While the ENB has until now taken the view that its dancers’ political views are none of its business, a spokeswoman yesterday admitted that the latest turn may cast the affair in a new light. At lunchtime she told us: “We cannot comment on her personal life. It’s a personal thing for her.” But by the afternoon, learning of the latest development from the Daily Express, she said: “I think as it’s breaking news we can’t comment on that and we are investigating.”
Born in Leeds, Simone Clarke is unusual in being a home-grown principal of the ENB. The daughter of a maths teacher and a secretary, she beat 4,500 competitors to win a place at London’s Royal Ballet School at the age of 11. In 1988 she joined Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet. In 1998 she joined the ENB, rising to become senior soloist in 2000 and a principal dancer in 2004. Her credits include playing Juliet in Romeo And Juliet, Cinderella, as well as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker.

But it was her politics rather than her pas de deux that made the headlines in December 2006. She told an undercover journalist infiltrating the BNP that immigration had “really got out of hand” and in a newspaper interview claimed that “using the word immigration is now a greater crime than cold-blooded murder”.

She explained that she had joined the party in 2005 after a discussion with her immigrant partner of five years. “Yat and I were watching TV. As usual I was moaning abut something that I had seen on the news and he just said, ‘Well stop moaning and do something about it’. I didn’t really know anything about the BNP but they had come up in conversation a few times because they had just won some local council seats. We went to the computer and we looked them up and I read their manifesto.

“A lot of it went over my head but some of the things mentioned were the things I think about all the time – mainly mass immigration, crime and increased taxes. Those three issues were enough to make me join so I paid my £25 there and then. I think the BNP are honest. They’re not trying to dress up what they want, which is change on these issues.”

Honesty is not a quality associated with a party that has regularly been accused of concocting inflammatory stories to whip up anti-immigrant feeling. Activists from Unite Against Fascism called for Clarke to be sacked from ENB and picketed the ballet Giselle but the company insis­ted it could not comment on the political views of its employees.

She was supported as a matter of principle by actors’ union Equity, which said it was illegal to sack someone for their political beliefs. More heartfelt support arrived in the form of BNP councillor Richard Barn­brook, who turned up with a red and white bouquet to offer Clarke his backing. Speaking to journalists, he cited her relationship with Chang in her defence. “She’s not racist – she’s going out with someone who is not of her race,” he said.

But for the past eight months she has been dating Barn­brook himself – who irritably brushes off references to his pre-BNP life, when he produced a homoerotic student film called HMS Discovery: A Love Story. (Until recently the party promised to outlaw homosexuality, describing it as “this perverted practice”.)

He has also distanced himself from an earlier comment in which he said: “I’m not opposed to mixed marriages but their children are washing out the identity of this country’s indigenous people.” That volte-face is necessary since Clarke has a five-year-old daughter from her relationship with Chang. Now Barnbrook, 46, says: “Simone’s daughter Olivia is beautiful.

There are one or two out of thousands of my colleagues who have said, ‘You do realise she has a mixed race child?’ – but I couldn’t give a damn. I love Simone.”

Barnbrook – who could win a seat in the London Assembly at the capital’s election in May – had already hinted at the relationship. This autumn, when his council was discussing a plan for a memorial to those who died because of a notorious local asbestos plant, Barnbrook caused uproar when he said it would be more fitting to have a statue to an English rose like Simone Clarke.

But the ann­ouncement that the pair have been engaged for the past seven weeks has shocked those who were prepared to give Clarke the benefit of the doubt for her naivety.

“We took it that she was a passable ballet dancer and a bit dim,” says anti-fascist campaigner Gerry Gable, publisher of Searchlight magazine. “I just think she’s stupid but the more she puts her head above the parapet the English National Ballet might want to think about how it reflects on them.”

Gable says he was disturbed to learn that Clarke is now an executive member of Solid­arity, which describes itself as “the union for British workers” but which he says is a front organisation for the BNP and will never be recognised as an authentic union. Its general secretary is Patrick Harrington, a former leader of the National Front. “They say they come to the aid of people who have been let down by their own unions but Equity said it would stand by Simone Clarke, so she has no right to have any gripe with her union,” points out Gable.

He says a middle-class dancer from the ENB was a prized recruit for a party which is trying to get away from its tattooed, skinhead image in order to appeal to Middle Britain. “She is window dressing for them,” he adds.

This is confirmed by a glance at the BNP’s website. “All BNP members will be delighted at the news that Simone Clarke, the lead dancer [sic] for the English National Ballet, who is proud to be a member of the British National Party, has announced her engagement to Richard Barnbrook,” it explained beneath a picture of Clarke in full tutu and a shot of her fiancé in an outfit strikingly evocative of Hitler’s brownshirts.

But it is the revelation in the same web-post that Clarke has spoken at “numerous” BNP functions that may now put her artistic future in doubt.

“After the initial brouhaha it all seemed to go away and she seemed to have managed to keep her mouth shut,” says one informed source from the dance world, “but this shows she really does have a serious political agenda and it’s not just a flirtation.

“I hope she is aware of the danger of being exploited to the detriment of her career. There will be a point beyond which the ENB cannot go because she’ll bring them too much trouble. They are protective of her and will continue to be so until things get too difficult to manage.”

Another source was more forthright. “Expose her,” he said, on learning of Clarke’s appearances on BNP platforms. “Until now I’ve given her the benefit of the doubt but not any more. She is a fully fledged BNP activist and she must not be allowed to use her prominence at the ENB to further those hateful ends.”