Patrick O’Flynn, who has shuffled off this mortal coil at an age he’d likely have described as “none of your business,” was a journalist and politician whose pen was mightier than the sword, though he’d have argued the sword was underused in modern politics. A man who wore his nationalism and conservatism like a well-tailored tweed suit—slightly out of fashion but impeccably cut—O’Flynn spent his career skewering the pompous and the progressive with a wit so dry it could desiccate a bog.
Born in 1965, O’Flynn emerged from King’s College, Cambridge, with an economics degree and a suspicion of elites that would define his work. He cut his teeth at the Daily Express, rising to political editor, where his columns thundered with the kind of righteous indignation that made readers nod sagely over their morning tea or choke on their cornflakes. His was a voice that could make a Labour leader sound like a Buddhist monk at a Vegas casino—utterly out of place and faintly ridiculous.
O’Flynn’s flirtation with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) saw him elected as an MEP in 2014, a role he embraced with the zeal of a man who’d just discovered the EU was taxing his pint. His defection to the Social Democratic Party in 2018, citing UKIP’s dalliance with less savoury characters, was less a political pirouette than a stomping exit from a party he felt had lost its way. “I joined the SDP,” he declared, “because it espouses broad and moderate pro-nation state values,” which was his way of saying he preferred his nationalism with a side of civility, not a knuckle sandwich.
At The Spectator, where he scribbled regular columns, O’Flynn’s prose danced a jig between satire and sermon. He took aim at Keir Starmer with the precision of a darts player in an old Camden pub, calling him “vain, out-of-touch, humourless,” and suggesting Nigel Farage could have him “on the ropes” at PMQs. His disdain for multiculturalism’s failings and his warnings of “white identity politics” were less dog-whistle than foghorn, sounding alarms that echoed from Westminster to the West Country.
Like Clive James, whose satirical verse he might have envied, O’Flynn had a knack for exposing the absurdities of the powerful while maintaining a twinkle in his eye. His writing was a protective reef around the Britain he loved—one of sovereignty, scepticism, and the occasional pint. He was no mere hack; he was a craftsman of cantankerous charm, wielding words like a fencer with a foil, sharp and precise, but never cruel.
O’Flynn leaves behind a legacy of columns that read like love letters to a nation he feared was unravelling, and a warning to future scribes: if you must tilt at windmills, do it with style and a smirk. He is survived by his wife, Carole Ann, his son and daughter, as well as his readers, who will miss his mordant wit, and by politicians, who will sleep easier without it.