A Labour voter most of his life, Mike Hookem joined Ukip in 2008 and recently became its defence spokesman.
His father worked filleting fish on the Humberside docks and Hookem left school at 15, working in low-paid jobs before joining the Royal Air Force at 17. He left after four years but later rejoined the armed forces as commando engineer in the Royal Engineers. He has also worked as a bus and lorry driver, a carpenter and a joiner.
“At the time I joined Ukip in 2008 I had no political experience,” he has said. “Not unless you count shouting at TV’s Question Time every Thursday night. But it had become clear to me that if I didn’t do something, no one would. We now live in a political society where those in power ignore your voice as an individual.”
Hookem became an MEP in July 2014 – at the same time as Steven Woolfe – having chaired Ukip’s Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire regional committee. The two men represent different ends of Ukip’s political spectrum. Woolf has admitted he recently considered joining the Conservatives, while Hookem voted Labour until he became disillusioned with what he considered “a criminal Labour government”.
“I will not be changing my accent or the way I speak, as I am still a working-class lad from the west end of Hull who calls a spade a spade,” he promised supporters when he entered the European parliament in 2014.
Before he took his seat he was also a researcher for Godfrey Bloom, the Ukip MEP who caused controversy when he spoke about sending British aid budgets to “bongo bongo land”.
Hookem ran for the UK parliament in Hull East in the 2010 general election, but lost heavily to Labour and trailed in fourth.
In last month’s Ukip leadership contest, Hookem ran for deputy on a joint ticket with Bill Etheridge, who lost out to Diane James for the top job.
Hookem says his favourite book is The Longest Day, a history of the D-Day landings written in 1959. In August, on a trip to a refugee camp in Dunkirk, he claimed he had been threatened at gunpoint by a migrant.
