. Instead he stood in South Wales East. It was possible a mistake. He was top of UKIP’s regional list.

BBC Wales held a main leaders’ debate. However. They did not invite the UKIP leader on saying that it was a minor party. Neil was invited to speak in a minor leaders’ debate alongside the leaders of the Green Party and Reform UK.

Neil stood in Islwyn. This was the onetime Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s former bailiwick. But Hamilton performed worse than the other Neil! He polled only 507 votes – coming 6^th.

All UKIP politicians failed to be elected to the Welsh Parliament.

In 2018 Neil was himself pushed out as UKIP leader in the Welsh Assembly. He was supplanted by Caroline Jones.

In 2018 the then leader of UKIP Gerard Batten said that a vote would be held to elect the UKIP leader in Wales. Whoever won would lead the party’s delegation in the Welsh Assembly and would be the Cymric voice of the party. Gareth Bennett MS, Miss Jones and Neil Hamilton all contested it. Bennett won. Nonetheless, Hamilton said he respected Bennett and would cooperate with him.

On 12 September 2020 Neil was elected leader of the UK Independence Party. He won 498 votes out of 631. That meant 79% of the total vote. He defeated John Poynton. Membership had collapsed. Most talented and ambitious UKIPers had decamped to the newly founded Brexit Party (now called Reform UK). That included the sometime leader of UKIP – Nigel Farage.

When Neil took over UKIP was in poor shape. The membership had fallen off a cliff. Its finances were shocking. As Brexit had happened it seemed that UKIP had lost its raison d’etre. People were bored rigid of the EU issue. But Neil insisted that the Tory Brexit had been half-hearted at best. In spite of Neil’s most valiant efforts, UKIP is largely a one man band. It has trouble garnering much media attention. Neil does his level best to keep the UKIP show on the road. But the membership is elderly, donations are paltry and public opinion is shifting towards seeking readmission to the EU. In truth the party shall probably not long survive him.

In 2021 Neil was ‘liberated’ in his own words from the Welsh Parliament.

In 2022 he attended the memorial service of Fr. David Johnson.

When Brexit came Neil believed that the United Kingdom had benefitted precious little therefrom. He wanted a hard Brexit and argued that the United Kingdom has not used its Brexit freedoms fully. Nonetheless, he was impressed by Boris Johnson’s drive and ambition. Neil has thought aloud about rejoining the Conservative Party but concluded, ‘’I am a bit long in the tooth to do that.’’

The UKIP position on Ukraine is that Ukraine must free itself from Russian aggression and tyranny. The United Kingdom must back Kyiv to the hilt.

Neil expressed his disagreement with reparations for slavery. He said it is ludicrous. He also disagrees with taking down statues of those who trafficked in slaves. This would lead to the razing of all Roman architecture.

By 2022 Christine had had enough of being in the media spotlight. She voiced her desire to leave all that behind and to finally regain some privacy. A quarter of a century as a public figure has been more than enough.

One of the happiest and most marvelous things Neil has achieved and the thing that has sustained him through many disasters, is his marriage. Adversity appears only to have drawn the couple closer when it would have sundered many other marriages. It is surely one of the most resoundingly successful celebrity marriages of the present day. The Hamilton’s have plenty of sworn enemies. But even their most implacable foes have never accused the Hamilton’s of being unfaithful to the marital bed. What extraordinary serendipity that these star crossed lovers should have met so young

Did Neil ask cash for questions? He has never wavered in his denials in over 29 years. Perhaps finally he ought to be believed.

A peerage for this political titan is long overdue.