Catherine Blaiklock (born April 1963) is an English nationalist politician, financial trader and hotelier who was the founder and first leader of the Brexit Party, a political party established in January 2019 to support a no-deal Brexit. She was forced to resign as leader in March 2019 when it was disclosed she had made anti-Islamic and racist statements online.^[9] Blaiklock had been the Economics Spokesperson for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which she left in late 2018.^[7] Before entering politics in 2016, she worked as a financial currency and derivatives trader.^[10] She also founded a Nepali healthcare charity with her ex-husband, an Everest Sherpa.^[6] Her father was polar explorer Ken Blaiklock.

Blaiklock is the daughter of explorer Ken Blaiklock,^[11] who moved his family to Norfolk when she was three months old, from where Blaiklock was raised until college.^[12] Blaiklock says she detested growing up in Norfolk, describing it as "intellectually devoid".^[13] As a teenager she spent four years in care homes because she had bulimia and her parents found her "wayward and difficult".^[13][6] Blaiklock entered Christ Church, Oxford on a scholarship in 1981,^[12] the second year the College admitted women.^[14] She studied geography and climatology.^[6] She then went to India on a Commonwealth Scholarship.^[12][10]

Blaiklock worked as a financial currency and derivatives trader with Merrill Lynch and other investment banks, and was located in New York, Tokyo and Singapore.^[12][10][6] She returned to Asia and founded a health care charity in Nepal, called Nepal in Need, with her then-husband Gyaljen Sherpa,^[14][15] with which she is still involved, and for which she continues to raise funds.^[6][16] Since returning to Norfolk in 1999, she has run a guest-house and other small businesses in the local hospitality sector.^[12]

Blaiklock has been criticised^{[by whom?]} for articles she posted on The Conservative Woman where she discussed introducing hanging for drug dealers and argued that food banks are contributing to obesity in low-income families, who should be eating potatoes, being cheaper and healthier.^[31][17][32] She has also been noted for her anti-Islam statements written on a range of conservative websites.^[33][32]

In January 2019, The Guardian reported that, in blogs and tweets since deleted, she had "argued crime and fatherlessness among black men are due to high testosterone levels, and suggested their lower academic achievement could have a biological basis".^[34]

Blaiklock’s first husband was a Nepali called Gyaljen Sherpa whom she met in 1997 at Everest base camp,^{[lower-alpha 1][3][14]} and with whom she has two children.^[4] Her second husband is a British Jamaican, Christopher Kirkpatrick.^[18][4]

As of February 2019^[update], Blaiklock continues to run a guest house from her home in Lingwood in Norfolk called The Annapurna Guest House.^[5] Her husband manages the guest house on a day-to-day basis, and the BBC reported that its Tripadvisor page has been the subject of politically motivated attacks and "malicious trolling", requiring intervention by Tripadvisor.^[35]

• 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom
• Leader of the Brexit Party