[2] He was previously the research director in the European Parliament for the now-defunct political grouping Europe of Democracies and Diversities, which included the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
[7] In the 2004 European elections, North was UKIP's number one candidate on the party list for the Yorkshire region, until he was supplanted by Godfrey Bloom,[8] who won a seat.
[12] In a post on his eureferendum.com blog, in May 2015, North called on supporters of the UK withdrawing from the EU to contact him with the aim of forming a volunteer unit to "monitor, add, and edit" Wikipedia content to be more favourable to their views.
North is the original author and main proponent of Flexcit (standing for "Flexible Continuous Exit"), a policy suggestion involving gradual British disengagement from the European Union.
[15] Flexcit argues that exit from the EU is "a process rather than an event", so advocating a phased repatriation of powers,[16] which has been described as "Brexit lite".
[19] North was one of seventeen shortlisted entrants invited to submit a full submission to the Institute of Economic Affairs's 2013 Brexit Prize competition.
[22] A European Commission official and academic has argued that North and Booker are best seen as "latter-day pamphleteers", who "exaggerate their case", advancing an "all-embracing, Kafkaesque conspiracy, the "System", consisting of an evil partnership between Brussels and Whitehall".
[25] The reviewer concludes by noting the importance of the book's influence on popular euroscepticsm in the UK, but warns readers to look elsewhere for "an objective information source".
[25] Princeton University's Andrew Moravcsik, whose research is cited in the book, has accused the authors of "misconstruing" his work as supporting their narrative and failing to demonstrate that there were any viable alternatives to European Union membership, with Booker and North's economics being "even dodgier than their history".
[26] He further argues that their "Eurosceptic dogma" of an "undemocratic" scheme of centralised regulation" is undermined by their own examples; that it is largely "British officials exercising their own discretion" and juggling the fate of special interest groups against the wider economy.
"[37] On 21 August 2010, The Daily Telegraph issued an apology,[36] and withdrew the December article from its website,[37] having reportedly paid legal fees running into six figures.