Murnaghan Interview with Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP leader, 19.06.16

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the Chancellor has appealed for a change in tone in the final days of the EU referendum campaign in memory of the MP Jo Cox.  It echoes the words of the new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and others who told Sky News on Friday that the referendum campaign has become, he said, poisonous.  Well I’m joined now by the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, very good morning to you Mr Farage.  I just want to start because there is this poster you unveiled last week of the EU being at breaking point with the number of refugees and asylum seekers that are coming in and we’ve had a lot of reaction, I’m sure you’re aware this morning.  Let’s just hear some of it:

JOHN MANN: It has contributed nothing relevant, nothing positive, Farage should withdraw that poster, it’s got nothing to do with what’s motivating 99.99% of people who have voted Leave or are thinking of voting Leave.  He is trying to play on fears, it is highly inappropriate.

CHRIS GRAYLING: I didn’t like the poster, I think the tone of the debate I would like to see conducted over the next few days, let me just say I didn’t like the poster and I think that’s the key point, even people on the Leave campaign are uncomfortable with that poster.  

PHILIP HAMMOND: It’s wrong, it’s the wrong poster, it was the wrong approach, it’s the wrong view.  

MICHAEL GOVE: When I saw that poster I shuddered.  I thought it was the wrong thing to do.

NICOLA STURGEON: The poster that Nigel Farage unveiled last week was vile and racist and I know you are going to be speaking to him later on and I hope he does agree today to withdraw that poster because that sort of sentiment has no place in a civilised debate.

DM: As I say, Nigel Farage is here with me.  Let’s deal with Nicola Sturgeon, vile and racist, withdraw it.  Let’s have a look at it, get it up on screen.

NIGEL FARAGE: I can reassure John Mann this was the first of six posters for the last week of the campaign and it was a one day poster.  It was the only poster that was actually talking about the European Union itself, that’s why it says on it the EU is failing us all.  Actually if you live within the eurozone you’d say it is failing you, if you see what Chancellor Merkel did last summer by saying just come in unlimited numbers so we do not want to stay part of a union that is failing in every regard.

DM: But we’re not in the eurozone nor ever likely to be as you know.   

NIGEL FARAGE: But we are members of a political union and the problem that we have, not being in the eurozone fine but we’re actually in a permanent minority at the Council of Ministers so what we were saying there was that the EU and Mrs Merkel in particular has failed very badly, it is a complete statement of fact about …

DM: But in terms of the Leave campaign it has rather split you when Chris Grayling, two senior figures in it, Chris Grayling says it’s plain wrong and Michael Gove said he shuddered when he saw it.  

NIGEL FARAGE: Well Michael Gove had better look at his own posters, pictures of Abu Hamza, warnings about terrorists and murderers coming into Britain at free will.  What has happened here is that we have had a tragic event in British politics and everybody over the last couple of days, we’ve been trying to say, all of us, to say and do nothing over the last couple of days.  That poster reflects the truth of what’s going on, we’ve a new poster coming out tomorrow morning and we’ll unveil a different poster for every day of the campaign.  

DM: And will you withdraw that poster?    

NIGEL FARAGE: That was a one day poster, that’s the point I’m making, so that poster is …

DM: But you could say I wish we hadn’t unveiled it.  

NIGEL FARAGE: I wish an innocent member of parliament had not been gunned down in the street, okay, that’s the point and frankly …

DM: We all wish that, of course we do.  

NIGEL FARAGE: … had that not happened I don't think we would have had the kind of row we have had over it.  

DM: No, we would Mr Farage, with respect, because isn’t there an implication in that poster that those people who by and large, if we can judge from them, we understand that they were leaving Croatia to head into Slovenia, that they are would be asylum seekers, they are not economic migrants.   

NIGEL FARAGE: Well I’m sorry I don’t agree with that at all.  I’ve said from the start of this that the European Union, Juncker got the policy wrong, Merkel compounded it, the vast majority of people that have come into the Schengen zone would never qualify as refugees under actually traditional measure.  

DM: But Schengen zone, eurozone, not the UK.  Those people can never come to the UK.  

NIGEL FARAGE: Well they can if they get EU passports in years to come but the point is …

DM: In years to come, many, many years to come.  They may get residency but you understand the rules, even if Germany allows them to have long term residency they still cannot travel to the UK.  The UK, Ireland and Denmark have an absolute veto on that.  

NIGEL FARAGE: Until they get EU passports, then there is no veto at all.  The problem is we are losing sight of what this is really all about.  You tell me we’re opted out of this, we’re opted out of that, we are members of a political union, the majority of our laws now get made by that union, their court in Luxembourg overrules the British parliament, overrules the British courts and we have effectively no border controls to 500 million people. This referendum in four days’ time is about one very simple question – do we wish to govern ourselves or be part of that political union?  

DM: How nervous are you about Thursday?  It’s a culmination of a life’s work I suppose for you.

NIGEL FARAGE: Well I have put a few years into this, yes, over 20.  I think people out there that have made their minds up that we should govern our own country, we should control our own borders, we should be in charge of our destiny, I am certain they are going to go out and vote on Thursday.  

DM: We have been talking, haven’t we, obliquely  about Jo Cox, let’s talk about it directly.  First of all the sadness, the awfulness of the event and you believe it has taken the momentum out of the Leave campaign?  

NIGEL FARAGE: Out of the whole campaign I said.  There was a big momentum developing right across the country, a tragic death, a pause, very difficult to know or to see in the next three or four days where either of the campaigns go in terms of the public once again connecting with it, difficult to tell.  

DM: Do you think in a way the arguments have all been made ad infinitum, let’s just have the vote on Thursday?

NIGEL FARAGE: It could be that it makes little difference, I don't know, I think it’s very difficult to call.  I do think one thing, it is going to be very close on Thursday, I think whatever happens.  

DM: But what do you think to these latest opinion polls putting Remain back in the lead again?  

NIGEL FARAGE: Well some say, some of the polling experts say that was beginning to happen before the tragedy, others are less sure.  I don’t think any of us know, at the end of the day it is about who goes down to vote on Thursday.

DM: I asked you about how worried you are because you watched I know with interest the Scottish independence referendum, you say that, there was a Leave poll that put them ahead and then people began to think really, really hard, do I really want to do this?  Do you see a similar effect taking place now, that people think they want to leave but in the end they ...?

NIGEL FARAGE: No, I don’t because that in the end was based on the economic argument that the SNP’s argument was based on oil and $113 a barrel whereas this economic argument, albeit it is a subset of who governs Britain, but this economic argument – you know, when the Chancellor told us that every household could be worse off by thousands of pounds, 70% of the electorate did not believe it so I don't think that us being told we’ll be worse off outside the European Union is really having that big an effect.

DM: But the Prime Minister has addressed that today, hasn’t he?  It’s about who is telling you, and we’ve discussed this before I know, legions of experts inside the United Kingdom, international experts, he likened it to a mechanic who knows about cars and looking at a car and saying this is a defective car and the brakes and other things don’t work and you are still encouraging people to put their children in it.  They can’t all be wrong can they?  

NIGEL FARAGE: The defective car is the one that’s got the euro, the one that had the madness of Merkel’s policy last year, is the one where eurosceptic groups on the right centre and left in every country are springing up.  We’ve got a chance to get off the train before it hits the buffers, it’s going to be the greatest opportunity of our lives to take back our pride, our self-respect, our independence and I hope, again, our place in the world.  I don't think, I don't think lining up a load of experts who are using a completely false economic model or being threatened by the Chancellor actually works.  

DM: Also the Prime Minister is saying today there are three basic lies at the heart of the leave campaign, this issue of the amount of money that the UK gives to the European Union, the £350 million, well not true.  That Turkey is somehow imminently about to join the European Union and that we are going to have a European army.

NIGEL FARAGE: We pay £34 million a day net, net, to be an EU member, that is nearly £10 billion a year, that is too much.  On Turkey, Mr Cameron has been the biggest champion of Turkey joining the European Union and on March 18th he was part of an accord of Prime Ministers and Presidents saying let’s accelerate the membership process …

DM: But the French and the Germans are saying it won’t happen, if they are saying it won’t happen, it won’t happen.

NIGEL FARAGE: Well of course they are saying it, they are trying to help their mate Dave because there’s a referendum four days away and as far as the European army is concerned, they could not be clearer, they want a European army and next week they are going to start formal discussions in terms of putting it together.  

DM: Let me ask you about what Silvie Bermann, the French Ambassador to the UK, said to me about an hour ago, talking about the border force officials, the UK border based on French soil there in northern France, in the Pas de Calais.  She is saying that could easily go so all the people who are there and waiting and trying to get to the UK, the French aren’t going to do much to stop them.

NIGEL FARAGE: Well the relevant French ministers have said nothing of the kind but look, we are going to get all sorts of threats, we’re going to be told in the next four days the border will go in Calais, they won’t trade with us, we’re going to get all of this. Actually the British being in Calais, doing passport checks, saves France a very great deal of money and I think …

DM: How?

NIGEL FARAGE: Because otherwise they’d have had to have done the job, we’re doing it for them, we’ve saved them a lot of time and money over the course of the last few years.  If at any point in the future our border went back to Dover and Folkestone, we would just police our border and people without reason to come into Britain would go back to France and give them an even bigger headache.  

DM: Let’s get back to the next few days then.  This poster, let’s have a look at it again, so we’re not going to see this poster of the refugees trying to get into … we’re not going to see that again, it has been withdrawn?

NIGEL FARAGE: No, it was a one day poster.  I’ve got six posters and you’ll see the next one tomorrow morning in the national press and online and the next posters are all about this country, not the wider point I was making there about the European Union failing us all.

DM: But failing on immigration.  

NIGEL FARAGE: On immigration failing terribly, on economics with the euro particularly, failing terribly.

DM: What is tomorrow’s poster?  Is it more about migration to the UK?

NIGEL FARAGE: It doesn’t mention it, no. Tomorrow’s poster is actually about the centre of this debate, do we want to be part of a political union.  Let’s not pretend this is a trade bloc, this is a political union with full legal authority, or would we rather have our own independent identity?

DM: But do you accept that as it appears now you have lost the arguments?  The economic argument versus the migration argument seems to be winning out.

NIGEL FARAGE: I think we need to be very robust in the next four days, pointing out that actually Britain’s deal with the EU now is rotten. If 40 years ago there was a good reason to get involved with something that gave us tariff free access to the European market, that in a world of high tariffs economically may have made sense.  Now global tariffs have gone down and for the benefit of that we pay a big fee, we have to regulate the 88% of our industry that is not involved with European exports, this is a bad deal.

DM: The future for you, maybe the House of Lords?

NIGEL FARAGE: I don't know what I’m going to do after Thursday, I would just like to win on Thursday.

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