Murnaghan 25.11.12 Intervied with NIgel Farage, leader of UKIP, on fostering row in Rotherham

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, a bunch of fruit cakes, loony’s and closet racists, that’s how David Cameron described UKIP six years ago. Yesterday though, after a row over fostering, Labour and the Tories leapt to UKIPs defence. Education Secretary Michael Gove described them as a mainstream party, so are they? Well I’m joined now by the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage. First of all, you must remember that phrase from the Prime Minister, then the leader of the opposition. Would you like Mr Cameron to apologise for that, it was a bit strong wasn’t it?

NIGEL FARAGE: He was asked to apologise yesterday because everybody said, from Gove to Ed Miliband and even Rotherham Council said we don’t believe UKIP are a racist party, so Mr Cameron was asked yesterday by one of your rivals, did he retract the statement? Initially Downing Street did retract his statement that we were closet racists mostly and then in a classic sort of omnishambles, two hours later they retracted the retraction and Cameron later last night said that not everybody in UKIP is racist. So he alone in British politics today continues to throw this slur at us that because we believe in not having our law set in Europe and controlling our borders that somehow that is racist. If he wants an electoral war with my party on his immigration open door policy he can have one.

DM: Okay, let me talk about the case as much as we can, of course there are children involved here but we’re going to hear more from the council tomorrow but they seem to be defending themselves on the basis that we understand these children were East European and your candidate in the Rotherham by-election talks about a problem in terms of unemployment, a problem being made worse by new migrants from Eastern Europe. I mean you do have a problem with migrants from Eastern Europe, your party, it’s on your literature.

NIGEL FARAGE: We have a problem with having a total open door to a relatively poor series of countries, something we’ve never done in the entire history of this country and what we’ve had since 2005 is a massive over supply in the unskilled labour market. Now what that means is that at a time of youth unemployment of 21% in Britain it does not make sense to have an open door. I want people from all over the world to come and work in Britain, good skilled people who come here on work permits, not people who come here, compete for unskilled labour, qualify automatically for Job Seekers Allowance, that doesn’t make sense.

DM: Obviously we don’t know the precise circumstances, could the council have a defence on the basis that then we understand the foster parents would have a position that they didn’t agree that your parents or parent, whoever it was, should have been over in this country in the first place but we’ll bring you up in spite of that?

NIGEL FARAGE: Look, we have always had a balanced policy on migration from the rest of the world. We allow certain numbers of people to come in, we’ve never had an open door before.

DM: But too many Eastern European migrants.

NIGEL FARAGE: But that doesn’t mean you discriminate against any individual. If I was Polish I’d come to London for goodness sake and if you talk about these particular people, whose identities have been protected I’m pleased to say, they have been fostering for the last seven years, they have been giving those children love, care and attention and the opportunity to thrive in this country. They have respected the culture from which they came but they have also been doing everything they can to teach them English so that they can integrate and do well at school, surely we need more people out there fostering kids like this and I think the way this Labour controlled council have behaved is an absolute outrage.

DM: Do you think the line should be drawn somewhere though? No doubt you are a mainstream party, of course you are and millions of voters have proved that but if these foster parents had been members of the BNP or things like that, or far left Communists …

NIGEL FARAGE: Look, I’m not here to discuss the BNP, I am here to discuss UKIP which is a non-racist, non-sectarian party. Indeed in next week’s by-elections one of our candidates is Jamaican born so the idea that UKIP is a racist outfit is rubbish and I’m afraid this whole atmosphere where even discussing numbers that come to this country is considered racist has been stirred up by Gordon Brown and David Cameron who have attempted to suppress sensible debate on immigration by throwing these labels at people like us.

DM: Okay, so much criticism of David Cameron on that, what about his stance at that EU summit being widely praised – you’re smiling but he did well didn’t he, I mean he drew a line and he wouldn’t cross it.

NIGEL FARAGE: Labour got this very badly wrong, the Labour press release was that Cameron was isolated in Brussels. No he wasn’t, actually the whole of Northern Europe doesn’t want to pay any more into this budget and can you blame them?

DM: But David Cameron stuck to his guns didn’t he?

NIGEL FARAGE: He did. David Cameron thinks it’s a good deal for Britain for us to continue paying just £53 million a day as a membership fee. Now that apparently is a victory. That’s fine, if you think that’s good value for money, you go on voting for David Cameron. My view is that we shouldn’t pay a penny piece to the European Union because what we want with Europe is a simple free trade deal.

DM: Okay, do you think he is going to shoot your fox in terms of going for a referendum and that might then marginalise UKIPs appeal come a general election?

NIGEL FARAGE: You know, I’m afraid my opinion of Mr Cameron this morning is rather lower than it was even yesterday morning. What he’ll do is come up with some sort of fudge compromise and try and give us an in/in referendum. Do you want to stay in Europe on the current terms or do you want to stay in Europe on a renegotiated package? Whatever he does it will not work, what the people of this country need and deserve is a very clear simple choice – do you want to stay part of a political union or leave it and revert to a simple free trade?

DM: Even Labour could go for that, some of the soundings that have been coming out are particularly supporting that vote for a cut.

NIGEL FARAGE: Yes, the party who gave away Britain’s budget rebate suddenly wanting a cut was delicious wasn’t it? I think that the tide of opinion and the reason why people are now saying UKIP is a mainstream party, look at the polls, up to 2 to 1 now majority in this country want us to divorce ourselves amicably from political union so I’m expecting all sorts of promises as a general election hoves into view. The trouble is they have made all these promises before. Labour before promised to give us a referendum and didn’t deliver. Mr Cameron in fact made a cast iron guarantee of a referendum so I will only believe them the day that I actually walk into that polling booth and pick up a pencil.

DM: Tell me about, lastly, about Lord Justice Leveson, his report coming out on Thursday and again Mr Cameron is the Prime Minister, is the recommendation is for some kind of statutory regulation of the press do you think the Prime Minister should go for that?

NIGEL FARAGE: I’ve just spent 13 years in Brussels and travelling all across Europe and so I’ve compared our printed press to the printed press in Europe. In many countries in Europe they have got very, very strict privacy laws, it is very difficult for journalists to expose corruption, dishonesty, sexual abuse and I think that our press frankly is fantastic compared to what I’ve seen over there and I think that to have a statutory body set up that began to regulate, perhaps even began to censor the press, would be a huge mistake. It would be laughable I think anyway in the age of the internet and I think it would be completely the wrong thing to do. Yes, of course the press has …

DM: This is coming from a man who had his phone hacked.

NIGEL FARAGE: Yes, I’m part of the hacking scandal and of course things have gone wrong in the press as they go wrong in every walk of life and in every business but surely the whole point of this is that fact that I’m one of the next group taking action against News International shows you that actually if things go badly wrong we’ve got legal redress anyway.

DM: Nigel Farage, thank you very much indeed, very good to see you there, the leader of UKIP.