Is Godfrey game for a gaffe?

AFTER a week of being the politically correct brigade's Public Enemy Number One, Yorkshire's new MEP Godfrey Bloom hopes he has weathered the storm. For the last few days he has been deep in the gumbo (public school speak for s**t) he admits. But he hopes he will soon be allowed out of it.

What he means, presumably, is that soon he might be able to meet a woman somewhere in Yorkshire who doesn't want to give him a clip around the ear and send him off to clean behind the fridge with a feather duster.

The UK Independence Party Euro MP suffers from an affliction that seems to be in short supply in the corridors of Brussels and Strasbourg. He has a sense of humour.

It was this, according to him, that landed him in hot water on virtually his first day as a professional politician.

Quizzed by journalists after being appointed to the European Parliament's Women's Rights Committee, he is reported to have said: "I just don't think they clean behind the fridge enough." He was then 'said to have raised no objections' as journalists further recorded him saying: "I am here to represent Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you get home."

When he later expanded on his views on TV by adding: "No self-respecting small businessman with half a brain would ever employ a lady of childbearing age," the result was predictable. Newspapers dubbed him the sexist Yorkshire MEP who thought women shouldn't go out to work, but stay at home cleaning and making the tea.

Which is utter rubbish, he says. Nothing could be further from his true views. What he was doing was speaking out against European rules and regulations which make it difficult for women to find work.

So why on earth did he say what he is reported as having said? The fridge and tea comments were jokes made before the press conference had properly started, he says.

"My wife and I have a bit of family banter. If I haven't dug the borders or mowed the lawn and I'm getting a bit of grief about it, my response is 'you haven't cleaned behind the fridge!'

"It was before the interviews proper started, there was a lot of jostling around in the press conference, and this voice said 'what do you think you can do for women?' and I said 'get them cleaning behind the fridge!'"

But there is, he sighs, a "certain genre of journalist" that just doesn't have a sense of humour.

What about the tea comment? He was making the point, he says, that as Euro MP it is his job to represent all his constituents - housewives as well as women who go out to work. "And that means I also have to represent the women who have to get the tea on the table for their husbands at 6pm. Aren't they worth representing as well?"

Yes, but why Yorkshire women? "I'm representing Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire," he says. "And I think it women not going out to work does apply more to Yorkshire than anywhere else. I live in the real world and that's how it is. In the south of England both husband and wife have to work to fight the huge mortgage. That's much less so in the north."

What about his own wife, Katie? Does she clean behind the fridge and put the tea on the table? The look of horror on his face at the thought says a lot about Katie, who runs her own physiotherapy practice.

"Nobody has cleaned behind our fridge for 20 years!" he says. "And because I finish work at 6pm and my wife finishes work at 8pm, if I want the dinner on the table, I put it there. I cook it."

It would have been nice to check this with Katie at this point - we're sitting in the study at the MEP's comfortable home in Wressle, near Selby - but she's busy with a client.

Which still doesn't explain that comment about women of child-bearing age. That, he says, is the serious point underlying the banter; and it's one of the reasons he became a member of the European Parliament.

It is a fact of life that the employment regulations "spewing out of Brussels and Strasbourg" designed to protect workers' rights and guarantee maternity leave, paternity leave, sick leave and stress leave are hurting small businesses - and they are also making it more difficult for some people, such as young women, to find a job.

"I did not say 'don't employ women'," he says. "But I have had an overwhelming post bag from people, small businesses, saying 'we employed a girl the other day, she was pregnant during the interview and she didn't tell us'.

"The point is that if you run a little hotel in York with your wife and a chef and you need a receptionist - if that young lady who applies for the job has just got married, nobody is going to employ her. I'm not saying that's right or proper, but it's the reality of regulations in the workplace.

"It's all very well sitting in Brussels feeling warm and making all these regulations about women's rights. What it means is the young lady at the York hotel or wherever doesn't get the job in the first place. They say 'I'm sorry, we're looking for a bit more experience'."

He would like a change in the rules so small businesses employing fewer than 20 people were exempt from workplace regulations on maternity and paternity leave. Then a hotel could offer a young woman a job on the understanding that if she wanted to start a family, they would not have to keep her job open for her and pay her not to work.

Whether you agree with that or not, it is a point worth debating. Not only women are being disadvantaged by 'overprotective' workplace regulations, Mr Bloom insists. More and more private sector jobs in manufacturing and financial services are going overseas. "Here we sit, wonderfully protected, with no jobs," he says. "For me, it is blindingly obvious."

Well, yes, except that unemployment in this country is very low at the moment. That's because of bogus jobs, he sniffs: public sector jobs that don't mean anything. "If you look in The Guardian you see jobs like 'Teenage Pregnancy Adviser,'" he says. "They are not real jobs."

The whole "kerfuffle" about the comments he made blew up for one reason, and one reason alone, Mr Bloom says. "I said 'The Emperor has no clothes'. Somebody has come along and is starting to tell the truth. And it is frightening people."

And wasn't he perhaps a bit nave? Inexperienced? "There's some truth in that," the 54-year-old, who is still chairman of his own investment practice, admits. "However, I'm not going to plead that. I'm a big, strong fellow. I'm a tough guy. My shoulders are broad. I don't care if people hate me. I don't give a s**t!"

Godfrey's Bloomers...

EU Jobsworths.

"The place is full of Mr Jobsworths, whose job is to sit there and shut up and take the party line in exchange for a good, decent salary, decent expenses, decent pension. Most of the MEPs are mediocre, very ordinary people."

His £57,000 MEP's salary.

"I can't live on that." Which is not what he means, he corrects himself hastily. With his City financier's job he comes from a world where he earned far more than that. "The point is, I'm not there in Europe for the money."

MEP's expenses (£100,000-plus to employ staff)

"What they all do is shove their wife on as an assistant for £50,000 a year and she opens the post." He does not employ his wife.

On taking up his seat

As a member of the UK Independ-ence Party, wouldn't the right thing have been to refuse to take up his seat? "We agonised over this for a long time," he says. But in the end decided they could better fight the European beast from within.

On New Labour's attitude to Europe.

Brussels really is all about moving towards a super-state, he says. There is a legitimate argument to be had over whether that is the best thing. "I don't agree with that, but it is not necessarily an ignoble end." What he can't stand, he says, is that New Labour in this country won't admit that that is what Europe is really all about. "This is so intellectually dishonest.

On Peter Mandelson, who will be the UK's next European Commissioner

"He's going to clear up fraud? Who's going to take that seriously?"

Updated: 09:52 Tuesday, July 27, 2004