Andrew Bridgen | A Thousand Words (Part 1 of 3)

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You know, you've got a hood over your head

and someone's kicked you in the face

and your nose is bleeding.

Then you put onto the floor of a helicopter

that which takes off and you hear the door shut

and you hear the helicopter take off.

And then a few minutes later, the door opens.

You haven't landed.

And then you were thrown out of a helicopter

that hasn't landed.

I owned my own fairly big house in its own grounds.

And I got my ass to martin and I got the range rover

and I got a trophy wife.

And we were a long way from the cameras

and we thought we were having a confidential conversation.

It was me telling Boris, confidentially,

that we're definitely going to win the referendum tomorrow.

And Boris's face.

Eugenicist, Malthusian, yes.

What have you got again, Stanley?

LAUGHTER

MUSIC PLAYS

Andrew, thank you for inviting us to your home.

Thank you very much for coming.

Thank you for letting us use your home.

I haven't seen the lovely picture yet.

So we'll save that to the end.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Yeah, as you know, it's a long format.

So we've got plenty of time.

What I quite like to, I'm quite interested in people

as much as what's going on out there.

You're a local lad, aren't you?

I am.

I've got a great affinity with North West Leicestershire.

Yeah, I mean, the way you talk about your constituency

and you did the people there.

Well, I've worked miracles here.

Yeah.

And I'm very proud of North West Leicestershire.

So...

Did you go out far from me?

No, I was actually brought up...

Well, I was born at Burton, Hospital,

because that's where the maternity wall is.

So most people around...

Well, a lot of people around here would have

Burton on Trent as their place of birth,

because that's where the maternity hospital is.

But I was...

To the age of six, I was living in Tamworth in Staffordshire,

because I had 10 miles away.

I looked after my maternal grandmother until I was six.

Right.

And then moved back to my mum and dad.

Then and my...

Why did you end up with your grandmother?

We didn't have room.

My father kept a shop in Tamworth,

and they only had a one-bedroom flat.

Above the shop.

And my mother had three sons,

by the time she was 21.

And this wasn't room.

Right.

So...

I was ousted.

So I, you know,

there's so many in the bed roll over.

Yeah, roll over, yeah.

So am I...

How did that fit?

Do you remember the feeling of not...

Is that stuck with you at all?

I think it probably does, but I mean...

And then my grandmother, Levinia,

was a lovely lady.

Yeah.

And I remember that she was...

She had a lovely voice, a perfect pitch,

when she was cleaning the terrace house.

OK.

And I went to school in Cross Street in Kettlebrook

for a year at primary school,

because I was six, I mean, I was from when I was five.

Yeah.

And then my middle brother, Anthony,

also, was looked after by my maternal grandmother.

Right, so you weren't...

Oh, I wasn't...

Well, I was my brother with you.

Well, it would have been for about a year until he was born.

Yeah.

And then we all went back to the family home

when my father had bought a small holding at Nethersyl,

which is right on the border with Leicestershire.

It's only a few miles away.

And the most suzly village in Darbyshire.

OK.

Right on the border.

And that was interesting.

So a bit of a culture shock.

So a little cottage out in the middle of nowhere

in about...

And we didn't have mains electricity.

Right.

So we had a one kilowatt-lister engine.

And you had to wind it with a handle to get it going.

And it went off at night.

So we didn't have a fridge or a freezer or any of that.

And if you put anything on, because there's only one kilowatt,

so if you put the no electric kettle or anything,

if you put too many things on, the television used

to drop into a little pin in the middle of the screen,

in the winter bath night was an experience

you weren't looking forward to, as I remember.

And we all went to the junior school in Netherceil,

which was St. Peter's, which is, I think,

when I left to go to the Comprehensive,

I think it was 64 pupils, three classes, 64 pupils, very small.

We used to walk to school and walked...

Well, we were often dropped off, but we always walked home.

And yeah, they were happy days, really.

And then I had another bit of a culture shock

when I went to the local Comprehensive,

which was the pingle that swaddling coat, 1,200 pupils,

which, having spent to the age of 11 at a school with 60,

it's a bit of a difference.

Did you have to fight for yourself there, or was it a fairly easy job?

It was a very comprehensive education, Jake.

I'll tell you that. Oh, okay.

Yes, you had to.

Some really good teachers there.

Some not so good, but some very good teachers.

And I actually enjoyed it.

I enjoyed my time at school.

You're quite competitive, quite strong-willed.

Not competitive in a negative way, necessarily,

but did you feel driven when you were at school?

Did you want to do the best?

Were you motivated to...

Well, I was, I was fortunately in the top set for all the subjects

I was doing, and there was all streamed.

So although it was a comprehensive school, it was all streamed.

Right.

So all the people that I was in lessons with, they weren't,

there wasn't a full cross-section of the school.

Yeah.

You met those in the playground.

Yeah, I was, I was captain of the rugby team.

Yeah.

Well, I used to play all over the place.

I played at Sly Half.

I've played right-wing.

Yeah.

And I played a lot more rugby at university.

Right.

And, and I won my first election at, at, at, at Pingles School,

because I was, I was voted head boy of school.

Yeah, okay.

I think it was 1980.

Mm-hmm.

And that, that was quite interesting.

So I, I was the head boy, and we had two deputy head boys

we had a head girl.

Alison Bome, her name was.

Two deputy head girls.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I remember.

Well, probably.

I think you, you're probably, when you're 16, you,

fancy anything.

Pretty much.

As long as it was female.

Yeah.

And I had a load of prefects.

And the, the prefects had privileges,

but they had to do duties.

And that was mostly like policing the school

at break time and lunch time.

And I think the major, the major job of the head boy

was to prevent the other people from burning the school down.

Right.

Man, I was, I was, I was pretty successful.

I was, you know, there were a few small fires

while I was there, but, I mean, after I left,

they, they did burn the whole school down.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Not because you'd left.

Not, no, I'm not taking it.

It was always amazing, because the fires always used to,

well, generally, there's nothing we could do about it,

because the fires normally broke out

that the end of the last week of the summer holidays.

So did you quite enjoy the responsibility,

the kind of authority?

I'm ashamed to admit I probably did, yes.

Well, you know, you don't have to be ashamed.

Everyone's, everyone's different.

Everyone's got a certain drive.

Well, I did like that.

I, I admired the headmaster, Mr, Mr Bradley,

right, who was an X-R-E-F vampire pilot.

You know, the, the vulca, the V.

No, no, no.

It was a sort of twin tailed little,

it wasn't a very long or famous jet fighter,

which is called the vampire.

You're right.

It would have been in the fifties, right.

He was a, an X-R-E-F pilot.

And, yeah, he was, he was a really good committed man.

It was interesting that, yeah, it's a small model.

Many years, many years later, when he'd retired,

he was a constituent of mine.

All right.

And I knocked on his door.

I knocked on his door in probably 2008.

So you're talking, you know, 28 years, 30 years later.

Yeah.

And, asked him to vote for me.

Yeah.

As many of my teachers had retired and lived here,

because it was right next door, so.

And, and he said to me,

call me, call me Joseph.

Mm-hmm.

And you know what, I couldn't.

Right, that's very tricky.

I just couldn't call him Joseph.

Yeah.

And even when I was his elected member of Parliament,

he was always Mr. Bradley.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because he was my headmaster.

Mm-hmm.

And that's.

Those things stick with you from Charter, don't they?

Yep.

So, I think I did 11 O levels.

Nobody's gonna know what O levels are soon, aren't they?

We were the last first year to do GCC, so O levels were,

yeah, my brother did O levels.

And, and then I went into the sixth form.

Yeah.

At the, at the pingle.

And it, I always intended to do.

That's why I probably could have gone to another school,

but that was the only one in the area that had the,

the sixth form.

So, so I went there.

And.

What did you do?

A levels.

Biology.

Yeah.

Chemistry.

Oh, okay.

Mathematics.

Okay.

Um, and we did a general studies as well.

We had to do it.

We did, yeah.

So, it was a kind of early inkling that you would always,

always.

I always wanted to go to university.

Nobody in my family had ever gone to university.

Right.

I wanted to go to university.

Uh,

it would have only been about four or five percent of people

went to university in those days.

Yeah.

It's there.

They wanted everyone in debt.

Exactly.

Um, well, they didn't get me in debt because I had a full grant.

Yeah.

Same.

Which they could afford to do.

That couldn't be in those days.

Yeah.

With only a few percent of people going to university.

Yeah.

Um, and I had a look around.

Which university I wanted to go to and I,

I wanted to stay in the Midlands.

I like the Midlands.

So, I had a look at Leicester, Birmingham,

Nottingham, Keel.

Okay.

And being a country boy, I looked at Nottingham University's campus.

And it's sort of 300 and odd acres of parkland.

And you've got Bulletin Park next door.

So, although it's in the city.

Mm-hmm.

It feels like you're in the countryside.

Right.

I just fell in love with the campus at Nottingham.

And so I applied first and second for Nottingham.

First of all, to do biological sciences.

And secondly, to do zoology.

So I was really keen on going to Nottingham.

Yeah, yeah.

And I got two A's and two B's at A level.

So I went to Nottingham.

Nottingham was very, also a very interesting university.

Because so in 80, 83 was the only university in UK

with more women at it than men.

All right.

51, bonus, bonus.

And also, the girls worked much harder than the bloats.

So the grades at Nottingham,

the girls were enhancing the academic prowess.

So by sort of 84, Nottingham was in the top four

of five universities in the country.

And then every other university realized

that the girls work harder, more dedicated

and they're gonna get high grades.

So if you want to move up the, so it was an arms race.

But Nottingham started it.

And yes.

But there were a lot of women,

I mean, notoriously Nottingham had a gender bias anyway.

Right.

I mean, I got two nursing colleges.

Okay, yeah.

I played a lot of rugby at university.

I was playing three times a week.

I had the privilege of playing rugby with Brian Moore.

England hooker.

Oh, okay.

He's two years older than me.

He's two years older than me.

He looks a lot, he's had a hard life.

Right, okay.

And probably my rugby claim to fame

is that, I mean,

obviously Brian was already playing for England.

But he played for the university sometimes.

He played for Nottingham.

Okay.

But he had a very bad scrum.

He was a hooker.

He had a very bad scrum collapse.

An injury's back and nearly was never going to play again.

He nearly broke his back.

And he had to referee for sort of at least half a season.

And I'd broken my collarbone

playing rugby in the first year.

And it was always that name, wasn't it?

Yeah.

And my sort of physique had changed.

Yeah.

And it ended up moving from playing right wing

to playing hooker, which was Brian's position.

And I was playing in a game that Brian Moore was refereeing.

And I was playing hooker.

And the opposition hooker kept,

he was, he was foot up every time in the scrum.

Oh, okay.

And eventually I got pretty racked off with it.

So when he put his foot up, I just kicked it right on the shin.

And then the front, the front rose erupted.

And of course, I'm bound in with these two props

either side of me.

And the other hooker headbutted me straight in the face.

And it's very hard when you couldn't unbind, you know what I mean.

So it's right, someone's going to.

But Brian Moore threatened to throw me off a rough play.

So that's rough, isn't it?

If Brian Moore thought it was rough play,

but it was pretty rough.

What it is to be young and insane.

Well, that's kind of reflected in how you are now, I guess, isn't it?

I mean, all that, you're not afraid of a fight.

Well Nigel Farage said that to me a couple of years ago.

He said that the problem with you Andrew is,

he said you're always looking for a fight.

Right.

And I said, no, that's not true, Nigel.

But if there's one going, I'm not going to walk away from it.

Right, yeah.

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There is a difference because there are people

who get the feeling that they're just always

trying to play out some kind of childhood

in a thing that they just want to fight all the time.

Well, I mean, obviously we used to have a few games

in the rugby club at Nottingham.

I used to go on a few pub crawls and things.

And apparently at the time in the early 80s,

Nottingham was supposed to be the most violent city

in England.

But I never saw any.

But I mean, I know that you could go to the nicest village

in England, go to the local pub.

And if you really wanted to fight, you could have one,

can't you?

If you want one.

Of course one.

So I mean, no, I didn't see any trouble really at all.

But now, Nottingham was good.

I studied biological sciences.

What was it about science that did the logic of it?

The logic of it, the fact that you could challenge it

and especially getting involved in genetics

in the early 80s.

I mean, the doubling time for knowledge in genetics

when I was a student was six months.

Right, OK.

I remember the textbook was Edwin Lewin Jeans.

And it was volume one too.

And every few months there was volume 10.

It was the books were coming out as they were being updated

of the editions because say the doubling time for knowledge,

the doubling time.

No, twice as much in six months than we did.

So I specialized in genetics,

virology, and behavior.

Interesting.

And just because I was actually out for an easy life.

And it was something I was really interested in.

So I mean, find a subject that you're interested in.

It's not a bind, is it?

No.

No.

So that was the only reason.

I remember my final year project was on transmembrane,

detecting transmembrane proteins from amino acid sequences.

And actually, I had missed computers completely.

I'd never, ever been on a computer while at school.

So I did night classes for, I think my-

I bet that's it.

There weren't that many computers around them, were they?

No, but I mean, it was at university.

Yeah, but the computers at Nottingham University

in those days were about the size of this kitchen.

In the basement, air conditioned,

and you had terminals upstairs.

And they did a thing where they linked up

with a university in America.

And they used our computers at night

when no one was using them.

We used, yeah.

And this is to have all these terminals,

how things have changed so quickly.

But so I had to do night classes,

because I actually didn't know anything about computers.

I learned to code in a scientific language.

And I wrote a program which could detect transmembrane proteins.

Obviously, the potential signal proteins,

receptor proteins, on the outside of cells,

by finding, you know, three or four sequences

of amino acids that were, like, like,

syphilic, either like fat, like being in cell walls.

Yeah.

Potential transmembrane proteins.

Is that something that you still...

How did you follow that?

I tried to follow the science.

I tried to follow the science.

It's been very difficult over the last few years

to follow the science.

Yeah.

But now you have to follow the money, yes.

I was actually offered the chance to do a PhD in genetics

by the university at the end of my course.

But I decided to join the Royal Marines instead.

Are you doing it?

Yes.

I didn't know that about you.

Yeah.

OK.

I only put in for it as a commission for four years

for a short commission.

But I was offered a full career commission.

And they said, we'd take great offence

if you didn't accept it.

OK.

And that was interesting.

That was interesting.

I don't know who's going to pay.

I think the training year in the Royal Marine Commandos

was in 86, 7, was I think it was quarter million pounds.

I mean, you got to play with like three helicopters, yeah.

Martillery and the mortar line and tanks and things.

Yeah.

It was quite interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

OK.

So in some ways, it's different to the lot

of the people that we come across in the movement.

They tend to be.

I think the majority of people who are freedom people now

have come from a left wing sort of anti-authoritarian

standpoint.

And they've probably shifted it into a more central kind

of way, not central.

These things are arbitrary to joke the whole left-right thing.

But the left thing is it's an illusion.

But there is a kind of mindset.

I mean, so you describe, you know, perhaps

more of a left brain kind of approach,

logical science, interesting science,

interesting order in the military in the,

that's quite different from a lot of the people

who might be, you know, which is which.

I can't say that the mindless orders.

I mean, I don't mind.

I'm a bit of a rebel, really.

Well, obviously you are.

So I don't mind following orders as long as they're good orders.

And it makes sense.

But I mean, obviously, I find, you know, burning with an iron,

the dimples off your boots.

And then polishing the toe caps.

I found that, you know, I did what I had to do.

But I couldn't say that, you know, it wasn't like,

or being told you've got to, you have to polish

the bottom of your boots.

The souls of your boots.

Where you can imagine running up downstairs

within the souls of your boots are polished.

But also, what that does to the floor, yeah?

And then being told, you've got to get a toothbrush

and clean the stairs.

I don't think I look back on my experiences in my earlier life

before I realized the magnitude of the challenges

we're facing in the world, currently.

And a lot of it, I think, was essential training

to get me into the position where I was mentally able

to stand up.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of things, I think, you know,

doing, studying the right subjects at university.

I think, you know, being trained in the raw Marines

as an officer, you know, I think when I was ostracised

in Parliament for sort of 20 months,

and no one's talking to you, and they're gearing you

in the chamber, and you have to eat all your meals on your own.

Yeah.

And if they thought they were torturing me,

I mean, it's nothing compared to what real torture is.

Yeah.

I remember once on one exercise, you know,

being interrogated at a dope camp and battle camp,

you know, you've got a hood over your head,

and someone's kicked you in the face,

and your nose is bleeding,

then you put onto the floor of a helicopter

that which takes off, and you hear the door shut,

you know, hear the helicopter take off, right?

And then a few minutes later, the door opens,

you haven't landed, and then you were thrown out

of a helicopter that hasn't landed.

Well, I mean, the first, you know, two seconds of falling,

you've got to do thoughts going through your head

until you hit the ground.

And then the next thing is,

you'll rock sack and rife a land on the back of you,

and someone shouts, don't let us catch you again.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, they are experiences.

Yeah.

And in early 88,

my mother rang up and said that my father

had got to have his hip replaced at 48.

There's no one to look after the family,

and you'll have to come home and look after us.

And I did.

And set up a company called,

my father had this small holding

and a fruit and veg business,

which had always, he'd made money to live,

but it wasn't a business you could really scale up.

And I formed AB Produce,

limited with my little brother,

and started that with a thousand pounds

and a 74,000 pound loan from my father,

which we repaid in 12 months.

And my mother and father went and retired into Spain,

and we kept them on the payroll

and built the company up 22 years.

So I was the MD in chairman to 30 million pound business,

built a new factory in Northwest Leicestershire,

down at Meesham on the West Minister,

in West Minister Industrial Estate.

That's interesting, isn't it?

That 2001 built a new factory there.

I'd, we'd won awards just over the board

in Derbyshire, Derbyshire Business of the Year.

We'd become chairman of the East Midlands Institute

of Directors.

So I was on the council that was running

116 pound mal in London.

I did that for nothing one day or two days a month.

All right, while I was running my business,

we'd grown that every year,

and making over a million pounds a year profit

by the mid-90s.

But it was on the old farm site,

the old, this old small holding site,

and the problem was the roads weren't very good,

and although we'd improved the roads with Leibhys

and things, the growth of the business

was upsetting some of the locals

who didn't want to see lorries going by there.

Right, okay.

She's always a problem.

The other half of the village liked it

because they worked at my, at my plant.

So we'd got a problem expanding

because the business needed still to expand,

and it was getting harder and harder

to get planning permission to expand the business.

And I think it came home to me when I,

to get a little tiny building,

not 1% of the footprint of the buildings we already got,

to link two buildings together for a process

that we were doing,

took sort of 18 months and a lot of effort,

and then I realised there was really no future

at that site to grow the business.

We could stay there and make money, we couldn't grow.

And so I went and spoke to the village

and I had a public meeting and said,

look, we've got a problem.

I want to grow the business.

We can grow this business,

and it's very good for the local area.

A lot of people work there,

and we were employing about 150 at the time.

And what we could do is...

Complete breach for planning at the time.

It's planning law now, because they bought it in.

But I said, look,

I'm going to build a new factory just down the road at Measham,

four miles away,

so that everyone who works at the factory

will still be able to work at the new factory,

because we're going to just move it down the road.

But it's what I'm going to do with the old site.

I mean, it's all business development,

and I can rent that out to 20 different companies

or businesses.

You'll have more traffic than you've got now,

and you won't be able to say who it is,

because there will be 20 different businesses

renting a little unit each.

I said, oh,

we could pull the whole lot down

and we could build some houses on top of the brown field site,

and that'll be nicer for you.

And they said they'd rather have the houses.

So I made an application to the local planning authority,

and it was voted through,

although it's outside the plan.

I'm going to invest 10 million pounds in Measham

and build a new bespoke factory state of the art

on an industrial estate.

And I was going to float the company on the stock market

on aim, the alternative investment market.

That's why the company's called AB Produce PLC

because we were ready to go.

And then the planning inspectorate,

this is under the Labor government,

they said they had an objection

and pulled the planning permission.

So the flotation on the stock market dropped.

Yeah, a quarter of a million pound wasted on the fees,

and I was pretty annoyed.

And also the locals are fairly annoyed

because they thought they were going to get rid of

this traffic problem, and so it was actually George Cox,

who was Director General of the Institute of Directors,

and Ruth Lee, who was the economist,

and they were meeting with Gordon Brown.

And they said to me that my own personal example

was a very good example of red tape,

stifling, business, and development.

It was actually stifling everybody,

because everybody locally liked the plan.

And so Tony Blair sent some civil servants

to meet me from London.

I really?

Yeah.

And they were, the first time I met these sort of people,

they're a bit different.

Yeah.

And I said, well, you refuse the plan.

And I put it in for 10 houses.

They were largely attached houses.

And I said, well, they said, well,

we'll put him for a bit less,

and we'll make sure it goes through this time.

I mean, you know, that's what they said.

And I said, well, it was only 10 to start with.

And they're already massive houses.

And so he's under a label going,

so we'll just make the houses bigger.

Another thing.

So we ended up putting in a planning permission

for five enormous houses, five enormous houses,

which went through.

And I sold the site, I think, for a million pounds.

So it was £200,000 a plot in 2000.

And that postcode wall stitch park, it's called,

is the most expensive house in postcode in Derbyshire.

Yeah.

And they were built by a builder.

And they're very nice, very nice development.

And that allowed me to move, get on the plan.

And by the time all this had been resolved,

another 18 months had gone by.

The company was profitable.

We got money in the bank.

The interest rates had gone up.

Because there'd been so many failures on aim of companies

that hadn't made it.

They'd increased the cost to a million pounds to float,

instead of a quarter of a million pounds.

And I weighed it all up and said,

we don't need to borrow the money.

I'll just borrow the money from the bank.

We'll build the new factory.

And I built the new factory at Westminster Industrial

Estate.

The cost went from, I think the business rates

went from 25,000 a year on the rural farm site to 150,000 a year.

So I needed to grow the business.

And we had the capacity with the building.

So basically, traveled, traveled quadrupled the size

of the business.

And paid back all the investment by 2006.

Six years paid all the money back for the factory.

And everything.

And it was happy days.

I'd met through the Institute of Directors.

I'd met all of Tony Blair's ministers

who were to do with business.

And I think that basically confirmed my worst fears

that these were absolutely useless.

And got a clue.

And I was in a position where I was.

I owned my own fairly big house in its own grounds.

I got my Aston Martin.

And I got the Range Rover.

And I got a trophy wife.

And two kids going to private school.

Yeah.

And I don't really get the answer.

The company was, the group, because it was a group of companies

by then, it was a company called British Investments.

I'd formed.

The group was making 3 million pound profit a year.

And I was paying tax personally on a million pounds.

And I didn't really need anything else.

So what was I saying?

I had done like 20 years building this business up.

How are you feeling inside at that point?

You feel content satisfied?

Like you achieved what you wanted to?

Or did there's something in that year

that didn't feel quite right?

Well, it was the fact that we built this business up.

And I could see if we tried to apply the same principles

of valuing people and the right leadership,

we could do a lot better.

And Northwest Leicestershire, where we are,

I mean, it was always considered

the most deprived part of Leicestershire.

Colville was the most deprived town in Leicestershire.

And La Paure relation.

And I don't think, you know, it deserves better.

It's actually a wonderful place.

Northwest Leicestershire is probably the constituency

furthest from the sea anywhere in the UK.

And we're also the centre of population in the UK.

So if everybody in the UK wanted to walk

the shortest distance and meet up somewhere,

you would be Applebee, Applebee Magna

at the south end of Northwest Leicestershire.

And I used to go to a pub in a little village

with a few friends on a Friday night.

It seems like a different lifetime at the time of the day now.

And the conversation would always go the same way.

It's just around 2005, 2006 that, you know,

the government make it harder for you

to do business to employ people and get on.

And the areas couldn't, it's not good enough.

The government's not good enough.

And it was like being in a loop every Friday

to the point where I was dreading it.

And I think it was definitely one point of master's pedigree

to many.

And I just, I just say, well, every Friday

we have this conversation people, you know,

there isn't anybody else to help us, right?

So how about this for a plan?

I'll put the money up for the leaflets.

We'll all join the local Conservative Party

in Northwest Leicestershire, who probably only have about 55 members

and haven't put a leaflet out in 10 years.

You all stand for councillors.

I'll stand for MP.

We'll take over the area.

And then we'll sort it out ourselves.

And I think they must have had a one drink too many as well.

So they all said yes.

They all said yes.

I said, I'll fund the political campaign.

And then we'll be in charge.

Then we can't moan, can we?

Because we'll be in charge.

It's our problem.

And mysteriously, that happened.

Nobody wanted to be the Conservative candidate

for Northwest Leicestershire,

because it was seen as an unwinnable seat.

I was it?

Yeah.

Yeah, 83rd target seat on the 2010.

I'd given a lump of money to the Conservative Party

in the 2005 election, I think, from memory,

the Conservatives had a half a percent swing to them.

I worked out at that rate.

We got a Labour government for the next 120 years or something.

So I said, we need direct action.

So you still obviously had faith in the system at that point?

Only because I didn't know the system.

I had no faith for the politicians I'd already met.

But I was hoping that the Conservative ones

will be rather better.

How I was disappointed.

Well, yeah.

But that's the journey we go on, isn't it?

Yes, it's a journey.

It's a journey I had to go on.

Yeah.

So, believe it or not, you have to go and do an exam,

a test to be a Conservative candidate.

And you have to pay the Conservative Party,

well, I think, well, a long time ago, it was 250 pounds.

OK.

So I'm only making scam.

I think 70% of people don't pass.

OK.

And having been in the military,

I remember no notice at all.

They didn't really want people like me.

It was all the Cameron's A-listers.

And it was all already D-A-R.

They wanted a lot more women candidates,

and minorities, gay, when I didn't take any of those boxes.

But anyway, I paid my 250 pounds.

And kept saying, you know, when the selections were coming up

for Northwestern South Derbyshire,

the only seats I'd ever wanted to stand in,

because they were my, they'd been my homes.

And at sort of two days notice, I was told,

oh, someone's dropped out of this selection,

and it was somewhere like a hotel at the side of the motorway

at Newport Pagnole or somewhere.

Goat, you know, you've got to be there at 9 o'clock

on the Saturday morning or something,

or Friday, whatever it was.

And I went down there, and obviously, you know,

military selections are interesting,

and you can see what's going on.

Yeah.

I've done all that, and we went down to this hotel,

and they came the old trick on us,

when you went into the reception,

and they said, go through to that room there,

and then someone came out at the,

so say it was supposed to start at, say, 10 o'clock.

This chapy came out and said,

oh, there's been a bit of a delay.

The room's not ready for the exams to start,

so just have a coffee and, oh yeah,

as if they're not spying on you.

So all these people for the test were there,

and they put some, you know,

bits and bombs out and coffee and whatever,

in this room.

And there were chairs and things,

and you know, there was that chap in the corner

with a newspaper, I think.

You're in the hospital.

It's basically, yes.

And I thought, oh, for goodness sake.

I went and did all that, you know,

my name's Andrew Bridge, and all that's in the other room.

All that, yeah.

All that rubbish.

And then after about 20 minutes, this chap comes out.

The room's now ready for the exams to start, okay,

as if they haven't already started.

And as I was walking to the exam room,

I went by this chapy with the newspaper

and tapped him on the shoulder.

And I said, my name's Andrew Bridge,

and I hope you've made a note of all that interacting

I was, and he just burst out laughing.

Oh, I see it, I see it, all right, okay.

He'd been, I mean, it was like a very bad spine movie.

Yeah, yeah.

And the, yeah, there's a lot of psychological profiling

in those exams, so you couldn't really say

whether you've got the right hand straw, not.

I mean, a fair bit of role playing,

which was interesting, and scenarios,

and interacting with the other candidates.

And they were spying on you at lunchtime as well.

They didn't, they never stopped spying on you.

So, it was all very interesting,

and I was pleased to pass.

There were only 13 people applied to be the candidate

for Northwest Leicestershire.

I mean, I think the, the cycle afterwards,

next door is Charmwood, which has always been

a conservative seat.

I think there were 220 candidates for that seat,

for the Conservatives, and applicants for the seat,

because it was a, a shoe in,

but Northwest Leicestershire was not.

And I got into the last three candidates here

for the Conservative candidate,

and then the party decided they'd throw it out

because they didn't have many members,

throw it out into an open primary,

so they just put coupons in the local paper,

and anyone could vote.

And I got 66% of all the votes,

and so I became the candidate for Northwest Leicestershire.

2006, my friends, a small business people,

stood for the Council, and I ran that campaign

and funded it in 2007.

And mysteriously, we had the biggest swing

in the country against Labour.

The Council here had been basically Labour since 83,

when Northwest Leicestershire was created.

And we took the unwinnable Labour seat,

down to only five Labour Councils

out of 38 in one night from control.

Labour was so arrogant, they even put the Council tax

up 8% in election year.

They were so sure that they were going to win.

8% increase in Council tax.

When we got in, we didn't put the Council tax up

for 15 years.

It was the longest, in the Library of the House of Commons,

Northwest Leicestershire's Council tax freeze

was the longest ever in history.

In the UK, 15 years, no rising Council tax

from the District Council.

And I built this factory in Northwest Leicestershire,

and I was actually, as the Institute of Directors

Representative, I was on the East Midlands Assembly,

which was one of the first things we got rid of

when I got into Parliament.

But their civil servant said to me,

that said to me many years before,

the late 90s, that I was building my new factory

in the least business-friendly planning district

in the whole of the East Midlands.

And that's what it was.

I mean, often, you know, bringing 300 jobs

and investing 10 million.

The way the planning officer spoke to you,

you thought you'll bring in bubonic plague.

You know, they were not business-friendly.

And obviously, there was a lot of allegations around the area

when we took over in 2007 that, you know,

and some local councillors were known as Mr. 2%

and they wanted 2% of the build cost.

Well, I mean, people don't want to play those sort of games.

And speaking to developers and architects,

they wouldn't apply.

There was so much aggravation.

They wouldn't apply for a planning application

in Northwest Leicestershire.

So it meant that the whole area had not developed.

So it was a bit like fallow ground.

But it just needed cultivating.

So the advantages in Northwest Leicestershire were that we got

very good communication in the centre of the country.

And we've got an airport, East Midlands Airport,

which is the biggest dedicated cargo handler in the UK.

So if you wanted one big shed

and you want to distribute over the country,

four hours, four and a bit hours,

lorry driving time from here.

And you can get back in the same day,

84% of all the chimney pots in Great Britain.

All right.

So if you don't know, distribution and logistics,

big opportunity, we've got the M1, we've got the M42,

we've got the A50, we've got the airport,

central of the country.

So that's what we decided to push on.

Massive business growth, big sheds.

A third of all the jobs in Northwest Leicestershire now are

logistics or transport related.

We're just commented to Vicki on the way here.

How many trucks and lorry's there are?

Absolutely.

It's crazy, yeah.

And also as part of my MD and Chairman of AB Produce PLC,

we also ran 12 HGVs our own transport fleet.

So I was actually a qualified transport manager,

was the only one in Parliament,

which is completely in line with the employment profile

of Northwest Leicestershire.

We've got this area, which was supposedly the most

deprived in Leicestershire.

And with the team who were quite,

I'm just quite determined to do something about it.

And when I was running my food business,

it was the best in the industry.

And I like it being the best in the industry.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that 12 years

after we took control of the council,

Northwest Leicestershire was delivering

the highest economic growth in the UK.

From a lower base, but by 12 years,

and it wasn't a full-time job,

it was just a matter of making the right decisions,

making the right decisions.

And it was fellow ground.

So we had plenty of headroom

for building new factories and houses,

because no one wanted to build.

Sure.

So by the 29th, the 19th election,

we've got 1.2 jobs in the constituency

for everyone of working age.

So people have to travel into this area to work,

which keeps the wages going up,

because they're most sustainable,

the most sustainable way of improving pay and conditions

is to create a strong demand for labour.

And we did.

And the skill sets are, you know,

people want his job security.

I said, I can't give you job security,

but if your skill sets are transport and logistics,

warehousing, or even, you know,

the office functions for those sort of businesses,

you could get yourself,

or a HGV, Laura Driver, or Fort Lift Driver.

You could leave your job in the morning

and find another job in the afternoon here.

I mean, that's that.

I can't give you job security,

but I can give you employment security, yeah.

And that means that people have to pay proper wages

to hang on to staff.

Sure.

So that was really good for the people.

So by 2019, North West Lester should move

from the poorest area of Lestershire to the richest.

It's the only part of Lestershire here

where the average household income is above UK averages.

Oh, okay.

I'm very proud of that.

Yeah.

And we'd also built about 800 houses a year.

800 houses a year.

And we, you know, the government's building beautiful,

but they adopted, the Labour have got rid of it now,

where houses have to be aesthetically improving

the built landscape.

Oh, okay.

We developed that here 12 years ago, 14 years ago,

and we've been doing it,

and I presented it to the government and parliament,

and they eventually adopted it 10 years after we'd started it.

We called it building for life, better by design,

and it's easier to get planning permission

if the houses are not boxes.

So we built good quality housing,

and because we built enough,

house prices in Northwest Lester

are about 30% less than the UK average.

So you imagine a situation where you've got

above average household incomes for the UK,

but house prices is 30% less.

Yeah.

So I'd suspect when I first became the MPI,

I said, I wanted to make Northwest Lester

a better place to live, work, and to visit.

Well, most people I spoke to,

they, to make them happy,

they wanted a reasonably well-paid job locally.

We've got the jobs now.

They wanted to be able to buy a house

of good quality locally that they could afford to do,

30% less than the UK average.

Pay the bills, go out on a Saturday night,

and go and have a holiday,

hopefully from East Midlands Airport,

for a couple of weeks in the summer.

I mean, I don't think they weren't asking for that much,

were they?

And if that's the definition of happiness,

we delivered it,

and it's interesting,

it was all those indicators by 2019,

helpfully, just before the 2019, 19 December election,

the government bought out there

and updated their happiness index.

And Northwest Lestershire, unsurprisingly,

was the happiest place to live in the Midlands, right?

From the most deprived.

Yeah.

And, you know,

it's unsurprising, then,

that at that 2019 election,

I'd led the leave campaign for the whole of these Midlands

against Ken Clark, the builder burger.

Yeah, sure.

Who was the MP next door in Rushcliffe in Nottingham?

And it was humiliating for Ken Clark.

It was a big beast of the Conservative Party.

You know, how many jobs have he held,

you know, everything except for Prime Minister?

In the whole of the East Midlands,

it was really only Rushcliffe,

was the only part of the whole East Midlands

that voted to remain everywhere else voted to leave.

Right, yeah.

So it was 59-41 in the East Midlands.

And Northwest Lestershire was

61-39 leave.

Yeah.

And I knew that leave at one,

when I saw the turn out figures,

so we

was 79.8% turn out in Northwest Lestershire and the referendum.

People will turn out,

if they think there's something to worry about.

And real change.

And I knew those people weren't coming out

to vote for the status quo.

And it had been very interesting

because leading the leave campaign in North,

in these Midlands,

the day before the referendum,

leave had rung me up from London

and said, Boris is coming up to you for the eve of poll.

And so Boris Johnson came up to,

and I'll meet you at Ashbeda LaZouche,

the market town,

and we'll walk up Market Street

and all the TV cameras turned up and everything.

And I was also, we're making a little documentary.

I think it's called Brexit, a very British coup.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I can remember standing on the Royal Hotel car park

with Boris, and we both had forgotten

we got the radio mics on,

and we were a long way from the cameras

and we thought we were having a confidential conversation,

but it was one of those Gordon Brown moments.

You remember him with the bigger-tid woman?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But a bit like that, but I mean,

it wasn't anywhere as bad as that,

but it was me telling Boris,

confidentially, that we're definitely going to win

the referendum tomorrow.

And Boris's face was not what he wanted.

He tried to talk me out of it.

Oh, seriously?

Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no.

He said, Boris, I don't know how many,

how many doors you've knocked on,

but we're going to win.

He said it'll be close.

It'll be close, Andrew.

I said, well, maybe, Boris, I said,

but not round here.

And so what had what were you feeling when you?

Well, I realized, did you smell a rat,

or did you just, well, I just think he was being negative.

At the time, I should not have rat,

but I, I now realize I've seen

looking back.

He was thinking about the new.

Well, yeah, well, close party gate.

Yes.

And well, I tried,

Swade Boris early on to be a lever.

And I mean, he was

a lever.

He believed, remained.

He was, you know, he wasn't really bothered.

And I think he bought, now looking back,

I mean, what Boris,

Boris, all his family are a remainers.

His father was an Emmy.

Yeah, of course, where his father was a genesis.

He's, well, you genesis,

Melthusian.

Yes.

What have you got against Stanley?

LAUGHTER

Yeah.

Hasn't read his book, I don't think.

And I tried to persuade Boris to stand for,

to be on the leave side.

And he said, oh, are you backing leave?

I said, well, of course I'm going to back leave.

Yes.

And a bit of that sovereignty.

And anyway, he eventually did.

But I mean, Boris had just looked at it.

I mean, Cameron had made a huge tactical error

in that he had decided to place himself

in charge of the remain campaign.

So sure was he that he was going to win.

And obviously, Boris, he likes the stardom.

I mean, the crowd, the stage was very, very crowded

on the remains side.

And they weren't going to let Boris have much of the glory.

Were they?

OK.

They wanted a bit of stardom.

The only place he could get that was on the leave side.

So we were desperate on that side for a few big beasts.

So do you think he's making those decisions

or do you think, now looking at it?

Right, no, no, he'd made that decision

that he would be on for leave.

Most of the conservative type voters

would probably vote to leave, but leave would lose.

So it's staying the EU.

But Boris had been seen as a hero.

And he would eventually be leader of the conservative party,

the vanquished hero.

And it didn't come out to plan.

I mean, there's no way that anyone,

I can remember, is it Mr Oliver, who

was Cameron's one of Cameron's special advisors?

And the middle of the referendum campaign in 2016,

we had a conservative party away day at a big hotel in Oxford.

We had them every two years.

And the reason we didn't have it,

the party was sort of 2,3rds, 1,3rds remain.

1,3rds of the MPs were for leave.

It was like a civil war.

And for two days in Oxford, sure, at this hotel,

we were told we were having a party meeting

and we don't mention the R-word, right?

So it had a whole weekend where the party came together

to discuss policy and nobody mentioned the R-word.

And we were in the referendum.

And it was a bit bizarre.

And Cameron hated me anyway.

He'd come to North West Western 2008

and told me that Sarah was a dump.

And I wasn't going to get any money from the party.

And I wouldn't be an MP.

And I said, well, we'll see about that.

I don't need the money.

I've got my own money.

And if you really think that this area is a dump, Dave,

I said, what makes you say that?

He said, oh, I came to Corvall in 2005 with Michael Howard

in the election.

What a SH-1T hole.

I said, well, like you know, this is my,

you know, I'm not a floating candidate.

This is the area I live in, you know?

And I said, if you really think that,

the best thing is you never come here again.

Don't come here again.

And I will with it.

I wrote to the government and said, look, you know,

this is killing people.

And I was told that there was no link between lockdowns

and suicide rates.

I mean, clearly, it occurred to me

that the people in Number 10 had got access

to the best scientific advice available, haven't they?

They weren't worried about killing granny.

They were 50 civil servants and younger advisors,

all just standing there, not mass, not socially distanced,

watching it all.

It said it was an absolute pantomime.

As far as Johnson could not have had COVID,

I didn't have the best of childhoods myself.

And I've just got this thing.

I can't stand anyone doing anything to children.

And here, why are you willing to die on that hill?

Because that's the hill you're killing, why people are?

I know he's sold his soul to the devil and he is not.

He's not what he purports to be.

Hello, it is Ryan.

And we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we?

Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic,

doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know,

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