Godfrey Bloom

Godfrey William Bloom TD (born 22 November 1949) is a former British politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber from 2004 to 2014.

Bloom was born on 22 November 1949, the son of Alan Bloom and his wife, Phyllis.

His father served as a fighter pilot during the Second World War.

Bloom was educated at St. Olave's Grammar School.

Bloom was commissioned into the Royal Corps of Transport (Territorial Army) in 1977.

attending the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst for the two week course for territorials.

In 1992 he was promoted to the rank of major.

He left the TA in 1996.

Bloom worked as a financial economist.

In 1996 he was part of Francis Maude's regulatory consultancy panel from which he later resigned.

In his last position, he worked as the director of the investment company TBO in which he is a major shareholder.

Bloom contested the Conservative-held seat of Haltemprice and Howden at the 1997 general election, coming fifth.

He was elected for the UK Independence Party in the European elections of 2004 and 2009, representing UKIP until September 2013, when UKIP withdrew the party whip from him.

In 2004, Bloom's election to the Yorkshire and the Humber seat was UKIP's first seat in the region in the European elections.

In 2009, he was re-elected.

In the parliament Bloom was a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality.

Bloom was ejected from the Mansion House in 2009 for heckling Lord Turner for giving staff bonuses after the massive regulatory failure of 2008/09.

On 20 September 2013, UKIP withdrew the party whip from Bloom after he hit journalist Michael Crick in the street with a conference brochure, threatened a second reporter, and at the party's conference jokingly referred to his female audience as sluts.

Bloom resigned his party whip from UKIP on 24 September 2013 and thereafter sat as an Independent MEP until the end of his term in office on 2 July 2014.

Nigel Farage, the UKIP party leader, has been cited by Channel 4 News to say that "the trouble with Godfrey is that, he is not a racist, he's not an extremist or any of those things and he's not even anti-women, but he has a sort-of-rather old-fashioned territorial army sense of humour which does not translate very well in modern Britain".

On 20 September 2013, during its party conference, UKIP withdrew the whip from Bloom.

At a party conference meeting he had jokingly referred to his female audience as.

Subsequently, he got into a confrontation with journalist Michael Crick in the streets, hitting him over the head with the conference brochure, and allegedly threatened ITV reporter Paul Brand, by saying, "You treat me badly, you'll get a lot worse than that (Crick's slap) ... that is a threat to any journalist."

On 24 September 2013, he resigned his UKIP party whip, while retaining his party membership.

His statement said: "I have felt for some time now that the 'New UKIP' is not really right for me any more".

In December 2013, as a result of his various controversies, Bloom was awarded the Plain English Campaign's Foot in Mouth Award.

A spokesman said that Bloom was "an overwhelming choice" who "could easily have won this award on at least two other occasions... [he's] a wince-inducing gaffe machine and we could fill a page or two with his ill-advised quotes from 2013 alone".

He then sat as an Independent until the end of his term of office in May 2014.

Bloom resigned his UKIP party membership on 13 October 2014.

During his tenure, he received attention for making remarks considered objectionable by his party leader, for his opinions concerning climate change and for making other controversial comments.

Bloom and Crick met again in May 2014.

The two shook hands and had lunch together and Bloom thanked Crick, describing the incident as a "defining moment" that made him realise that he "wasn’t really suited to party politics".

Bloom was removed as Honorary President of the Ludwig von Mises Centre in December 2017, the organisation citing his comments on Twitter.

According to The Daily Telegraph he was the first man to be ejected since John Wilkes in the late-18th century.

In a letter to UKIP, Turner wrote that "Mr Bloom will not be receiving any further invitations to Mansion House events nor will be welcome at the Brussels Annual reception [...] As to future Mansion House events we will be seeking a different MEP from UKIP as a potential guest."

Bloom signed the petition in disgust at the knighthood for the failures of Hector Sants.

He is a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Bloom was a co-author of Wolfson Prize Economics Submission with Pat Barron and Philipp Bagus.

He warned that credit agencies would be "castrated" by too much regulation of the EU.

Bloom claims that most MEPs have "little or no business experience" and do not understand the consequences of their actions.