The Turnip Taleban Fights Liz Truss - Again / Telegraph Magazine

 On a damp, grey early summer morning three men and a woman are walking through a 700-acre private estate in rural Norfolk. They wear light blue bibs proclaiming ‘Vote Independent: Bagge’. A red Royal Mail van crunches up the gravel track and stops beside this curious group.

One of the four – a trim, grey-haired man resembling an older version of Gordon Ramsay – steps forward. ‘Hello! Are you supportive of me?’ he asks the bemused driver. After a short pause the postman replies: ‘What are you?’

It’s a very good question, and one to which James Bagge must provide a compelling answer between now and the general election on 4 July.

Some months ago he embarked on a campaign best described as quixotic: he is seeking to oust Liz Truss, the local MP, by standing as an independent conservative. He wants her to be remembered not only as the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, but as the first former occupant of Number 10 to lose their seat in Parliament since Ramsay MacDonald lost Seaham in 1935.

On the face of it, defeating the former prime minister in this overwhelmingly rural, white and conservative constituency seems a preposterous idea, even when the Conservative Party nationally is profoundly unpopular.

It has been a Tory stronghold for 60 years. Truss has held it in four successive general elections, most recently with a stonking majority of 26,195. Indeed, she secured more than twice as many votes in 2019 as her Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green opponents combined, and for none of those parties is this constituency remotely close to being a target seat. Bagge, a political novice, admits he faces a ‘monumental task’ to secure ‘one of the biggest electoral upsets in history’.

But much has happened since the last election, little of which has gone down well in South West Norfolk. Truss damaged the economy during her brief but catastrophic premiership and her personal approval rating plunged to minus 70. She has written a self-serving memoir which blames everyone but herself for that disaster. She has been spending a lot of time giving lucrative speeches overseas, not least to gatherings of extremely Right-wing Americans.

She has founded a movement, Popular Conservatism, in a tacit challenge to Rishi Sunak’s relative centrism. She is backing Donald Trump in November’s US presidential election and has grown increasingly close to Nigel Farage (though his Reform Party is also running a candidate against her).

But Bagge is not from the lunatic fringe, no Screaming Lord Sutch. As a Conservative himself, albeit a deeply disgruntled one, he potentially poses a far more serious challenge to Truss in this true blue constituency than the official opposition parties. He might be described as an ‘establishment insurgent’. He is an old-school, one-nation Tory who feels the party has ‘lost its way’, and he is a figure of some stature in a distinctly feudal part of the country.

Bagge’s aristocratic forebears have lived here since the 1400s. His great-great-grandfather was a local Tory MP. He was born and raised at Stradsett Hall, a splendid Elizabethan manor near Downham Market, and still lives on that estate.

He was educated at Eton, served as an Army officer in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, and worked as a criminal barrister in London. He helped prosecute the Guinness share-trading fraud for the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). He conducted official investigations into the collapse of Barings Bank and the Equitable Life scandal while working with the international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.

He served as Norfolk’s high sheriff in 2017, and as its deputy lieutenant for three years until he resigned to launch his campaign. ‘I felt it inappropriate to be His Majesty’s representative while trying to oust His Majesty’s former prime minister,’ he chuckles.

For good measure he raised more than £70,000 for Norfolk’s unpaid carers by walking 1,500 miles from King’s Lynn to Santiago de Compostela in Spain in 2018, spent three years as a frontline adviser for the Norfolk Citizens Advice Bureau, and helps run two local youth charities. ‘I have a hugely privileged background and I’m very aware of that, but somewhere in me is this desire to serve,’ he says. ‘I do feel genuinely that I want to give something back.’

Bagge has one other claim to fame. He and his older brother, Sir Jeremy Bagge, the seventh baronet and present occupant of Stradsett Hall, were prominent members of the so-called ‘Turnip Taliban’ who opposed Truss’s selection as the constituency’s parliamentary candidate back in 2009.

They and other members of the local Conservative Association complained that the young, state-educated woman from Leeds was a complete outsider being imposed on them as part of David Cameron’s project to modernise the party, and that South West Norfolk needed a home-grown candidate who understood its distinct rural nature.

The day after Truss’s selection, the Mail on Sunday dredged up details of her affair with Mark Field, a married Tory MP 10 years her senior who had been her mentor. Turmoil ensued. Members were furious that Truss, herself married, had not told them. A second meeting was called.

The tabloids had a field day. They dubbed Truss’s opponents the ‘Turnip Taliban’ after the locally grown root vegetable, and the ‘Norfolk Neanderthals’. Sir Jeremy, the archetypal red-faced country squire, unwittingly fed that caricature by insisting: ‘I’ve got absolutely nothing against women. Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner? How did my wonderful children appear?’

Cameron and his aides in London demanded that the local association back down and accept Truss. Most did. The Bagge brothers did not. At the acrimonious second meeting, James Bagge moved the motion that Truss’s selection be rescinded, but it was defeated by 132 votes to 37. Truss had prevailed with the help of the liberal metropolitan establishment that she now disdains. Bagge, a lifelong Tory, resigned from the party.

He smiles ruefully when I recall that saga. ‘I have broad shoulders,’ he says. ‘And turnips have proved to have deeper roots than lettuces,’ he jokes in reference to the lettuce that famously outlasted Truss’s premiership.

Bagge refutes my suggestion that this is the ‘Revenge of the Turnip Taliban’. He denies that he is challenging Truss in order to settle old scores. ‘It’s not sour grapes,’ he insists. ‘I still feel every bit as strongly, even stronger now than I felt then, that she’s not the right person for this constituency.’

He opposed her selection in 2009 not because of her affair, he insists, but because she had no connection to Norfolk and ‘after two or three years we wouldn’t see sight or sound of her’. He feels amply vindicated. He says that although she has reappeared in the constituency in recent weeks, she has for most of the past 14 years been an absentee MP who came up from London only for occasional photo ops.

‘She gets out of the car and the first thing she says is, “Where’s the photographer?”’ he claims. He is unaware of her holding surgeries. Certainly none are advertised on her website. ‘She’s failed as a representative of the constituents of South West Norfolk.’

As for her 49 days as prime minister, he adds, they were a disaster. ‘She’s an embarrassment to South West Norfolk and the butt of jokes on every comedy show… After she was defenestrated, that was the point where I thought, we don’t want her continuing as our MP.’

Bagge formally announced his candidacy on the same day that Truss published her memoir, Ten Years To Save the West, in April. ‘We now have six weeks to save South West Norfolk,’ he quips.

The former prime minister's book, in which she writes that 'the Conservative moment across the West has been faltering for almost a generation' CREDIT: Getty

Bagge’s candidacy has triggered a contest that mirrors the tensions tearing the Conservative Party apart at national level. It pits a traditional, centrist, mildly patrician Tory who feels his party has been hijacked by strident Right-wing ideologues, against a standard bearer for the party’s populist wing – a woman who scorns the establishment, boasts of being a ‘disrupter-in-chief’ and embraces the ‘raucous and rowdy’.

Seeking to test the public mood in South West Norfolk, I join Bagge on one of the two dozen walks he has been conducting this summer to introduce himself to the electorate. Had Sunak not called an early general election, he says, those walks would have taken him to every village in the constituency in contrast with Truss’s occasional flying visits.

I meet him in Hilgay, just off the A10. He arrives in an old Volvo, and proves to be a genial, softly spoken man with a hearing aid and a stick, having injured his knee playing a charity golf match the previous day. At 71, he believes he would be the oldest first-time MP ever if elected.

He is joined by an old friend from the SFO who has come from Devon to support his campaign, and another from his Norton Rose days who has arrived from London. Both detest Truss, as does the third member of Bagge’s entourage, Elizabeth Bryson, a retired teacher from nearby Downham Market, who says she can no longer vote Conservative because ‘I don’t want to vote for Liz Truss’.

I can’t help suspecting that the day has been somewhat stage-managed. A woman named Jean Rockford turns up to see us off, and tells me that Truss has done little to help her local group of sexual abuse survivors. So does Jenny Groom, a former independent mayor of Downham Market, who says Truss has done nothing to help her town. Bagge then introduces me to Ali Dent, the village butcher whose shop also sells used books and garden gnomes for charity. ‘You should have an MP who’s local rather than someone bussed in from somewhere else,’ he says.

Our walk to Southery, a village four flat fenland miles away, takes us along country lanes flanked with sweet-smelling cow parsley, past ditches and dykes and fields of sheep, and through the Wood Hall estate. There the keeper, Jim Holman, emerges in timely fashion from his cottage to greet us. He, too, is a Bagge supporter. ‘We need someone who cares about the constituency and like a lot of others I’m a bit fed up with Liz,’ he says as an F-35 fighter jet from the nearby RAF Marham air base roars overhead.

But for the bewildered postman we encounter nobody else until we reach Southery. Bagge fills the time by describing his ‘word-of-mouth’ campaign. He says he has signed up 130 volunteers, raised more than £20,000 and delivered 10,000 leaflets. He has employed a social media expert. He persuaded Martin Bell, the former BBC war reporter and independent MP for Tatton, and Andy Preston, the former independent mayor of Middlesbrough, to address a recent rally in Thetford. He has consulted Rory Stewart and David Gauke, two centrist former Tory ministers purged from the party for opposing a ‘no-deal’ Brexit.

Bagge claims that at least a dozen local Tory councillors quietly encouraged him to run, and that several Labour supporters have promised to vote for him in order to defeat Truss. ‘I’m tapping into genuine and widely held discontent,’ he says. On cue, we meet a dog walker. A former police employee, she says she has voted for Truss before but ‘I don’t think I can vote for her again. I don’t think she’s done anything of any good.’

Bagge says he is 'tapping into genuine and widely held discontent' with his campaign against the former prime minister CREDIT: Getty

The walk ends at The Old White Bell in Southery where precisely nine villagers have gathered to meet Bagge. He promises, if elected, to be a ‘local champion’ who would improve collaboration between the constituency’s councils, health trusts, educational authorities and charitable organisations.

After questions about immigrant labour and a proposed new chicken farm, the discussion turns to Truss. The villagers complain about her frequent trips abroad. Some are traditional Conservative voters who say they will not vote for her again. A couple are Labour voters who intend to vote for Bagge to keep her out.

Bagge’s audience is small and self-selecting, of course, but Truss’s perceived neglect of her constituency does appear to be an issue. Norfolk’s Eastern Daily Press recently reported that she had spent ‘more than 70 days in the last year jetting around the world to engagements’.

The Register of MPs’ Interests shows that she has visited the States half-a-dozen times in that period, plus Switzerland twice, Taiwan, Denmark, Poland and Ireland. Those expenses-paid trips were mostly to deliver speeches and earned her around £250,000. More recently she has been assiduously promoting her book.

I called Terry Jermy, the Labour parliamentary candidate and a local councillor. He, too, told me she had been visiting the constituency more in recent weeks because she’s ‘nervous’ about the election, but ‘in the last few years she’s been completely absent. She doesn’t work with local councillors. She doesn’t hold surgeries where people can meet her. I’m not aware of any that have taken place for years.’

Josie Ratcliffe, the Lib Dems’ parliamentary candidate and another local councillor, said: ‘We rarely see her. She has a reputation for only coming to the constituency for prearranged photo ops and will disappear back to London before the press release is put out.’

With some difficulty I found a member of the constituency’s Conservative Association who agreed to talk to me on a strictly unattributable basis. ‘She’s a joke, isn’t she,’ this person said. ‘I don’t support her. I don’t think she’s a good MP. I think she’s all about herself… I would love James to beat her.’ Other members of the association would vote for Truss out of party loyalty, this source conceded, but ‘my friends say they’ll vote for James’.

In fairness to Truss, she was a minister for 10 years before her brief stint as prime minister, leaving her little time to visit Norfolk. She has a house in Downham Market, and in a post on X she declares: ‘I will be running on my record of standing up for local residents over the past 14 years. From securing a new Queen Elizabeth Hospital for King’s Lynn to achieving a new banking hub in Downham Market and winning £20 million funding for a new town deal for Thetford, I have a record of delivery across South West Norfolk.’

That makes it all the more surprising that neither she nor her aides were willing to defend that record for this article. Indeed I met a proverbial wall of silence when I approached them, presumably because they are afraid of giving Bagge the oxygen of publicity, afraid that his improbable candidacy might gain traction.

I telephoned and texted Jonathan Isaby, her spokesman, but received no reply. I called Ian Sherwood, who was described to me as her ‘director of operations’ in Norfolk. ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ he said, then cut me off.

I emailed David Hills, who until recently chaired the South West Norfolk Conservative Association and was awarded an MBE in Truss’s controversial resignation honours list. He replied to say he was ‘not available’. I left messages asking for someone to call me on the association’s answerphone. Nobody did.

Finally, the day after my walk with Bagge, I turned up at the association’s offices in an imposing neoclassical building in central Swaffham. As luck would have it, the new chairman, Matthew Sawyer, an architect, was due to give a talk on planning to the association’s Swaffham branch. ‘Our darling Liz Truss!’ a well-spoken woman exclaimed when I explained what I was doing. It was unclear whether she was being sincere or facetious.

I chatted to an elderly member, Colin Dickerson, while waiting for Sawyer. He agreed that Truss faced a stiff challenge, but still thought she would win. He recalled how her predecessor, Gillian Shephard, had survived when the Conservatives were deeply unpopular in 1997 – albeit with a majority slashed from 17,000 to just 2,500.

Sawyer then swept in, looking distinctly flustered. He whisked me away to his office. Yes he had received my messages, but no he could not speak to me. ‘We’re focused on Liz’s campaign and championing the things Liz is doing locally,’ he said.

That was exactly what I wanted to talk about, I told him.

‘I have no further comment,’ he replied. ‘The person for you to contact is Jonathan Isaby.’

But he won’t talk to me, I protested. Sawyer left the room to call Isaby. He returned to say neither he nor Isaby would talk to me. ‘Why not?’ No answer. ‘How often does Liz Truss hold surgeries?’ I persisted. No answer.

Outside, I sent a final text to Isaby, asking what Truss had achieved for her constituency, how many days she had spent there in the last year, how many surgeries she had held, whether he wanted to comment on Bagge’s challenge and why he would not speak to me. No answer.

I conducted one more exercise before returning to London. In the absence of any polls, I stood in Swaffham’s picturesque old marketplace and conducted my own small survey of 20 randomly selected passersby, men and women, young and old. It was deeply unscientific, of course, but the results were striking.

Of the first 19 people I accosted, not one had a good word to say about their MP. Truss was a ‘waste of space’, said a retired school worker. ‘Absolute bloody rubbish,’ said a retired publican. ‘She’s a bloody liability,’ said a self-employed man. A roofer told me: ‘She nearly brought the country to a standstill. She crashed the economy. I was hoping we’d never hear from her again.’ A former retail manager added: ‘I used to like her, but when she got the prime minister’s job she seemed to lose the plot big time.’

Few had seen her about the constituency. Several had voted for her in the past, but none were inclined to do so this time. I finally found a Truss supporter at the 20th attempt. ‘Her intentions [as prime minister] were good,’ said a retired lecturer named Bill. ‘I think her ideas were reasonable, but she was probably learning to run before she could walk. I think she did her best in very difficult circumstances.’

I learnt one other thing from my survey: for all his dogged efforts, for all his walks through Norfolk’s byways, not many had heard of Bagge. Yet.