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Richard Tice Chairman of the Brexit Party November 2018 – January 2021 MEP for East of England July 2019 – January 2020 Founder of Leave Means Leave July 2016 – January 2020 Co-founder of Leave.EU July 2015 – June 2016 11 September 2020 Euroscepticism UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE): What first made you a Eurosceptic? Richard Tice (RT): When the big debate was happening really in the 1990s about whether or not the UK should join the euro, I looked at it. I am a business- person, but my degree was quantity surveying, construction economics, and did economics at A Level. It just struck me, that I thought the whole project was completely flawed in that if you take away the right to set your own interest rate according to your own economy’s needs, then essentially it is like taking away a leg of a chair. You are making the chair substantially less stable and you are reducing your own flexibility. So I was very anxious about that. I wrote a three-page letter to Gordon Brown and I knew Nick Herbert, who you know was an MP. He was an old mate, and he was with Rodney Leach. He was the first director of Business for Sterling. So I got involved, gave them some money, ended up becoming a director of it, and it went from there. UKICE: Lots of people objected to the Euro but didn’t want to see the UK leave the EU. At that stage, would you have put yourself in that camp? Page 1/22 RT: I was very sceptical of the EU at that time, but in a sense, I was more focused on trying to make sure we didn’t join the Euro. That was immediate, it was tangible, and so that was my focus. But then the more I started to look at the whole European Union, its objectives, our membership, what I perceived as the benefits and the costs and the obligations and the restrictions, my preference was to say well, it either needs fundamental reform or we should leave. So I started to write articles in the property world’s main magazines, their weekly rag, about actually why it would be okay and if we left we would do fine. UKICE: I really want to ask you if Gordon Brown wrote back agreeing with you. RT: What do you think? I didn’t even get an acknowledgement. UKICE: Was he at the Treasury then or was he in Opposition? RT: Yes, he was. He was Chancellor. UKICE: Richard, can we ask you, did you have a party affiliation at that time? Were you a member of any of them? RT: Yes, I was a member of and a donor of the Conservative Party. UKICE: And you never thought of switching to UKIP or getting involved in UKIP at all? RT: Not really, no. I mean they weren’t really a credible thing then, so no. UKICE: And what about when Nigel Farage took over? Was there any thought on your part of doing it at that point, when they began to attract more support? RT: Yes. I first met Nigel in about 2012, so some time afterwards, but I had known for a fair while, through Business for Sterling days, Stuart Wheeler, the late, much beloved Stuart. So I just rang him up and said, ‘Look, I might want to try and help out with a bit of cash.’ So I never actually joined UKIP, but I have actually donated to three different political parties, if not four, so you can donate without being a member. Page 2/22 UKICE: Were you not tempted to go into front-line politics back then? RT: Yes, I was. Bluntly and candidly, I just knew that we were raising a family, the price of it in that sense, and my wife wasn’t keen and I was still trying to make some money, but I always mentally said to myself, ‘Maybe I should do 20, 25 years in business and then try and help out somewhere in public life.’ That was always part of my life plan. UKICE: And so we get to 2010 and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. Although you might still have been donating to the Conservatives at that point, had you drifted away from the Conservatives ideologically by that point or were you still very much on board? RT: I tore up my card. I used to give them a fair bit of money, and I said to Mathew Chattey one of the fundraisers, in, I think, 2012, ‘I am leaving the party and I will re-join it when (David) Cameron is no longer its leader.’ I was very upset at the Strategic Defence Review, the way they rushed that through. I felt that was basically completely misguided. So, yes, I think they had gone down the wrong path, and, yes, there were just some other things about what they were doing where I didn’t really feel they had a mandate from their membership and the electorate. UKICE: It wasn’t all about Europe, as far as you were concerned, in terms of the drift away? RT: No, it wasn’t. It was some other big stuff. I felt the way they decimated the defence forces was rushed, it lacked credible thought, so I was pretty upset at the time and I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ Leave.EU and the referendum UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE): So what was your route into Leave.EU? Richard Tice (RT): I gave some money to UKIP, quite a big chunk actually, £20,000. In, I think, 2013 or early 2014 for the 2014 European elections. I felt they had a cracking chance of doing really well, and history proved that to be the case. By then, of course, Cameron was petrified at UKIP’s rise and so he had given the referendum pledge. I felt really something big was going to Page 3/22 happen. So that was what I did for the 2014 election. Was delighted that UKIP won those European elections, and then it was obvious that there would be a referendum post the 2015 general election. UKICE: Cameron making that pledge wasn’t enough to bring you back into the fold then? RT: No. I was a bit torn, to be honest, because I liked the fact that he had given the pledge, but bearing in mind that he had broken many previous pledges I didn’t trust him. I mean he pledged, for example, to have a referendum on the (EU) constitution. Cast-iron pledge, and then, when he came into Government, he could have carried out that pledge, but he reneged on it. He said it was already done, and so, no, I didn’t trust him and I just trusted my instinct. But as we were moving towards the 2015 election, I had a meeting with Matthew Elliott in about February 2015, ahead of the May election, and I said to Matthew, ‘What is the strategy, what is the game plan?’ He said, ‘Well, we are just going to carry on as Business for Britain until after Cameron finishes his negotiation, and then we will have a short no campaign.’ I said, ‘That is ridiculous. That is way too late, you will have missed the boat, and you will lose. Literally the day after the election, we need to come out, we have raised a bunch of money, and we are looking for a chief executive, and bang, basically put the Government on the back foot and say, “We are ready, we are raising money, we are doing up the team, we are off.” Matthew said, ‘No, that is wrong.’ So I was frustrated by that, and I was literally sitting on a train commuting with a pal of mine, and he said his brother knew Arron Banks. So within a week I met Arron, met Andy Wigmore, and we both said, ‘Right, we will pledge X thousand pounds.’ I think initially I said I would pledge 50, and we met a creative team and off we went. Yes, and then very quickly after the election, obviously Cameron won it, didn’t need the Lib Dems, and within a week or so we briefed The Telegraph and they did a story on it, the fact that we were off and we were starting to raise money. So that was it. Page 4/22 You see, I always had the view that Cameron never expected to win a majority in 2015. I think the truth is UKIP actually helped him win a majority. Bizarrely, I think when they were lining up their expected negotiating strategy with the Lib Dems, the first thing Cameron was going to concede was that he couldn’t have a referendum because he hadn’t won a majority. I think the Lib Dems thought that was the one thing they wouldn’t be able to ask because it was cast-iron. Anyway, that didn’t come to pass, and then Cameron rushed it. So, yes, we got going with Leave.EU. I met (Dominic) Cummings and Owen Paterson and Bernard Jenkin and co. in early July and said, ‘Look, we could try and get together.’ I organised a big meeting, we made a presentation with some of our early thoughts and creative work. We had this big meeting in the Corinthia Hotel in about late July 2015. At the end of it, somewhat patronisingly, some of the Tory MPs just basically patted Arron and me on the back and said, ‘There, there, dear boys.
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