The former businessman, BBC journalist and European Commission spokesman has just been selected as the Conservative Party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the new constituency of Harpenden and Berkhamsted. In an exclusive first interview, we find out more about the man who could become Harpenden’s next MP…
Sitting in the shadow of the Abbey Gateway, sipping on a cup of Earl Grey from George Street Canteen, Nigel Gardner points in the direction of the top floor of the imposing 14th century edifice.
“I did the Oxford entrance exam on the top floor of that building, I was the only one in there. After I got in my mother drove me from Flamstead up to Luton to catch the National Express coach to Oxford.
“When I arrived I sat next to this young chap with bushy hair and said to him, ‘Where are you from?’ He said ‘Luton’, I heard Luton. I said I had just come on the National Express and I didn’t see him on the coach. ‘Did your parents bring you?’ He looked at me, and this time he said it very clearly, ‘Not Luton, Eton’. And that was David Cameron.”
Nigel is obviously jubilant following his recent selection as Conservative candidate for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, which involved a gruelling 10-hour process between six highly eligible contestants.
Not only was he the only local candidate, but this was the only seat he was fighting for, something which observers say gave him an obvious edge, and it is clear his connections to the area run deep.
“The other candidates were outstanding. I was amazed. I was completely shocked to win actually. I think what worked for me was I think the legitimacy of really coming from here and the fact I wasn’t applying for anywhere else. I think that really, really helped. It’s so unusual, isn’t it? I don’t want to do it for anywhere else. I just don’t want to do it for anywhere else.”
Nigel’s grandfather grew up on the Childwickbury Estate, and his grandmother was one of six sisters living upstairs at The Oddfellows Arms in Harpenden. When they married they bought a house in Waverley Road, St Albans, where his father subsequently grew up.
The other side of his family were evacuated to the district during the war to avoid the Blitz, and took a room in Beech Road near the King William IV pub.
But although his parents met here, they moved away after getting married because of that perennial reason affecting many local first-time buyers – it was just too expensive.
This meant Nigel was born in Slough, but the family eventually returned to St Albans and he grew up in Midway, Chiswell Green, initially attending Killigrew Primary School, before moving to Flamstead when he was about six.
“Flamstead is very important,” he insists. “This new constituency stretches from Jersey Farm, Sandridge, Wheathamstead, through Harpenden, Redbourn, Markgate and Flamstead, right the way to Berkhamstead and Tring – and I grew up in Flamstead, which is basically its geographical heart.
“I went to school in Harpenden, I went to Aldwickbury, but I used to hang out in Berkhamstead, and I had my first kiss with a girl from there. So, you know, I went in both directions. And after Aldwickbury, I came here [St Albans School] under a fantastic headmaster called Frank Kilvington, who many of your readers will remember, this fantastic guy.
“Every Monday and Friday we had to go to the Cathedral and have a religious service for 15 minutes. But he was so radical that occasionally we’d have a rock band, there’d be a punk band. He was a great, great headmaster.”
Which brings us full circle to his time at Oxford, with future Prime Minister Cameron as his tutorial partner in economics for a term.
“Yeah, we were in the same year. He was very bright, very motivated and I would say a very emotionally intelligent man. He’s much more complex and interesting than you expect.”
After Oxford, Nigel went to the College of Europe in Bruges in Belgium to study European politics, where he encountered the other side of the 2010-2015 coalition.
“One of the first people I met there was a guy called Nick Clegg. I looked at him and thought ‘God, you really remind me of somebody, you speak like that person, you move like that person’, and I couldn’t work out who it was for about three or four days, and then it clicked, it was David Cameron!”
Perhaps surprisingly, Nigel’s political journey actually started out in the Labour Party, and he stood three times as a Labour candidate in Westminster and the European Parliament elections, before enjoying a brief flirtation with the Liberal Democrats: “It was entirely unsatisfactory,” he reveals.
He eventually made the decision to join the Conservative Party in 2018, the result of several changing factors in his life.
“Two things had happened. One, I’d grown up. My life had changed. I’d set up various businesses. I became very aware of the economy and economic policy and I don’t think the Lib Dems or Labour invest enough in business and wealth creation. Without wealth creation you can’t do any of the things you want to do with public services.
“The other thing that happened was that politics had changed. Tony Blair was no longer there in the Labour Party, the Lib Dems had broken a lot of promises and they didn’t really offer any stability.
“For me it is also about the place. You know, I think the Conservative Party has the best policies for this constituency and the country, but I also only want to do this here. I didn’t apply for any other seats at all, only here.”
His passion for this part of the world is evident: “I just feel so at home here, you know? I love being here. I really love it. It’s like coming home. I mean, I’m very lucky. I made some money, I’m solvent, I’m ready for a new challenge. And I just like the idea of giving something back to where I grew up. I like being here.
“You get entrenched in a place. The funny thing is, I went away. I left here. I went to Oxford, then I went to work for Sir Leon Brittan in Brussels [as a European Commission spokesperson] and I set up these businesses and I worked for the BBC.”
His companies included investment company Flint, international factual TV production house Sandstone Global, and leading European public affairs and media relations company GPlus.
“I went away, and now it’s great being back. The funny thing is that a lot of my very close friends who went to school here are all coming back. My best friend went to Hong Kong for 30 years, he’s now come back here.
“There’s something really lovely about Wheathampstead, Harpenden and St Albans. There’s something really nice about this place, even though a lot of things have changed here since I grew up. A lot for the worse, but it’s still amazing. I mean, Harpenden’s just been voted the number one town to live in, and Berkhamstead’s only a few places behind.”
He has already put down roots locally, having recently bought a cottage in Redbourn.
“It is a cottage the father of my best friend lent me in the 1980s when my mother died when I was 20. It’s beautiful, I was very lucky to buy it from the family. It’s still exactly the same.
“There are some great tearooms in Redbourn now! The place I really like is called the Queen of Hearts Tea Room. It’s wonderful, they have lovely china cups, great cakes, wonderful ham sandwiches. I went there with my girlfriend to have tea before my selection meeting and it fortified me!”
Nigel firmly believes in the importance of becoming part of the community he wishes to serve: “It’s the same with newspaper journalism and politics. If you’re not present in the place, you can’t do it properly.
“I’m doing this full-time. I’ve had three businesses and I’ve just sold the most recent one. I still have a small equity stake, but I don’t work there, I’m just on the board. So, yeah, I’ve moved on from my business interests and this is what I want to do now.”
Current Harpenden MP Bim Afolami is fleeing to the safe seat of Hitchin after the Conservative group on SADC was wiped out locally during the 2021 election. Does he think maintaining Tory Parliamentary control will prove a challenge?
“I think we have an uphill battle here. It’s a new constituency, and it will be very interesting to see what happens in Mid Beds [where a by-election is taking place next month following the resignation of MP Nadine Dorries], it’s not so far away.
“It’s a new constituency with some very different parts, so you’ve got Harpenden, you’ve got all these villages, and then we have the other side from south west Herts. Harpenden and Berkhamstead are very similar kinds of place but they’re not linked together, so the real challenge will be to bind it into some kind of whole. From Jersey Farm to Tring, it’s an hour’s drive.”
In fighting to win selection, Nigel focused on the key issues of Green Belt development and stopping the expansion of Luton Airport.
“The whole story of building on the Green Belt, it’s not just happening now, this has been going on my entire lifetime from when I was here and going to school. There are huge swathes of the countryside that are just not what they were, you know, even the bits that aren’t built on; there’s so much pressure on the countryside, it’s a shadow of its former self in many places.
“The point of departure for me is that we have to protect the Green Belt. Of course our children have the right to grow up here like we did, but that shouldn’t be at the expense of the Green Belt. I’ve just seen too much of it go in my lifetime.
“I want to see an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty status for the countryside around Redbourn, Wheathampstead and Harpenden. It’s not a panacea, it doesn’t solve all your problems, but it’s a really good start. And there should be cross-party consensus on that.
“On the house building, I read the [draft Local Plan] Section 18 consultation as I was eating a plate of pasta, and I almost choked! They’re just filling in all the countryside around Redbourn to the M1. There’s already been so much building in Redbourn since I grew up.
“So, you know, I feel really, really, really strongly against this. Now, not to play party politics with it, but, you know, there is a party involved. It is a Lib Dem administration.
“You have to take responsibility if you’re in [local] government. These are people’s lives, their gardens, the countryside around their houses. You can’t frighten people with these ideas just because you’re playing politics with it. You’ve got to be responsible about it and you’ve got to be transparent.
“They just need to show a bit of courage and the point of default should be that we need to protect our countryside and then work from there. And there should be cross-party support for that.”
He says the growth of Luton Airport to a proposed 34m passengers per annum fills him with horror.
“I’m against the expansion of Luton Airport – what I don’t want to see are little increments legitimising further expansions. So from 18 to 19 million, it might not seem a lot, but the way these things work…
“We don’t want the equivalent of Gatwick Airport on our doorsteps, thank you very much. I remember when I was growing up in Flamstead there was already a lot of air traffic and my parents used to complain about it. But that was the days before EasyJet and Ryanair and now you just see the planes all the time.”
Although Berkhamsted – as a part of Dacorum – voted narrowly to leave the European Union in 2016, Harpenden most assuredly did not. As an outspoken Leave campaigner, could this prove an issue for Nigel’s campaign?
“My story on Brexit, I think, illustrates how difficult and complex this issue is for the country. I started off as a very strong Remainer. I worked for the European Commission. I went to work for Sir Leon Britton and sitting next to me was Nick Clegg.
“What happened to me – and in some ways I was privileged to see this – was that I didn’t like the way Brussels was run. I just thought we could do it better ourselves. There was a lot of waste and a lack of accountability and transparency, and I just thought we could do better.
“So I became a Leaver. But Brexit was a very difficult issue. It divided not just families and communities, I think a lot of people themselves were personally conflicted on it. I mean, you know, it was very complex.
“The second thing is where do we go from here? We are where we are, and we just have to make it work. I think we have to do better in negotiating a workable post-Brexit solution with the European Union so that everybody can get on with their lives in a way that works.”
