Gerard Batten

Gerard Joseph Batten (born 27 March 1954) is a British politician who served as the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2018 to 2019.

Batten was born in Romford, Essex, on 27 March 1954.

He grew up on the Isle of Dogs in the East End of London.

Before entering politics he was employed as a salesman for British Telecom.

Batten was a member of the Anti-Federalist League, an early Eurosceptic cross-party political alliance from 1992 to 1993.

He was a founding member of the party in 1993, and served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for London from 2004 to 2019.

He was one of the founding members of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in 1993, and was its first General Secretary from 1994 to 1997.

He has been a member of UKIP's National Executive Committee several times.

The Mitrokhin Commission, which was established in 2002 and closed in 2006 with a majority and a minority report, without reaching shared conclusions, and without any concrete evidence given to support the original allegations of KGB ties to Italian politicians contained in the Mitrokhin Archive.

Led by the centre-right coalition majority, it was criticized as politically motivated, as it was focused mainly on allegations against opposition figures.

Batten was first elected as a Member of the European Parliament in the 2004 European Parliamentary Election for the London constituency on the basis of seeking the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.

During his first term of office Batten served as a member of the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Security and Defence (from July 2004), and was appointed as UKIP's official spokesman on Security and Defence.

In this role, he attacked the-then Labour government's plans to introduce identity cards.

Anatoly Trofimov was assassinated by unknown gunmen in April 2005.

In early April 2006, Batten stated that a London constituent and former Federal Security Service (FSB) agent, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, had been told by Mario Scaramella, that Romano Prodi, the former Prime Minister of Italy and president of the European Commission, had been the KGB's "man in Italy".

Batten demanded an inquiry into the allegations.

He told the European Parliament that Litvinenko had been warned by FSB deputy chief General Anatoly Trofimov that there were numerous former KGB agents among Italian politicians, and that "Romano Prodi is our man in Italy".

The allegations were rejected by Prodi.

On 26 April 2006, Batten repeated his call for a parliamentary inquiry.

He said: "Former, senior members of the KGB are willing to testify in such an investigation, under the right conditions... It is not acceptable that this situation is unresolved, given the importance of Russia's relations with the European Union."

Litvinenko was admitted to hospital with suspected poisoning on 11 November 2006 after eating at a London restaurant, and died on 23 November 2006.

The police later concluded he had been poisoned with polonium; a small dose of which is lethal.

In November 2006, the new Italian Parliament with a centre-left coalition majority instituted a commission to investigate the Mitrokhin Commission for allegations that it was manipulated for political purposes.

In December 2006, colonel ex-KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky, whom Scaramella claimed as his source, confirmed the accusations made against Scaramella regarding the production of false material relating to Prodi and other Italian politicians, and underlined their lack of reliability.

In 2006, Batten commissioned a document from Sam Solomon, "A Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding", which amounts to a proposed code of conduct, including the rejection of passages in the Qur'an that propose "violent physical Jihad", and that should be considered "inapplicable, invalid and non-Islamic".

At the 2007 UKIP annual conference, he was selected as the party's candidate to contest the 2008 London Mayoral Election, in which he received a 1.2% share of the vote.

On 22 January 2007, BBC News and ITV News released documents and video footage from February 2006 in which Litvinenko made the same allegations against Prodi.

Batten participated in the international counter-jihad conference in Brussels in 2007.

In 2008, Batten invited the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) leader and MEP Geert Wilders to the European Parliament, in an unsuccessful attempt to screen Wilders' film Fitna for MEPs.

According to Batten in Freedom Today, Wilders "is a brave man trying to defend western civilisation in the face of its own loss of the most basic instinct of self-preservation".

Batten stood in the 2009 UKIP leadership election, coming second in a field of five behind the winner Lord Pearson.

From 2009 to 2014, he held the office of UKIP's Chief Whip in the European Parliament.

In 2011, Batten spoke with Julian Assange's lawyers and began advocating for him in the media and in European Parliament.

In a 2013 interview with openDemocracy, Batten argued that the European Union was inspired by the proposals the Nazis developed in 1942 for Europe after they had won the Second World War, stating they were very similar to the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

When asked why Muslims should sign up to such a document, he told The Guardian's Rowena Mason in February 2014: "Christians aren't blowing people up at the moment, are they?"

From 2016 to 2018, Batten served as the UKIP Spokesman for Exiting the European Union.

In 2017, in response to the Irish Government's intervention in the Brexit negotiations, Batten expressed the view on Twitter that Ireland, "a tiny country that relies on UK for its existence", is "the weakest kid in the playground sucking up to the EU bullies".

He advocated the revocation of the Common Travel Area between Ireland and the UK.

Ireland's Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, rejected Batten's claims: "Ireland is not threatening anybody, least of all a friend, but we remain resolute in our insistence on a sensible way through Brexit that protects Ireland."

A UKIP spokesman said Batten's comments do not reflect party policy.