I don't believe the warnings, says Brexit Party's Scots MEP

Louis Stedman-Bryce has lived in the Helensburgh area since 2015, but admits that even after the results were declared, with the party winning by far the largest share of the vote across the UK, though not in Scotland, people in the local area still didn’t know who he was.

Mr Stedman-Bryce, whose journey from common-or-garden Brexit supporter to MEP lasted about six weeks, told the Advertiser: “It’s been an absolute whirlwind, but there’s been no reaction locally at all.

“Someone did walk past me the other day and did a double take as if to say ‘is that who I think it is?’, but nothing apart from that – although I suspect that may be about to change.”

Mr Stedman-Bryce, who is the director of a private care home firm, was elected after the Brexit Party received 233,006 votes in the Scotland constituency – slightly less than 15 per cent of the total Scottish vote.

“People kept saying ‘you’ll definitely get in’,” he said, “but I kept telling myself ‘no, I need to do everything I can to get elected’.

“I didn’t want to get complacent and assume it was a sure thing, and in fact we ended up getting 100,000 more votes than UKIP did in 2014, which was a great result.”

As for his own position on Brexit: he voted Leave in 2016, doesn’t want the UK to leave the EU without a deal, thinks the current deal on offer is worse than leaving without a deal, and doesn’t share the concerns of many who believe that a no-deal Brexit will cause enormous damage to the Scottish, and British, economy.

“I don’t believe the warnings,” he said.

“I think the damage to the economy, particularly in Scotland, is being caused not by Brexit itself but by the uncertainty over both Brexit and the question of Scottish independence.

“I could not, as a democrat, say that the people of Scotland could not ever vote for independence if that is what they want to do. But we were told it was a once in a generation vote. If the will is there, we should do that.

“But I believe the whole independence debate that is constantly bubbling away is far more damaging and far more harmful to successful businesses.

“Investment has fallen and that is very harmful to the economy.

“I have, from the age of 15, literally looked after myself. I had my first flat at the age of 16, and I’ve worked full time ever since.

“Now I employ 100 people and I’m looking to employ another 100 across the west of Scotland. I would not be supporting or advocating something I genuinely believed would leave those people worse off.

“The CBI [Confederation of British Industry] has been touting its reports about the economic consequences of leaving the EU, but they have cherry-picked the data they’ve used to emphasise the negatives. I think the danger is if you talk something down and say it’s going to be dreadful, the chances are much greater that it will indeed be dreadful.

“I don’t think anyone in their right mind, whether in the UK or in the rest of the EU, wants the UK to leave without a deal. But we have been pushed into a disadvantage because of the poor negotiations thus far, and ‘no deal’ needs to remain an option.”

“But this has dragged on for coming up to three years now, and we have to draw a line in the sand and move this forward, because it cannot continue.”