Pro-Brexit MEP Jonathan Arnott on leaving Brussels after five years - and what he plans to do next; The independent MEP - who was previously a UKIP member - has opened up about his five years working in Brussels.
Byline: Sean Seddon
Five years ago, Jonathan Arnott set off to represent the North East in the European Parliament believing the EU system was broken.
As he prepares to leave the role, he has spoken about hisexperiences of working in Brusselsand if he has changed his mind.
In short, he hasn't.
Mr Arnott said: "I feel like if I had gone into that job as a moderate Eurosceptic who wanted to reform the system, I'd have left a convinced Leaver.
"My time there proved to me there is no mechanism by which to change the system from within.
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"It left me stuck with this feeling of futility. I wish I was wrong and it wasn't like that because I think we should cooperate with our European neighbours but that's just how it is."
The idea of the EUas an overly-bureaucratic behemoth has become a common trope for Eurosceptics - but Mr Arnott says there's a lot of truth in it.
"You can't really appreciate it until you've worked there, it's bizarre", he said.
"It's all to do with making sure every single form is filled out absolutely correctly, and if there's any error the whole thing falls apart.
"The whole thing is very clunky and it works well enough until something goes wrong."
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To illustrate his point, Mr Arnott is fond of telling a story about the time he tried to get a fold-out sofa in his office fixed after someone had screwed it shut.
He said: "I reported the problem and nothing happened so I reported it again and still nothing - frankly, I didn't particularly mind it was broken, it just would have been nice to have somewhere for guests to sit.
"After more than six months and many requests, I got to my office and the sofa, along with the whole shelf unit it was attached to, was in the hallway outside my office.
"Eventually it vanished altogether and then one day I came back and the whole thing had been replaced.
"Who knows how much it cost taxpayers to replace all that and I actually felt terrible about complaining in the first place but the whole episode feels like an analogy for how the system works to me."
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Mr Arnott was elected on theUKIP wave of 2014 but quit the party in early 2018 over its lurch to the right and increasing focus on Islam, a policy shift he publicly criticised.
But he does...
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