Catherine Blaiklock | |
|---|---|
| Leader of the Brexit Party | |
| In office 20 January 2019 –20 March 2019 | |
| Preceded by | Party established |
| Succeeded by | Nigel Farage |
| UK Independence Party Economics Spokesperson | |
| In office September 2018 –November 2018 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Catherine Anne Blaiklock |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | English Democrats (2021–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
|
| Spouse | Gyaljen Sherpa (divorced) [1] Christopher Kirkpatrick |
| Children | 2 [2] |
| Parent |
|
| Residence(s) | Lingwood, Norfolk, England [3] |
| Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford [4] |
| Occupation | Financial trader [4] Hotelier [4] |
| Known for | Founding the Brexit Party [5] Former UKIP Economic Spokesperson [6] |
| Website | Catherine Blaiklock |
Catherine Blaiklock is an English nationalist politician, financial trader and hotelier who was the founder and first leader of the Brexit Party, a political party established in January 2019 to support a no-deal Brexit. She was forced to resign as leader in March 2019 when it was disclosed she had made anti-Islamic and racist statements online. [7] Blaiklock had been the Economics Spokesperson for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which she left in late 2018. [5] Before entering politics in 2016, she worked as a financial currency and derivatives trader. [8] She also founded a Nepali healthcare charity with her ex-husband, an Everest Sherpa. [4]
Blaiklock is the daughter of polar explorer Ken Blaiklock, [9] who moved his family to Norfolk when she was three months old, from where Blaiklock was raised until college. [10] Blaiklock says she detested growing up in Norfolk, describing it as "intellectually devoid". [11] As a teenager she spent four years in care homes because she had bulimia and her parents found her "wayward and difficult". [11] [4] Blaiklock entered Christ Church, Oxford, on a scholarship in 1981, [10] the second year the College admitted women. [12] She studied geography and climatology. [4] She then went to India on a Commonwealth Scholarship. [10] [8]
Blaiklock worked as a financial currency and derivatives trader with Merrill Lynch and other investment banks, and was located in New York, Tokyo and Singapore. [10] [8] [4] She returned to Asia and founded a health care charity in Nepal, called Nepal in Need, with her then-husband Gyaljen Sherpa, [12] [13] with which she is still involved, and for which she continues to raise funds. [4] [14] Since returning to Norfolk in 1999, she has run a guest-house and other small businesses in the local hospitality sector. [10]
Blaiklock joined UKIP in 2014, having never voted before, [11] and said that she only really entered politics after the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. [4] She was the unsuccessful UKIP candidate for Great Yarmouth in the 2017 general election. [15] [16] During the campaign, she produced photographs of her British Jamaican husband to argue that UKIP was not racist. [16] In September 2018, she was appointed the Economic Spokesman of UKIP, was the Eastern Regional Chair, [8] and wrote articles for UKIP in The Daily Telegraph . [6] Blaiklock left UKIP in 2018 when Gerard Batten appointed the English Defence League's Tommy Robinson as a personal advisor. [4]
On 20 January 2019, Blaiklock launched a pro-Brexit political party called the Brexit Party, [17] and listed her Norfolk guest house as the headquarters. [3] [18] She immediately outlined her desire for former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to lead her new Brexit Party, [19] [20] and on 8 February 2019, Farage announced he would be a candidate for the Brexit Party in any upcoming European Parliament elections. [21] In a 27 February interview, Reuters said: "Blaiklock wants Britain to leave the EU without a trade deal and says the threat of economic damage from a potentially disorderly no-deal Brexit has been vastly exaggerated". [11]
On 20 March, Blaiklock resigned as party leader after The Guardian enquired about deleted anti-Islam messages from her Twitter account from before she took on the role. Her deleted tweets were recovered by the advocacy group, Hope not Hate. They included comments such as "Islam = submission – mostly to raping men it seems" and "8 people waiting for lift, 5 Muslim girls, 1 black, 1 other Asian Chinese, 1 white. Immediately outside saw a drug deal take place. Looked like Turkey." [7] Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit party, described her comments about Islam as "horrible and intolerant". [22] In May, The Guardian reported that Blaiklock still remained as a Director of the Brexit Party. [23]
Blaiklock applied to join the Conservative Party on 23 July, the day of Boris Johnson's victory in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election, and received a membership number on 6 August. [24] However, a few days after her public disclosure of her application, the Conservative Party, who said her application was subject to final approval, rejected her application, with Blaiklock saying: "And it was central office who cancelled it even though the local branch knows who I am". [25]
On 3 July 2021 in The Salisbury Review , Blaiklock announced she had joined the English Democrats. She spoke at their autumn conference that year, and following the stabbing death of Southend West's previous member of Parliament, Sir David Amess, in Leigh-on-Sea on 15 October, they subsequently nominated her in early January 2022 to stand for them at the constituency's by-election, [26] [27] held on 3 February. Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and other mainstream political parties chose not to contest the seat out of respect, and Blaiklock came fourth with 320 votes (2.15%). [28]
In the 2024 general election, she stood in Great Yarmouth, [29] receiving 171 votes (0.4%). The seat was won by Rupert Lowe of Reform UK, the new name of the Brexit Party.
Blaiklock posted articles on The Conservative Woman where she discussed introducing hanging for drug dealers and argued that food banks are contributing to obesity in low-income families, who should be eating potatoes, being cheaper and healthier. [30] [15] [31] She has also been noted for her anti-Islam statements written on a range of conservative websites. [32] [31]
In January 2019, The Guardian reported that, in blogs and tweets since deleted, she had "argued crime and fatherlessness among black men are due to high testosterone levels, and suggested their lower academic achievement could have a biological basis". [33]
Blaiklock’s first husband was a Nepali called Gyaljen Sherpa whom she met in 1997 at Everest base camp, [a] [1] [12] and with whom she has two children. [2] Her second husband is a British Jamaican, Christopher Kirkpatrick. [16] [2]
As of February 2019 [update] , Blaiklock ran a guest house from her home in Lingwood in Norfolk called The Annapurna Guest House. [3] Her husband manages the guest house on a day-to-day basis, and the BBC reported in February 2019 that its Tripadvisor page has been the subject of politically motivated attacks and "malicious trolling", requiring intervention by Tripadvisor. [34]
Catherine, 46, and Gyaljen, who met 12 years ago when they were both at Mount Everest base camp, will go back to the centre at the end of September to oversee while work is completed on the last few rooms.
Ms Blaiklock, who runs a charity called Nepal in Need, has two children from her marriage to her Nepalese ex-husband.
The leader of the new pro-Brexit party backed by Nigel Farage has abruptly resigned, after the Guardian asked her about a series of deleted anti-Islam Twitter messages sent from her account before she took on the role.
Ms Blaiklock, the daughter of surveyor Kenneth Blaiklock – who took part in the first overland crossing of the Antarctic – said members signing up to the party had now topped 150,000 and that donations were continuing to pour in.
Norfolk Lunch: One wintery afternoon this year, thanks to Catherine Blaiklock and her husband [Sherpa] Gyaljen, alumni of the House convened in rural Norfolk for wonderful food and company. From one of the first women to enter the House as a student, [to myself] one of the most recent to leave.
Catherine Blaiklock, from Lingwood, founder of the charity Nepal in Need, has today issued an urgent plea for people to donate tents so that they can be taken out to the devastated region by trustees who are flying out in the coming days
It's as a pundit, though, where Blaiklock comes into her own. On New Year's Day she popped up on the Conservative Woman website where, under the headline 'Hungry? Let them eat spuds!' she explained that poor people 'cannot be bothered' to cook and claimed the use of food banks was causing obesity.
[..] former Ukip economics spokeswoman Catherine Blaiklock applied to register the new party last week and she sounded out Mr. Farage for a role in the organisation. He told the paper: "This was Catherine's idea entirely – but she has done this with my full knowledge and my full support.
Catherine Blaiklock, founder of The Brexit Party, said hundreds of Tory members had been in contact saying they wanted to defect to the new party(subscription required)
The ex-UKIP leader is taking over from Catherine Blaiklock, who quit over what he said were "horrible and intolerant" comments on Twitter about Islam
Former leader and former treasurer of Farage's party were supposed to have cut ties
Its leader, former Ukip candidate Catherine Blaiklock, has had Islamophobic, racist and classist remarks dredged up by BuzzFeed and from other online pieces.
In a blog post titled "Burka's [ sic ] in Detroit" published on her website in May last year, Blaiklock complained that when she ordered a Thai takeaway meal in the US city it was delivered by a woman in a burka.
Soon after Blaiklock announced she had registered the party with the Electoral Commission, her Twitter feed appeared to be deleted, as were some posts from her personal blog. One of the deleted posts, titled 'Baby mamas, gangs and testosterone', argued biological reasons could be behind gang violence and family breakdown among men of African-Caribbean origin in the UK and the US.
TripAdvisor has suspended reviews for the bed and breakfast used as the official address for the new Brexit Party after "malicious trolling". Annapurna Bed & Breakfast in Norfolk, run by leader Catherine Blaiklock's husband, was the address used when the party registered on 5 February. A party spokesman said the venue's rating had dropped in recent days. TripAdvisor said it halted reviews after "an influx of review submissions that did not meet our guidelines".