Show caption Martin Daubney at a Brexit party event: Labour, he believes, is going to get ‘a nasty surprise’ at the European elections. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters Brexit party He shot radioactive wolves, dropped acid – and now he backs Nigel Farage Ex-Loaded editor Martin Daubney on why he’s become a European election candidate for the Brexit party Andrew Anthony Sat 27 Apr 2019 13.00 BST Share on Facebook

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The Brexit party announced its candidates for the European elections last week, and among them was Martin Daubney, a former editor of the lads’ magazine Loaded and more recently a campaigner on men’s issues. Daubney, who came to prominence by promoting the idea of an endless male adolescence, marked his candidature by declaring that the Brexit party was a fresh start “with a new wave of people who understand the real world”.

The term “real world” is obviously a subjective concept, but I suggest that few people would rush to place those two words next to the names Annunziata Rees-Mogg and Ann Widdecombe, who are also Brexit party candidates.

“You picked the two people from the entire roster who don’t fit the bill,” Daubney says. “But look across the rest of the names and you’ll see a new wave of people who aren’t from the political class that goes straight from university to lobbying and work experiences in Westminster. They’ve had real jobs.”

The real job that Daubney held for eight years at Loaded involved such tasks as shooting radioactive wolves from a helicopter in Chernobyl, taking acid to celebrate LSD’s 40th anniversary, drinking a lot of alcohol, ogling women’s breasts and, in his own words, being “a skilled defender of the indefensible”.

Westminster is meant to be full of experts and where have they got us? Nowhere

Cynics might argue that it’s the perfect CV for someone looking to get ahead in Brussels. But what expertise do Daubney and his fellow party novices have to offer voters that more experienced politicians cannot?

“Westminster is meant to be full of experts and where have they got us? Nowhere. They have refused to enact the will of the people and people are sick to the back teeth of so-called experts because they exist in a world of self-interest and aren’t interested in what the common person thinks.”

Daubney’s own political journey, he believes, mirrors that of many potential Brexit party voters. He thought he’d be a lifelong Labour supporter, but “pulled the rip-cord” when Ed Miliband became leader. He’s since twice voted for the Liberal Democrats and once for the Women’s Equality party, thanks to its policy on shared parental leave.

He says that in Manchester, where he was introduced to Brexit party supporters, the room was “packed with lifelong but despondent Labour supporters, looking for permission to jump ship”. Labour, he believes, is going to get “a nasty surprise” at the European elections.

But what of Daubney, what nasty surprises are in store for him? He says he’s never voted for Nigel Farage or Ukip, but he believes that the Brexit party can replace the status quo, and become part of a European tide of populism.

What, though, are its policies?

“Nigel has said that he will lay those out after the European elections,” he says. He thinks it’s “extremely naive to think the Brexit party is reheated Ukip”, though, given Farage’s track record and policies as a politician, some would say it’s naive to believe that he will abandon his rightwing beliefs.

“Claire Fox [another Brexit party candidate] said there’s probably not much she’d agree with Nigel about women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigration. All those conversations will have to be had down the line. They’re conversations I’d like to listen to.”

Nigel Farage campaigning for the Brexit party in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, last week. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

But whatever the outcome of that debate, and even if the UK somehow manages not to leave the EU, Daubney has no intention of resigning, should he become an MEP. “I’ve always said, to use a colourful metaphor, it’s better to be inside the tent pissing outwards. If you’re trying to enact change in an institution, then you’re better off being part of it.”

Especially when that tent is paying you a hundred grand plus hefty expenses – certainly, Farage has managed to stick it out for 20 years now.

Although Daubney has said that he’d prefer to stay in Europe than leave with Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, his preference is a no-deal Brexit, which he sees as “an exciting way to look to the future in terms of trade deals, WTO and just being optimistic about Britain moving forwards”.

But what about the fact that an overwhelming majority of economic observers argue that it will have a very negative impact on the British economy in the short and medium term?

“I think people have lost faith in that negatively biased frame of mind,” he says, dismissing a whole field of study as an exercise in wilful pessimism. If there’s anything that can be done then, he says, people of all stripes believe “there’s only one man who can do it”.

“The naysayers and the deniers have reinvigorated Farage,” he explains. “This shouldn’t be happening. Nigel has reinvigorated the anti-establishment sentiment. We can say that that’s not helpful, but if the establishment is not helping, what’s the alternative?” he asks.