Davies was a member of the Labour Party until 1973 when he joined the Conservatives. He remained in the Conservative Party until Prime Minister John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1993.
Davies then joined the strongly eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). He contested Yorkshire South at the European Parliament election in 1994, taking 2.6% of the votes cast. Three years later, he contested Doncaster Central at the 1997 general election, getting 462 votes. The following year, in 1998, a by-election arose in the Yorkshire South European constituency and Davies stood again, against the wishes of the then UKIP party leader Michael Holmes but with the support of Nigel Farage and John Whittaker, who put up his deposit. Davies came last in the poll, but saved his deposit, increasing his share of the vote to 11.6%.
Davies' mayoral campaign had called for harsher punishments for "young thugs", withdrawal from the European Union, withdrawal of council translation services, a reduction in the number of Doncaster councillors, and for local schools to opt out of local authority control. Once elected, Davies was interviewed on BBC Radio Sheffield and Look North where the interviewers questioned the legality and achievability of his manifesto promises.
One of Davies' first decisions was to announce a cut in his annual salary from £73,000 to £30,000. He is an opponent of political correctness who pledged to stop funding the town's gay pride event, although organisers maintained that the event brought business to Doncaster.Later, he confirmed the event for 2009 would be funded as arranged before his election. He has also pledged to end and reverse town twinning as a waste of money, joking that he would use his two words of German to tell a visiting delegation Auf Wiedersehen (goodbye).He also insists he is "not conned by global warming" and has described climate change as "a scam".
After an incident in which two young boys living in Council care were given indeterminate sentences for the torture of two other children, an Audit Commission report stated that: “Those leading the council – the mayor and cabinet, some councillors and some officers – do not collectively have the capacity or capability to make the necessary improvements in governance.” Davies responded that he thought it “a very black report without any shade of colour at all and painted the town as a dreadful hole that no one would ever want to come to or live in and that is not Doncaster”, adding, "The town has been languishing in the doldrums under Labour rule and it's time that it made use of its huge advantages."
Davies has been criticised by Doncaster residents after admitting that he had never borrowed a book from a public library and walking out of a public meeting convened to discuss the proposed closure of a local library – a branch that Mr Davies admitted to having never seen.
Born in Woodlands on the outskirts of Doncaster in 1948, Davies went to school in Thorne, then worked at Danum School as a teacher. He is married. He is also the Chairman of Sykehouse Cricket Club and a member of the Campaign for Real Education and the Campaign Against Political Correctness. Davies is the father of Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley.
Doncaster,
Doncaster, is a large market town in South Yorkshire, England. Together with its surrounding suburbs and settlements, the town forms part of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster, which had a mid-2014 est. population of 304,185. The town itself has a population of 109,805. Doncaster is about 20 miles (30 km) from Sheffield, with which it is served jointly by an international airport, Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield in Finningley. The Doncaster Urban Area had a population of 158,141 in 2011 and includes Doncaster and the neighbouring small town of Bentley as well as some other villages.
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