Murnaghan 6.01.12 Interview with Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now I want to turn to UK politics and in actual fact the UK Independence Party. Well they’ve surged to their highest ever poll rating, a poll for the Daily Mail today has them sitting at 16%, ahead of the Liberal Democrats on just 11% and their leader, Nigel Farage, joins me now. A very good morning to you and a nice big smile on your face, is that because of that poll rating?

NIGEL FARAGE: Yes, our highest ever, delighted. We started off last year, exactly a year ago we were on four and a half percent of the polls so to go up to 16 is huge progress for us.

DM: Okay, so what do you put it down to? Is it your stance obviously on Europe, on immigration or does it go beyond that?

NF: It goes beyond that. I think that people see us as actually standing up and saying what we think, not being constrained or scared by political correctness, they see us as a party that unashamedly wants to stand up for Britain and for British people and I think on the top line issues that you mentioned – Europe and immigration – we’ve been abused for a decade for even daring to talk about these things. Well now the arguments that UKIP has made are absolutely at the heart of the national debate in this country.

DM: Okay, and clashing directly with the Conservatives on this. The Conservatives we hear, well we hear from the behind the scenes, are worried about all this. The Prime Minister has been speaking this morning, just a few minutes ago and you say you’ve been traduced I suppose in the past, the Prime Minister is still referring to some rather odd people in the United Kingdom Independent Party.

NF: Yes, yes, poor old Mr Cameron. I think what this comes down to is that David Cameron himself doesn’t understand how ordinary people feel. It is not outrageous to say that mass immigration into Britain has run at too big a pace and that we could do something about it and somehow to David Cameron even to say those things is wrong so it shows really how disconnected he is. If he wants to go on being rude about me and rude about UKIP, well let him do it, we won’t lose any sleep about it.

DM: But could you ever do business with the Conservatives, it’s been mooted in the past, remember last year. You said, okay you don’t like what Mr Cameron’s saying but maybe you could talk to the Conservatives if they were led by someone like Michael Gove.

NF: Yes, well I don't think there’s any prospect of any deal with the Conservative Party all the while that man leads it, given the way that he’s behaved and his attitude towards us. Look, I would do a deal with the devil if it got us what we need which is a free and fair referendum so that we in this country can decide who governs us.

DM: You don’t have to do a deal with the devil, say the Prime Minister, when he makes this speech, this long-awaited speech on Europe, maybe next week, maybe the week after, and he offers a referendum, then he’s shot your fox hasn’t he?

NF: Well he did it once before remember ‘I give you this cast iron guarantee’, he said, ‘that if I become Prime Minister there’ll be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty’ and he let us all down like a cheap pair of braces. I think the big problem is, Prime Minister, if this really matters, if this issue is vital, then call the referendum before the next general election. Of course I would support that wholeheartedly but he’s not going to do it.

DM: Okay but he’s going in to these, whenever they take place, these negotiations, he says he is going to come back and put that before the people. It might not satisfy you but it might satisfy a lot of people who said, well, you know, that’s why we support the UK Independence Party.

NF: This is the old con trick that was carried out back in the 1970s. Harold Wilson went to Brussels to renegotiate, he renegotiated nothing of substance at all, came back to the country and said ‘Look chaps, it’s just the Common Market, nothing to worry about’ and in a referendum the people believed him. What Cameron is going to do is come back and say, all we’ve got is the single market which is fairly innocuous sounding but in reality is the source of most of our upset and anger with Europe, that is what he’s going to try and do. But none of this happens of course unless there is a Conservative majority after the next election and that looks increasingly unlikely.

DM: And as it stands now your polling jeopardises that because also in the Daily Mail today is this estimation that your party’s performance, if there were a General Election now, could cost the Conservatives up to fifty seats, not fifty seats that go to UKIP but fifty seats that presumably go to Labour and elsewhere who are even more pro-Europe.

NF: Well I think that’s a bit simplistic.

DM: But are you prepared to see that happen? You are so anti-Conservative and anti-David Cameron that if that happens then so be it?

NF: No, I’m anti 75% of our laws being made in Brussels, I’m anti the fact that we can’t control the City of London, we don’t control employment legislation, we don’t control environmental legislation, I’m anti the fact that we can’t do our own trade deals with other parts of the world because we’re trapped inside this European Union. Thankfully you can’t put a cigarette paper between the Labour and Conservative parties on issues of real substance, it would make no difference to British business whether Labour or the Conservatives sat in Downing Street.

DM: But it would make a difference to British business, let’s talk about some of the nitty-gritty of the policy. If you have your way and we withdraw from Europe, we have a trading agreement and business says that’s just not good enough because we don’t have a seat at the table, we don’t have commissioners, they make decisions all the time that affect our business as we have no say.

NF: Well there’s a bit of a misconception here, that is somehow that Britain is shaping and changing legislation in Britain. Believe you me, I’ve been there for 13 years, we only have 8% of the votes within the European structures, we’re consistently, constantly actually, outvoted, we have a veto on virtually nothing left and now, from the French, the Germans, across Europe, Britain is hated. They blame the City of London for the eurozone crisis, we’ve got very little influence at all. Norway, the Prime Minister keeps quoting Norway as if … wouldn’t it be awful if we were like Norway – what do you mean, rich, independent, prosperous, doing well, one of the happiest nations on earth and actually who also do have input into the legislation and have recently vetoed a series of major European directives?

DM: But isn’t that the point, the Norwegian parallel, they’re still in the European economic area to allow them to trade but then this impacts doesn’t it on one of your other key policies, but that still allows the free movement of peoples within Europe, those Romanians and Bulgarians you’re so worried about could still come here.

NF: I wouldn’t want Britain to have European Economic Area membership because we would go on with masses of legislation coming every year and with the free movement of peoples and I think that as I look forward to 2013, for UKIP the biggest single issue is going to be highlighting the fact that from the 1st January next year, 29 million people from very poor countries in Romania and Bulgaria will have access not just to the jobs market but to the social security system too.

DM: And an awful lot of those peoples have already come from other East European countries, what happens under a UKIP plan? Are they allowed to stay, are their dependents allowed to come and join them, what happens to the million odd we estimate to …

NF: Well you can’t turn the clock back and you cannot say to people who have legally come to a country, you can’t be here, that would be quite the wrong thing to do but what you can do is put in place a proper immigration policy that says we only want foreign workers in Britain if they are bringing skills here to this country.

DM: Can their dependents join them?

NF: We’ve got to stop this, you know, the census figures were truly shocking. I’ve been saying three million new migrants in the last ten years, the census proved it was in fact four million.

DM: Okay, Mr Farage, thank you very much indeed. Nigel Farage there, the leader of UKIP of course.