Veritas
On 30 January 2005 Kilroy-Silk launched a new political party Veritas, promising to take the fight to the "supercilious metropolitan elite". Damian Hockney, UKIP's leader in the London Assembly, had defected to Veritas, becoming its first Deputy Leader.
UKIP members and some journalists dubbed Kilroy-Silk's new party "Vanitas", meaning a party acting as a vehicle for its founder's vanity.
On 31 January 2005, a television programme, Kilroy: Behind the Tan, was broadcast on the BBC. Created in documentary style, it followed the politician from his election as an MEP for UKIP to his leaving the party.
The party was formally launched on 2 February 2005 at Hinckley Golf Club in Hinckley, Leicestershire.
In early February 2005, Kilroy-Silk worked on a Channel 4 television programme called Kilroy and the Gypsies. He spent a week living with a family of Romany Gypsies at a campsite in Bedfordshire to explore their lives. He also interviewed residents of surrounding villages.
In the 2005 general election, Kilroy-Silk contested the seat of Erewash, but came in fourth with 5.8%, just above the 5% level needed to save his deposit. He tried to press charges against a man who, he said, "smashed a bottle of water against the side of his head" while the politician was being interviewed by a European television crew outside a supermarket. The alleged assailant said he had squirted Kilroy-Silk with water from a plastic bottle before running away; this account was confirmed by the TV crew, which also filmed the incident. The police decided not to prosecute.
On 12 July 2005, party member Ken Wharton announced his intention to challenge Kilroy-Silk for the leadership, claiming party members were "not being looked after". Discontented party members set up the Veritas Members' Association to "put the truth back into Veritas".
On 29 July 2005, Veritas announced the resignation of Kilroy-Silk as party leader. In his resignation statement, he said:
"It was clear from the general election result – and more recently that of the Cheadle by-election – that the electors are content with the old parties and that it would be virtually impossible for a new party to make a significant impact given the nature of our electoral system. We tried and failed."
In August 2005, four of the MEPs for the East Midlands region (Clark, Heaton-Harris, Helmer and Whitehead) sent a joint letter to President of the European Parliament Josep Borrell complaining about Kilroy-Silk:
"He seems to have done little or no work as a constituency MEP for the East Midlands. This leaves five MEPs to do the work of six and the electorate have been short-changed". They went on to complain that Kilroy-Silk was not "fulfilling the pledge he made on becoming an MEP, to serve the electorate of his region" and to call for him to "either do the job for which he is paid, or get out and leave it to those who can."The European Parliament does not have any power to expel a member, and Borrell took no action.
Kilroy-Silk, who was elected to the European Parliament on the UKIP list, remained a member of the Veritas Party, but sat as an independent MEP. Some Veritas members were reported to have questioned why he was allowed to continue as a party member.
In November 2008 Derek Clark MEP complained that Kilroy-Silk was taking his parliamentary wage while being paid to appear in the 2008 edition of the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!. In his opinion the TV show represented a conflict of interest. Kilroy-Silk was the first contestant to be voted out.
Kilroy-Silk's name was absent from the list of candidates published on 7 May 2009 for the 2009 European Parliament election. His membership was terminated when the European Parliament reconvened on 17 July 2009.
On 7 November 2009, he appeared as a panellist on the BBC's Question Time programme.
