Ex-Dragon's Den star joins election race as Derbyshire police investigate previous campaign

Rachel Elnaugh, who encountered fame, fortune then failure as the boss of experiential gift company Red Letter Days, has put herself in the running to become the first ever mayor of the new East Midlands combined authority at the election in May 2024.

While running as an independent, Rachel sees herself representing a populist ‘freedom movement’ which is seeking to shift the political establishment or overturn it altogether.

She said: “Politics needs to return to its roots: representatives speaking on behalf of the people and not a party agenda. I don’t have a big budget behind me so I’m going to have to do this the old-fashioned way: speaking the truth and inspiring people. Let’s see what happens.

“There is a huge movement of people standing up and speaking out. We’re the seed of an idea that I believe is capturing the zeitgeist of the times. There is a whole forest inside an acorn. Maybe it will take a few more years to gather the momentum it needs but it could sweep away the whole system.”

Her campaign may be starting from a low ebb, given Rachel secured just 36 votes in a by-election for the Bakewell ward on Derbyshire Dales District Council on February 22 – down from 175 in the same contest last year.

That prompted a moment of reflection when Rachel reconsidered her mayoral ambitions, but spurred on by her social media followers she is pressing ahead.

Her campaigns this year will be set against a backdrop of legal issues – the much-publicised 18-month dispute with the Peak District National Park Authority (PDNPA) over an ancient woodland she co-owns in Cressbrook, but also an ongoing police investigation into her 2023 council candidacy.

In a video she shared online in late December, Rachel recorded officers’ visit to her home to discuss two alleged election offences – one related to her use of the name ‘Elnaugh-Love’ on official documents, and the other related to wording on her campaign materials. Rachel declined to be interviewed by officers and was not arrested.

A spokesperson for Derbyshire Police told the Derbyshire Times: “Officers attended an address in Bakewell on 28 December to speak to a woman in connection with electoral malpractice offences. The investigation is ongoing.”

Asked for her response to the investigation, Rachel suggested it was “vexatious and either politically motivated”.

She added: “I have provided evidence to the police to demonstrate that there was no wilful intent to mislead the public in any of my election materials.“Clearly if they had reason to believe that I had indeed committed an offence they would have arrested me by now.”

Her encounters with the authorities are key to understanding Rachel’s political direction but also raise questions over how she would lead or work with such institutions if elected.

She said: “I’m not doing this because I’ve got political ambitions, but because I’m a concerned mother. I want to be a voice within the system questioning things and to ensure any authority I’m part of is at all times acting lawfully.”

Though PDNPA consists of local councillors and Government appointees, Rachel does not recognise the organisation’s rights of planning enforcement and continues to insist that her ‘common law’ rights, and those of her fellow landowners, should take precedence.

The authority has refuted her arguments and maintains its enforcement actions have been carried out in complete accordance with its legal powers.

Courted as a potential Conservative candidate in the early Cameron years, Rachel says she wound up voting for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour by 2019, via a spell as a Lib Dem member.

Rachel said: “I think the people of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire could take great comfort in electing a mayor 100 per cent devoted to their prosperity and wellbeing. I think I’d be a breath of fresh air compared to the red-blue Punch and Judy show.

“There’s an unacceptable concentration of power between Labour and the Conservatives. The government believes it has a right to command and control people but it has been acting unlawfully. When people wake up to the deception and harms caused by those servants of the people there will be a lot of anger.”

A world away from her own time in high-flying business circles, Rachel still describes herself as an entrepreneur but she has added the labels of campaigner, public speaker, author and mentor focused on building support for a radical brand of politics on the fringes of mainstream discourse.

The spark for that change was opposition to mass Covid vaccination programmes, which has been a rallying point for campaign groups around the world who share similar ‘freedom’ ideologies.

So perhaps Rachel might find a more receptive audience among a wider electorate than Bakewell at a time when the Ipsos Veracity Index has reported trust in politicians is at its lowest level in 40 years.

Throughout history, biological pandemics have always been accompanied by secondary contagions of fear and explanation, and in the 21st century, with its rapid spread and distortion of information, voices like Rachel’s profess to shine a light on ulterior motives behind certain public policy choices and the influence of corporate lobbying.

That attitude has been applied to challenging localised issues elsewhere, which Rachel is quick to mention in her pitch for office, like London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), and the notion of 15-minute cities.

In the latter case, Rachel and her fellow travellers argue the 15-minute city would amount to permanent neighbourhood lockdown, rather than convenient thriving high streets and readily accessible public services with a lower carbon footprint – as if a 24-hour Tesco was a plot to trap people in supermarkets around the clock.

Rachel said: “There’s a lot piggy-backing in on all this talk about ‘get the jab to save granny’ or ‘do this to save the planet.”

Such views brought Rachel notoriety during the pandemic when she claimed England’s Chief Medical Officer Christ Whitty would be hanged for recommending Covid vaccines.

That threat of violence, which echoed sentiments common in far-right circles, got her suspended from some social media platforms.

She said: “The powers that be have attempted to smear and destroy me, especially since I announced I was going into politics. There’s been a sustained attempt to pigeon-hole me because I’m threat to the system.

“Ultimately I’m not driven by money but I have lost a huge amount of revenue because of the stances I’ve taken. Most of my previous corporate clients won’t book me any more because I’ve spoken out against their bosses.”

She added: “This is how the smear campaign works. They say she’s a zealot, that she’s far-right and a fan of Tommy Robinson. I’m incredibly discerning about the content I share but I’m not in a place to blanket judge anyone.

“When you listen to anyone, whether it’s a friend or a stranger online, you may agree with 70 per cent of what they say and disagree with 30 per cent. I’ll judge each case on its merits. If anyone tries to paint me as a militant, violent person, they’ve missed the point.

“I looked at it through my training in trauma therapy. We have a highly traumatised society and a lot of people are going into a fight response, some into flight and others just freeze.

“There’s always an underlying reason, and I would always start from a place of listening and holding space for everyone. Isn’t that what it takes to be a representative of the people?”

Overlaying her politics with the language of ‘wellness,’ Rachel now tries to express a softer, more compassionate angle on the same questions, having broken away from the Freedom Alliance – ‘a UK libertarian party committed to community’ – along with two other candidates running for local office elsewhere in the region.

Rachel said: “It was clear that all was not well in that world. There were a lot of people within it that were quite right-wing, and not a lot of heart-centred conscious politics. The movement is broad and at one end it’s quite militant.

“We felt no option but to create our own movement, the Love movement, encouraging as many people as possible to get involved in politics, speak up and throw a spanner in the works of this bulldozer which is attempting to bring in digital totalitarianism.

“We’re completely peace-loving, concerned mothers who want to co-create a more fair and beautiful world for all people. We want to restore our connection to nature. That’s not me being a marshmallow, I’m more of lioness fiercely defending the rights of our children.”

Rachel’s manifesto seems light on fleshed-out policy ideas at this stage – it is more opposition that proposition – but she is emphatic about instigating a more direct form of democracy and an interpretation of the law which prioritises individual freedoms.Rachel said: “We need to break party politics. Voting for an independent is the very best way people can ensure that every penny of public money is funnelled into supporting their community, and not schemes that violate people’s rights.

“The devolution deal means the region will receive £38million per year over a 30-year period. It’s a huge amount of money, but where is that going to be spent?

“For me, it’s about affordable housing, upskilling and helping people to thrive. As mayor I will make a point that every single pound goes to local businesses and community projects and doesn’t disappear in the coffers of corporates interested in digital surveillance and a net zero agenda which is highly questionable.

She added: “My policy will always be to ask the people, to represent them, and for everything I do to be about bringing them more joy and prosperity, and speaking out against anything which serves to bring more pain and suffering.”

To learn more about Rachel’s campaign, go to rachelelnaugh.com/love-east-midlands.

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