Court of Justice to be repatriated. In June 1994, he wrote an article for the Daily Mail, where he stated that "Britain is waking from the nightmare of being part of the continental bloc, to rediscover that these offshore islands belong to the outside world and lie open to its oceans". Innovations in contemporary society did not worry him: "When exploration has run its course, we shall revert to the normal type of living to which nature and instinct predispose us. The decline will not have been permanent. The deterioration will not have been irreversible". In his book The Evolution of the Gospel, published in August 1994, Powell said he had arrived at the view that Jesus Christ was not crucified but stoned to death by the Jews. Bishop John Austin Baker commented "He is a great classicist, but theology is out of his academic field." Following his death, Powell's friend Richard Ritchie recorded in 1998 that "during one of the habitual coal crises of recent years he told me that he had no objection to supporting the coal industry, either through the restriction of cheap coal imports or subsidy, if it were the country's wish to preserve local coal communities". In the 1990s, Powell endorsed three UKIP candidates in parliamentary elections. He also turned down two invitations to stand for the party in elections, citing retirement. In April 1995, he said in an interview that for the Conservatives "defeat [at the next election] would help. It helps one to change one's tune". The party was just "slithering around". The same month, he took part at a debate on Europe at the Cambridge Union and won. In July 1995, there was a leadership election for the Conservative Party, in which Major resigned as leader of the party and stood in the election. Powell wrote, "He says to the Sovereign: I no longer am leader of the majority party in the House of Commons; but I am carrying on as your Prime Minister. Now I don't think anybody can say that—at least without inflicting damage on the constitution". To seek to offer advice to the Queen while unable to feel they could command a majority in the Commons was "tantamount to treating the monarch herself with disrespect and denying the very principle in which our parliamentary democracy is founded". After Major's challenger, John Redwood, was defeated, Powell wrote to him, "Dear