In Henry Bolton’s ideal world — which is manifestly some light years from the one in which the beleaguered, love-crossed leader of Ukip actually lives — this interview would be about fishing quotas.
It is how, at least, it starts. We are in the not-as-grand-as-it-sounds Captain’s Table restaurant at Folkestone quay, close to where the newly reborn bachelor is renting a flat. Mr Bolton sits to the left of me as Terry Noakes of the local fishermen’s association explains how EU quotas have brought low his livelihood. Mr Noakes sort of, almost, says that Mr Bolton, for all his embarrassing romantic travails, remains the man to ensure a better tomorrow on our high seas. After this initial briefing, cunningly arranged to demonstrate that Britain needs Mr Bolton to save Brexit from Bino (Brexit In Name Only), we leave the seaman for the Ship pub.
As I feel is expected, I buy Mr Bolton a pint of London Pride and local cod and chips. It’s good but he eats very little of it. He is 54, svelte and perfectly groomed, his hair brushed left from a widening parting. His checked shirt is fastened by a thin, claret-coloured tie as tightly done up as an army cadet’s. Over them, he wears a zip-necked, sea-worthy navy jersey. He looks me in the eye, and his eyes look sad.
On Sunday Ukip’s national executive unanimously passed a no-confidence motion in him. He refused to resign, thereby leaving his fate to an extraordinary general meeting on February 17. He was in the mire because over Christmas he had left his wife and two small daughters and within days taken up with a recently met 25-year-old model and Ukipper called Jo Marney. Ms Marney, it was soon discovered, had greeted Prince Harry’s engagement with online messages in which she used the n-word and described black people as “ugly”. In an eugenicist flourish, she feared Meghan Markle’s “seed” would “taint” the royal family.
He denounced the sentiments but merely downgraded their relationship from carnal to close. From a distance, it might look as if he, by remaining Ukip leader and Ms Marney’s bf, is having his crumpet and eating it. Up close, it is more that he is politically impotent and minus a sex life.
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“I mean, I need none of this,” he says. “There is nothing whatsoever that is convenient or advantageous to me personally in staying on, nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Not even the preservation of his pride? “That’s getting quite a knocking at the moment. My private life is in turmoil and I’m focused on the party. So, it’s a sacrifice. Most people would want to step out of it and deal with the home issues.”
Why doesn’t he? “Because I believe this is actually something more important.”
Than his happiness? “Than me and my happiness.”
Which he said had been greater than for years since meeting Ms Marney? “And now it’s just been slapped away. You know, if I had time to dwell on it I’d probably feel a bit bitter about it.”
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Here Gawain Towler, the Ukip PR who is next to us, makes winding up and shoving gestures, as if to move his leader back on message.
“But the thing is, the focus has got to be on sorting the party out to provide the platform it needs. If I fail, I want to be able to at least tell myself, ‘I gave it my best shot.’ But, yes, personally, financially, career-wise . . .” Financially? “Yes, I’m skint.” Like the romance, his leader’s stipend is on hold pending the extraordinary general meeting.
“The military have an expression: selection and maintenance of the aim. And the aim is independence from the European Union and making sure that we come out of the European Union on a trajectory that will take us to a prosperous, secure and optimistic future.”
Before he says all this, while better remembering his brief, he maintains that Ms Marney was an excuse used by his enemies on the national executive to get rid of him. This shower has already led Ukip into debt. A leadership election will be costly, make the party even less credible than Mr Bolton has, and threaten disaster in the local elections, just when the Brexit screw needs to be tightened on the government.
But what I want to know is how he can still love a racist. “I think on that, all I’m going to say is that a lot of young people say things on social media these days that don’t necessarily — which is strange for our generation — reflect what they think.”
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Tweeting as a performance art? “Correct.”
Still, he must have been horrified? “I was stunned but I’ve discussed that and I’d really rather not go into it.”
His relationship with Jo Marney (he always calls her that, perhaps avoiding the Bill Clinton “Miss Lewinsky” kind of thing) will be sorted out after his leadership is, but why not sort it now by ending it? “Because we’re humans and I like to think that I do the right thing, not necessarily the thing that everybody expects me to do, but the right thing. And I don’t yet know what the right thing is.”
Ms Marney has been traduced — she was never a topless model, for instance — and is now being hounded by the media waving chequebooks. “I cannot describe how utterly devastated she and her family have been — as have my wife and so on — by this whole thing.”
No, I say, his wife was upset because he walked out. “Yes, absolutely, but, you know, one could — and I’m not going to — trawl over the last 12 years of my relationship with my wife . . .” There’d be fault on both sides? “I think everybody would acknowledge that in any relationship there are good things and bad things on both sides.”
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It just does not look good: three marriages kaput. For almost two minutes, he itemises his highly impressive and brave career in the police, the army, the Territorial Army and as a special government adviser in Kosovo, Albania, Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine.
“And then I went to the leadership of Ukip.” We laugh.
“What I’m saying is: yes, there might be some flaws in my character. I’m human. But you know what? None of the above is conducive to sustaining a relationship.”
Better to have stayed single? “Correct. But I’m also a man. I’m also a human and I want relationships. I want company. I like women.”
And they like him? “Well that’s for them to answer, isn’t it? I mean, one of my marriages broke up as a direct result of the fact that I’d been basically embedded in warfare for several years — albeit I’d say fairly limited warfare, just Balkan conflicts and so on.”
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As well as a grown-up daughter from his first marriage, he has two with his Russian wife of 11 years, Tatiana. “I spoke to them last night. One is just 20 months and the other is four and I miss them terribly. They’re the light of my life. I could almost get choked up over that.”
I wish he would go back to them. “Well, maybe I shall at some point.”
Is Ms Marney managing? “Just. Only just. I’ve been — as has her mother — seriously concerned for her welfare at certain points.”
That she might harm herself? “Absolutely.” Poor girl! Silly girl! “Yes, absolutely, and she’s admitted it. It was absolutely stupid and unnecessary. But I feel real anger over this because we know, and we’ve got proof of this, that the whole intention of some within the party has been to attack her in order to question my judgment. They have been prepared to destroy that young woman’s life.”
Perhaps the best thing for her would be to leave? Did he ring her last night? “Yes. We speak most days on the phone. If I were to do that, I’m not quite sure what the consequences for her would be.” I suppose no one considers that she might actually love him? “Exactly. Everybody assumes that she’s just a quick leg-over or something. There are real feelings there on both sides.”
So certain of his views on Europe — hardened if not formed while working for the EU and witnessing its “appalling response” to the Ukrainian and immigration crises — he could not, I conclude, be more unsure in his private life. I turn my recorder off, but he starts talking again. I can write about it if I like.
He was born in Kenya (“Keenya,” he pronounces it) but the family moved to Devon. One day, when he was five and his younger brother was two and a half, they were playing outside. “He wandered off around the corner and there was an ornamental pond and he climbed over the low wall and that was that. I mean, I didn’t see that, but that’s what happened. My first vivid memory is of my mother carrying him in her arms, having found him. He was in a pond. And then I recall the efforts to revive him.
“I think ever since I’ve felt this sort of need — hence the army, hence the police, hence everything, it sounds a rather sort of pretentious thing to say — to try and protect people, do the right thing by them, because I didn’t then. Because I let him wander off. I mean, I was five years old, what did I know? But I just never again want to feel that out of self-interest I’ve made a decision that caused harm.”
The self-interested thing, in summary, would be to stay with Ms Marney, whom he clearly loves, and leave the party, which may soon turn out not to love him. “Exactly but it’s not where I am. And,” he says, this semi-comic, semi-tragic hero, “I don’t really understand that myself.”
CV
Born March 2, 1963, Kenya.
Education Graduated from Sandhurst as best cadet; City & Guilds leadership and management degree.
Career British Army from 1979-90 then an officer with Thames Valley police. Advised Albania’s deputy prime minister during Nato campaign in Balkans. Border management consultant for the EU in 2003. Stood as a Lib Dem in Runnydede & Weybridge in 2005. Appointed OBE for leading government’s stabilisation unit in Afghanistan. Joined Ukip in 2014.
Family Divorced twice and recently separated from his third wife, Tatiana. Three children.
Quick fire
Model girlfriend or model citizen? Both
Boxers or briefs? Briefs
Presidents Club or Soho House? Neither and there aren’t any clubs in Folkestone I can think of
Meghan or Kate? Oh, that’s unfair, isn’t it? Both
Danish pastry or a Russian salad? Given that I had Danish and Russian wives? Russian salad.
Hard or soft-boiled? Soft if we’re talking about eggs
Beret or helmet? Beret. Well, a military one
Nigel Farage or Nigella Lawson? Nigel Farage
Page 3 or back page? Back page
Donald Tusk or Donald Trump? Donald Trump. He’s more entertaining
Eurovision or Eurotrash? They’re the same thing
Tinder or Match.com? Neither
Britannia or McMafia? Are they TV programmes?
Land Rover or Lamborghini? Land Rover