“As a British Indian and Ukip adviser, I believed in Brexit – but what it’s done to the country has broken my heart”

Read Sarinder Joshua Duroch’s article for The Independent, here.

I campaigned for freedom and economic success, but this proved to be a sour victory when my nation was plunged into fear and division. I wanted Brexit, but not like this

By Sarinder Joshua Duroch |Friday 8 July 2016| The Independent

As an ex adviser to Ukip within the European Parliament, and as a third generation British Indian, I really feel that I have to show remorse for ever being part of Ukip. Within the party, I progressed very rapidly and before I knew it I was sitting in the European Parliament in Brussels alongside Farage and the others. But now I regret being part of something that became so poisonous.

Brexit was the key aim indeed of the whole party: there was nothing else on the stall to sell apart from immigration and the EU. As an adviser, I quickly became very concerned with this. Steven Woolfe, always made it clear that the party who called for the referendum should have some idea of a post-Brexit plan; Ukip was the biggest British delegation in the European Parliament, but they were exceptionally reluctant to even discuss the mechanics of Brexit due to the fact that they didn’t believe it was ever going to happen.

Put simply, the Ukip MEPS I came across were far too focused on the next European Parliamentary election and their salary package. Advisers were just told to collate stats and facts so that the usual rhetoric could be disseminated around the Parliamentary Chambers with the snarling and aggressive nature that became the Ukip trademark. There was little political will beyond that.

I supported Brexit and I was waiting in anticipation for the party and fireworks to commence once the nation voted to leave; I even wrote a book discussing the importance of leaving the EU for UK prosperity and investigation how further cohesion could be achieved in a multi-ethnic society with independence. But what did I get out of Brexit in the end? I got a nation that was divided and a political career that quickly turned sour. All of a sudden I was put under the spotlight as people demanded to know how someone like me could vote the way I did.

I was being questioned by people who assumed that due to my ethnicity I must not hold enough knowledge about contemporary European affairs to meaningfully back Brexit. Stereotyping was rife on both sides of the debate. I returned from Brussels with the realisation that there was no plan and Ukip were about to jump off a sinking ship. I saw them as akin to the first class passengers on the doomed Titanic.

Ukip were very quick to use the white working class for their cause, but they’d never be seen sharing a drink with them. Throughout the Brexit campaign, most of the rhetoric was geared toward the white working class, stirring up sentiments that their fellow non-white working class Brits were somehow responsible for all the ills in society. As Farage’s speeches become more and more anti-immigrant in nature, you can imagine how I felt as the only visible ethnic minority in the party based in the European Parliament.

I came home to destruction. At home my children would ask, “What’s happened here Dad – is this what you were sent out to Brussels for? Why have we been singled out as the nation’s scapegoats? You gave the impression that this would be the yellow brick road leading to Oz!” Of course, we all know how that story ends.

I wanted Brexit and I really wanted it to work; it hurts that Ukip sold me so many false promises. My nation is divided and few of my fellow Ukippers are throwing parties. Deep down, we know we ended up contributing to all the turmoil we now see.

On the night of 24th June I went outside and it felt like Kristallnacht. I heard a large group of drunken men singing songs thanking Nigel Farage and shouting, “Immigrants out!” in the same breath. This is what I came home to: I came home broken. I came home with an identity that felt as flimsy as the paper in my British passport. I used to walk around the European Parliament with pride that I was a British national, and now here in my nation I have resorted to being cautious when having to explain my views on immigration and the state of the nation. It as if due to my immigrant roots and due to my visible ethnicity I became a foreigner in my own country, a stranger living among the people I grew up with. I may as well have featured among the ethnic minority faces on Farage’s poster announcing “Breaking Point”.

I wanted Brexit but not like this. I campaigned for freedom and economic success, but this proved to be a sour victory when my nation was plunged into fear and division. Farage may have walked but he has left our country to clean up the orchestrated mess. Meanwhile, Ukip and their associated far-right friends in Europe will continue, like all political parties in Brussels, to enjoy the benefits of their taxpayer-funded lifestyles. When the lights go out on the British delegation of the European Parliament, Ukip MEPs will be the last ones there, scrambling around in the dark for one last euro.

Sarinder Joshua Duroch is an ex UKIP adviser and author of ‘Enoch, I am a British Indian’