Roger Helmer is not a sceptic in the normal meaning of the word: “a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions”. He does not doubt. He is as certain that he is right as the targets of his attack: the Brussels bureaucrats, Europhiles and “climate change alarmists”. Neither is he a contrarian, merely seeking controversy. His positions are based on his well-reasoned response to the evidence that he sees. Sceptic at Large is, then, more a personal manifesto.
Helmer threads a narrative through extracts from his speeches and blogs which gives the book the immediacy of responding to events as they unfold. It also gives the book a sense of frustration, almost exasperation, that others cannot see his obvious truth. Roger Helmer in person is charming and witty. The charm is here: even under severe provocation he remains courteous; his infectious humour is, however, largely absent.
Time and again he is surprised at how far the Brussels machine will go to rig the debate. He reminds me of Charlie Brown in the Schultz cartoon: repeatedly Lucy holds the football for Charlie to kick and each time pulls it away at the last minute, leaving Charlie Brown on his butt in the dust. The European Council recognised “that there were problems with democracy, transparency and efficiency within the EU” and Helmer agrees with them adding “corruption” to the list of indictments. The European Convention, tasked with solving these problems, instead produced the “all-embracing” Constitution which threatened to “end British independence”. When French and Dutch voters reject the Constitution, Helmer is “astonished at the bare-face effrontery” that revives it as the Lisbon Treaty. When Ireland struck “a historic blow for freedom and democracy” by rejecting the renamed Constitution, Helmer is shocked by the cynicism that requires them to vote again.
He is no less disappointed in the leadership of his own Party. Having supported David Cameron for the Party leadership in 2005, he was “appalled, shocked and disappointed” when Cameron “repudiated” the policy of holding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. According to Helmer, David Cameron has drifted away from the core beliefs of the Conservative Party and the LibDems are having undue influence in the coalition. On the Irish bail-out, Turkish accession to the EU, the European Arrest Warrant and Investigation Order, Ken Clarke’s justice policies and the decision to “decimate the armed forces” he is at odds with his party. Or, at least, he is at odd with its leadership. As he says, “the Party rank-and-file is a great deal closer to my position than to that of the Conservative High Command”.
He is at odds with them too on what he calls “climate change hysteria”. He neither accepts the “alarmist science” nor does he believe the measures proposed will do much to improve matters. Green climate policies are “probably unnecessary, certainly ineffectual and ruinously expensive”.
Helmer takes the opportunity to settle some old scores: with his long-standing rival in the East Midlands, “Bill Turncoat Dunn” who, having been elected a Conservative MEP, defected to the LibDems and with Hans-Gert Pöttering, the former leader of the EPP who moved to expel him from the Group in the European Parliament. The BBC’s Environment correspondent James Harrabin and the Guardian’s Leo Hickman are taken to task on climate change and he repeatedly mocks “Rumpy Pumpy” Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council and “Barosso No-Mates” the President of the Commission who proposes paying journalists to travel with him.
If the general tone is of gloom and disappointment, there are moments when the real Roger Helmer emerges, like the sun from behind a cloud. He is sceptical about the merits of art, literature, poetry or architecture after the early 20th century and gives us paeans to Edward Burne-Jones (“move over Michelangelo’s David … move over Moan Lisa”), to Lutyens, to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and to H.E. Marshall’s Our Island Story. Are there clues here to his wider world view? He appears in country attire to support the Fernie Hunt Team Chase and at the East Midlands Food Festival praising the producers of Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese. Is there nostalgia for more certain times? He quotes Cecil Rhodes, “the greatest prize in the lottery of life was to be born an Englishman” and goes on, “I was born a free Englishman … All I ask is to be a free man in a free country again.”
Sceptic at Large will be probably be read by those who already agree with Helmer, on the EU and on climate change. It deserves a wider audience. He may be certain where he stands on these issues but his positions are well argued and he deserves to be read by those of us who really are sceptics.
