Patrick O'Flynn, Westminster journalist turned leading Eurosceptic and Ukip MEP

Yahoo

21-05-2025

Patrick O'Flynn, who has died of cancer aged 59, was a Eurosceptic journalist-turned-politician who became one of 24 Ukip MEPs elected to the European Parliament in 2014; he left the party in 2018, at about the same time as its former leader Nigel Farage, in protest at its appointment of Tommy Robinson, leader of the far-Right English Defence League, as an adviser on rape gangs and prison reform.
While Farage went on to co-found the Brexit Party (now Reform UK), O'Flynn joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which, surprisingly, traces its origin to the party formed in 1981 by the so-called 'Gang of Four' (Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams) who split from the Labour Party principally because they considered the party too anti-EU. In the 1990s, however the SDP took a Eurosceptic turn and it campaigned for Brexit in 2016.
In 2019 O'Flynn stood as SDP candidate in the Peterborough by-election, held following the removal of the Labour MP Fiona Onasanya after her conviction for perverting the course of justice. But as the Brexit Party was also fielding a candidate and was the bookies' favourite to win (it came second to Labour), O'Flynn polled just 135 votes and lost his deposit.
Patrick James O'Flynn was born on August 29 1965. After graduating in economics from King's College, Cambridge, he took a diploma in journalism from City, University of London. After stints with the Birmingham Post and Sunday Express, he joined the Daily Express as a lobby correspondent, rising to chief political commentator and later political editor and chief comment editor. He also wrote extensively for The Spectator and, later, The Daily Telegraph.
In 2019 he recalled that when he first launched the Express campaign to take Britain out of the EU it was 'much to the bemusement of Lobby colleagues and the vast majority of MPs'. But he played a crucial role in the political bandwagon that culminated in the Yes vote of 2016.
By then, O'Flynn had joined Nigel Farage's Ukip as director of communications, before being elected an MEP for the East of England in the 2014 European elections. He became the party's spokesman on the economy and its campaign director in the 2015 general election, in which he stood, unsuccessfully, in Cambridge.
But tensions at the heart of the party became apparent a few days after the poll when, in an interview with The Times, O'Flynn described Farage as a 'snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive' man who was turning the party into a personality cult, and called for a more consensual style of leadership to avoid the appearance of 'absolute monarchy'.
O'Flynn was the running-mate for Lisa Duffy in the Ukip leadership election of 2016, but amid growing disenchantment he resigned from the party front bench in 2017. His unhappiness intensified after the April 2018 election of Gerard Batten as party leader. When he defected to the SDP in November that year, he explained that he had tried in vain to dissuade Ukip's leadership from its 'apparent and growing fixation' with Tommy Robinson.
'The key question in British politics now is which party are millions of sensible, moderate Brexit voters betrayed by establishment parties but wishing no tie-up with Tommy Robinson supposed to vote for?' he asked. 'The answer, alas, is clearly not Ukip.'
Under Batten, he added, Ukip had become 'an impediment to the Brexit campaigning that I have energetically pursued for many years. So, like many on the communitarian wing of the party, I have decided to join the resurgent SDP, which campaigned for Brexit during the referendum and espouses broad and moderate pro-nation state political values that I – and I believe many of our voters from 2014 – will be delighted to endorse.'
Patrick O'Flynn is survived by his wife, Carole Ann, also a Daily Express writer, and their son and daughter.
Patrick O'Flynn, born August 29 1965, death announced May 20 2025
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