Interviews with Ukip bigwigs used to happen in pubs. But times are changing. When I meet Patrick O’Flynn — the party’s economics spokesman, and until recently chief spin doctor — it’s in a juice bar.
O’Flynn, a former political editor of the Daily Express who studied economics at Cambridge, is one of those driving Ukip towards professionalism. Ukip, he says, is the only party he’s ever joined, and it is ‘not part of the Conservative family’. That is why he rates its chances in northern Labour seats: ‘We didn’t close down any coal mines or steelworks and we’re not known as the patrician Home Counties rich people’s party.’ He claims, rather extravagantly, that voting Tory north of Birmingham is likely to save a Labour MP: ‘If the Tories really want to stop a Labour government, then perhaps, unilaterally, they should stand aside in those seats.’
O’Flynn is nothing if not a Farage loyalist.
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