Relationships Talk

Gerard Batten is an enigma wrapped in a bright purple blazer and banana yellow tie. 

He left school with few, if any, academic qualifications (he won’t confirm) and believes the EU was planned by the Nazis.

But he is also — or claims to be on his CV — a member of Mensa, the ‘high IQ Society’.

Intensely proud of his pure Anglo-Saxon bloodline, he’s outspoken in his views against immigration. Yet 30 years ago he married — and is still married to — a Filipina woman whose family can’t understand the paradox.

He abhors the Koran, though he has admitted to never having studied it closely. And while he is close to Russians who describe themselves as political dissidents against the Moscow government, he is a regular contributor to Vladimir Putin’s English language propaganda arm, Russia Today.

He has also become increasingly irritated with the Mail’s research into the most basic facts of his personal history, tweeting that we have asked a bunch of ‘ludicrous’ questions about him. 

All this would be of little consequence if Mr Batten, 64, was not the leader of a political party which has changed the UK’s political landscape, and probably its future: UKIP. 

His predecessor, Henry Bolton, had been its sixth leader in just 12 months — having to step down after his 25-year-old glamour model mistress posted racist tweets about Meghan Markle, and offensive comments about the Grenfell Tower disaster families.

His predecessor, Henry Bolton, had been its sixth leader in just 12 months — having to step down after his 25-year-old glamour model mistress posted racist tweets about Meghan Markle

The manner of Mr Bolton’s demise seemed to confirm what was already apparent: that the party which won more UK seats in the 2014 European Parliament elections than either the Conservatives or Labour had become an irrelevant joke. 

Enter the stern, midnight-haired Mr Batten; an MEP and one of UKIP’s original founders.

Aside from the flamboyant wardrobe he wore to annoy other MEPs in the Strasbourg chamber, there is nothing remotely comic about the course he has set since taking the helm last April.

For he is exploiting the chaos currently engulfing British politics.

While Putin, who has supported populist groups across the EU, looks on with satisfaction at the chaos engulfing British politics and the fracturing of Europe, the far-Right here believes it can exploit, if not fill, a vacuum. 

UKIP was founded by Mr Batten and others to bring about Britain’s exit from the EU. 

Its core support lay in Middle England and white working-class areas which opposed the EU’s open borders that allowed mass immigration.

Now Mr Batten has a new and more radical vision for the UKIP of 2019 and beyond. He says it has already attracted thousands of new young members. 

But it has also frightened off many of the old guard, because the Batten vision involves a key role for a man who’s become poster boy for the far-Right and racists across the world.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, is a convicted fraudster and hooligan, as well as being founder and former leader of that boot boy collective the English Defence League (EDL).

But recent events have made him a global social media star; a ‘free speech martyr’. 

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, is a convicted fraudster and hooligan, as well as being founder and former leader of that boot boy collective the English Defence League (EDL)

This week he was in the headlines once again as the 16- year-old Syrian refugee who was ‘water-boarded’ in a filmed racist attack in Huddersfield says he will sue Facebook ‘for not stopping Robinson posting accusations he violently attacked three English girls’.

Mr Batten has been courting Robinson for almost a decade. Now he is in a position to put their ‘bromance’ to work.

Under UKIP rules — although they may change — no former member of the EDL or the overtly-racist British National Party (BNP) is allowed to join. But last year, Mr Batten took Robinson on as his adviser.

Some in UKIP fear Robinson is being groomed to succeed his boss, who has said he’ll stand down sometime this year. UKIP will then become a ‘new British National Party’.

Mr Batten has pooh-poohed this, but told the BBC: ‘I’m taking [UKIP] in a new direction, which is that I want to make it a mass movement.’

Mr Batten has been courting Robinson for almost a decade. Now he is in a position to put their ‘bromance’ to work

Both he and Robinson are Islamophobes.

Mr Batten has described Islam as a ‘death cult’. His ‘interim’ UKIP manifesto calls for Muslim-only prisons and an abolition of hate crime laws. 

In 2006, he suggested that all 3.7 million Muslims in the UK should sign a code of good conduct.

Tory MP Robert Halfon said this was ‘literally akin to the Nazis saying Jews should wear a yellow star’.

On his Facebook page on Christmas Eve, Robinson posted the word ‘UKIP’ and the promise: ‘A revolution is coming.’

If so, it has humble origins.

Mr Batten was born and raised on the Isle of Dogs in East London.

The old white, working-class population of the dockland peninsular had long felt they were neglected by government and under threat by Bengali incomers.

In 1993, the BNP — founded by former members of the neo-Nazi National Front — secured its electoral breakthrough there.

Mr Batten had left by then. After a brief period working as a bookbinder with his brother Harold — who is said to design the UKIP stationery — he was a salesman for British Telecom until elected as an MEP for London in 2004. 

When Nigel Farage became UKIP leader in 2006, he concentrated on European issues, while Mr Batten focused on what he perceived as the Islamic threat.

Colleagues say he hated attending the chambers in Strasbourg and Brussels. And he disliked and envied Farage, who was public school-educated and charismatic. Batten was neither.

When Nigel Farage became UKIP leader in 2006, he concentrated on European issues, while Mr Batten focused on what he perceived as the Islamic threat

What he didn’t mind was sharing a platform with racist loons. In 2011 he addressed the far-Right Traditional Britain Group, whose vice president Gregory Lauder-Frost was last year reportedly recorded calling broadcaster Vanessa Feltz, a ‘fat Jewish s**g’ who ‘lived with a negro’.

Lauder-Frost also spoke in derogatory terms about Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, and advocated the deportation of non-white Britons to their ‘natural homelands’.

At the European Parliament Batten has hosted the far-Right internet troll Carl Benjamin, who once described opponents as ‘acting like a bunch of n******s’. In another tweet, Benjamin told a female Labour MP: ‘I wouldn’t even rape you.’ He attended Mr Batten’s first UKIP conference as leader, and spoke.

Another speaker at the conference was Mark Meechan, aka Count Dankula, who is best-known for being prosecuted over a video — described in court as ‘anti-Semitic’ — showing his pet dog performing Nazi salutes to commands such as ‘Sieg Heil’.

But the most contentious Batten recruit to UKIP is Tommy Robinson, whom he made his adviser on prison reform and sex abuse gangs in November.

This prompted the resignation from the party of three MEPs, Nigel Farage and an unknown number of other members.

One of the MEPs, William Dartmouth, said he left because Mr Batten had introduced ‘outlandish people and extreme Right-wing groups’. 

Robinson was jailed for 13 months for contempt of court in relation to filming people in a grooming case

He add: ‘Mr Batten is setting Robinson up to be the leader. Resigning members have been replaced by people who support Mr Robinson and his ilk. [Batten’s] conduct is an utter disgrace.’

Robinson was jailed for 13 months for contempt of court in relation to filming people in a grooming case. 

The sentence was quashed and the case referred to the Attorney General. The case attracted worldwide attention, and Robinson received the support of American TV star Roseanne Barr among others.

Mr Batten spoke at a number of events held to support Robinson, who has one million followers on Facebook. But the UKIP leader’s ‘fixation’ with Robinson can be traced back almost a decade.

The eureka moment apparently came in February 2011, when the then relatively unknown Robinson was interviewed on BBC2’s Newsnight by Jeremy Paxman. ‘Gerard [Batten] watched the interview and was ecstatic,’ recalls an ex-colleague. ‘He said: “What a brilliant young guy. How do we get in touch?”’

Last spring, after leaving court Robinson and Mr Batten were treated to a three-course lunch at the House of Lords by former Ukip leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who told the Mail this week that Mr Batten was ‘a great guy’. 

Lord Pearson added: ‘One of his most extraordinary characteristics is that he believes he lacks charisma.’ The peer said Robinson had ‘great energy’.

While Mr Batten’s relationship with Robinson is unambiguous, there are question marks over his links to other dubious interest groups.

Take Putin’s Russia, for instance. Mr Batten has criticised Russia and accused it of hacking his website.

He has also employed as his researcher, a Russian called Pavel Stroilov who arrived in the UK in 2006 seeking political asylum. Mr Stroilov refused to talk to the Mail last week.

Mr Batten has known a number of other Russian exiles in the UK, including Alexander Litvinenko who was murdered by suspected Russian agents in 2006.

Intriguing links are being examined on the other side of the Atlantic.

Investigators in the U.S. are looking at the alleged relationship between Donald Trump’s election campaign and Moscow.

Investigators in the U.S. are looking at the alleged relationship between Donald Trump’s election campaign and Moscow

An area they are interested in is Nigel Farage’s dealings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who’s taken sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, after jumping bail in a case where he was accused of sex attacks in Sweden. 

Emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, leaked by WikiLeaks, are thought to have been originally hacked by Russian agents in 2006.

Mr Farage, who denies any impropriety, was seen visiting the Ecuadorian embassy when Assange was inside. But it was Mr Batten — not Mr Farage — who originally forged the link between UKIP and Assange.

In 2011, Mr Batten and Pavel Stroilov attended one of Assange’s extradition hearings and held a small ‘free speech’ demo outside. Documents show that in February 2011, Mr Batten met Assange’s lawyer to explore ways in which he could help the hacker.

Mr Batten then spoke up for Assange at the European Parliament and attended Assange’s 40th birthday party. 

He also suggested in a blog post that if Assange failed to block his extradition he should seek asylum. He wrote: ‘I would be delighted to advise Mr Assange on how to go about it.’

And that’s exactly what Assange did the following summer, at great cost to the British taxpayer, who has had to pay for six years of policing of his embassy refuge.

Also unclear is Mr Batten’s relationship with James Goddard, the far-Right activist arrested for allegedly harassing MP Anna Soubry outside Parliament earlier this month. 

Mr Batten has denied knowing James Goddard and said it was ‘malicious’ to suggest there was a connection. But there are pictures of the two together.

Mr Batten has denied knowing James Goddard and said it was ‘malicious’ to suggest there was a connection. But there are pictures of the two together

All this is a puzzle to Mr Batten’s in-laws in the Far East.

He married his wife, Frances Lina, now 60, after she came to the UK from the Philippines in search of a better life. They have two sons.

Speaking to the Mail in the family’s hometown of Bambang, Ike Cayaban, Mr Batten’s brother-in-law said: ‘I’m quite surprised about why is he so against immigration, because there could come a time when he could ban people like Filipinos. But there are so many Filipino nurses there who are helping British nurses.’ 

The retired librarian added: ‘It is the prerogative of the British government to think of the welfare of their citizens. But to a certain extent they should also help people. No man is an island. And I think that is also true of a country.’

Mr Cayaban, 68, said the politician had only visited the Philippines once since marrying his sister in 1988. He said that during the visit, around two decades ago, Mr Batten did not discuss his political opinions or views with family members.

Frances Lina, who now works in the courts service, moved to the UK after completing a medical technologies course in Manila.

She was studying for a business course at the time of her marriage to Mr Batten. Her eldest sibling Florencia, 75, had earlier moved to the UK after training as a teacher in the Philippines. She still lives in London, where she is retired after working as a carer and shop-owner.

The siblings’ younger brother Benjamin also moved to the UK with his Filipina wife to work as a painter and decorator, before returning home several years later.

Mr Cayaban said: ‘They wanted to find work there because it was greener pastures and we belonged to a poor family. It was a challenge for them and we had no other choice.’

He said the siblings, whose parents worked as farmers, belonged to ‘the lower echelon of the [Philippines] society’.

His puzzlement was echoed by Alan Sked, UKIP’s first leader, who has said of Mr Batten’s negative views on immigrants taking British jobs: ‘I felt like saying: “Your wife has been working [here] since she came to Britain.” ’

Such a contradiction does not concern Gerard Batten as he busily rallies the far-Right to his flag. For now, the purple-clad enigma marches on. 

Additional reporting: Mario Ledwith in Bambang, Philippines