ONE of Britain’s richest men is about to do something he considers disgusting — but he feels he must for the good of his country.

Paul Sykes, the diminutive Yorkshireman whose financial support is largely responsible for the phenomenal success of the UK Independence Party, has just become one of their most senior strategists. Although this sounds like a key political role, he balks at being described as a politician.

“Ew, don’t call me that, lass,” Mr Sykes said, giving a rare interview to The Times while sitting drinking tea in Parliament buildings. “If there was a lie detector test to get in here, the place would be empty. Call me a campaigner.”

The son of a miner who left school without qualifications, Mr Sykes, 61, began his business empire in Barnsley by dismantling buses for scrap, later becoming a property and internet tycoon. Now he is promising to blow his £500 million fortune on dismantling Britain’s relationship with the European Union.

Mr Sykes, taking an official political role for the first time, has been charged with leading a massive expansion and reorganisation of the UKIP, and leading its next campaigns.

“I’ll spend every last penny I have,” he said, preferring the anti-EU cause to bequeathing the money to his four children. He lives in a far from palatial townhouse in Harrogate, distinguished by its 30ft flagpole flying the Union Flag. Rumours that he was so patriotic he sat down to eat with the British flag draped around his shoulders are untrue, he said, but the patriotic spirit behind it is about right.

“To me, it’s no good creating wealth to leave to your child if you’re not going to leave them with a self-governing democracy. That to me is the most important thing a nation owns.”

Much has been made of the UKIP’s celebrity endorsements, but where Robert Kilroy-Silk, one of the party’s 12 new MEPs, is suave, Mr Sykes is blunt.

His cheerful disregard for politicians — whose view on life he dismissed as “not real” and totally out of step with the grass roots of Britain on the issue of Europe — is demonstrated when he caught sight of Robin Cook.

“Robin!” he shouted across a crowded room, and Mr Cook turned in alarm.

“Paul! Er, I have a plane to catch,” a terrified-looking Mr Cook said.

“All right, lad, off you go,” Mr Sykes said, releasing him.

Mr Sykes will be spending more time in Westminster over the next six months, finding the party London offices, setting up regional offices and a professional party structure, recruiting for the new post of the UKIP chief executive, and orchestrating the first of the party’s campaigns.

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