Murnaghan Interview with Nigel Farage, UKIP Leader, 28.06.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well the UKIP leader has warned that the terror threat in the United Kingdom could be added to by the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.  This week the EU agreed a deal you’ll remember to relocate tens of thousands of people who arrived in Italy and Greece and other countries to other European nations, meanwhile in Calais hundreds of illegal migrants tried to hide in lorries crossing the Channel.  Well Nigel Farage joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Farage.  First of all let’s just focus on the thoughts we have with those bereaved families as a result of the atrocity that has been carried out in Tunisia.  

NIGEL FARAGE: Yes, horrific and from what I hear there are still families in Britain who don’t know whether their relatives are alive, dead, in hospital, I mean truly, truly shocking.  Of course we have to face up to one thing, it’s not just in Tunisia that things like this happen, we do face the real prospect of it happening here again.  

DM: And this is the point I’ve been discussing, as many other people have been discussing, is when you get what’s termed a lone wolf like this operating in such a manner, it’s very, very difficult to either anticipate or deal with it.

NIGEL FARAGE: Yes, very difficult.  However the one positive thing I can say is we have not had an attack of this nature on British soil for a very, very long time compared to other countries, France, Belgium, etc.  It leads me to conclude that our security services who are currently arresting one suspected terrorist every single day, are doing a very good job.  

DM: But even they say, particularly if it is an individual who gets their hands on an automatic weapon, it’s very hard for us to see that coming.  

NIGEL FARAGE: Well that’s true although people who go down that route generally there’s a pattern of build-up through social media and other things and that’s why we’re doing as well as we are.  There are 300 people in Britain who have been to Syria and have fought in that conflict and been brutalised and are back in our community so I’m concerned about that and I do think that our security services need the power and need the resources to effectively tackle it but my real concern is that IS have said they will flood the European continent with half a million Jihadist fighters and you see the boats coming across the Mediterranean and the EU has decided we must be compassionate, we must say to everybody that arrives on the shores of Italy or the shores of Greece, you can stay inside the EU.  Already we’ve seen a photograph of one of the suspects from the previous Tunisian massacre – and people will say, oh Nigel don’t exaggerate, they won’t send half a million, but supposing they send 5000?  Supposing 5000 Jihadists use this route to get into Europe and my concern that we as a country can argue that we are opted out of the EU’s common asylum policy but effectively as we saw in Calais this week, people can either come illegally and have very little chance of being caught or if the Italians lose patience, because the north of Europe is not cooperating in terms of sharing the burden of all these people that are coming, all the Italians have to do is give people European passports and then they are free to go anywhere.  I’m worried about our position in this.

DM: What you say that some already have in the numbers that have already arrived, the thousands that have already arrived?  

NIGEL FARAGE: It would be surprising if some already hadn’t and as I say, one of the suspects from the previous Tunisian massacre was seen getting off a boat in Sicily.  

DM: But we’ve got plenty of threat emanating from within, you mentioned 7/7 and other attacks that have taken place here, there is an existing threat already within the United Kingdom and there is just an estimate of the number of people, British people, who have been fighting for Islamic State and its offshoots who are now back on these shores, it amounts to several hundreds.  

NIGEL FARAGE: Yes, my argument was, was that anyone who went to fight in Syria for IS should have their passports taken from them.  If we know that somebody has been and  engaged in that activity, why on earth would we want them back in our country?  

DM: Well that was one of the threats being made I remember by the Home Secretary …

NIGEL FARAGE: Ah yes but that was a general election.  All sorts of promises get made during general elections, often in response on subjects like this to what UKIP say first but I don’t see any evidence of that being put into place.  

DM: If I may digress ever so slightly here, people talking now as we always do about how you mustn’t give in to the terrorists, you’ve got to stand up to them, you wrote in the Mail on Sunday this morning about how you were thinking of going on holiday to Kenya and of course it’s had some terrorist atrocities itself, and you’re not going to go there.  Are you giving in to terrorism?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well I was going to go deep sea fishing way out in the Indian Ocean and of course Somalia is the bordering country and I just thought, do you know what, I don’t want to take the risk.  I think actually, and it may be desperately unfair on a country like Tunisia for arguments sake, who after the Arab Spring were one of the countries who appeared to be doing quite well, it may be desperately unfair to Tunisia but if your teenage daughter said to you, dad, I’m off to Tunisia with my mates for a week, what would you say?  Well I’d say no.  

DM: But they have deliberately targeted one of their main sources of foreign income and with that previous attack in March on the Bardo Museum and you’re right, we’ve seen the cancellations, we’ve seen the people flooding back but that’s giving in to them isn’t it, it’s conceding.  

NIGEL FARAGE: No, it’s not giving in.  We all make personal choices and if we think we’re going to put ourselves in harm’s way then we generally try to avoid it.  Those decisions are easy, the tough decision is, is our government going to stand up and say to Mr Juncker and the European Commission that you are making a terrible mistake with the Mediterranean, you need to look at what the Australians did back in 2008 when they faced exactly the same problem, boatloads of people coming to Australia, boats sinking, thousands of people drowning and the Australians decided they would send a message which was you will not via this route make Australia your home, the boats stopped coming, the drowning stopped too.  

DM: So is British policy not really joined up?  So we’ve got Royal Naval vessels in the Mediterranean picking up people who are in danger of drowning, delivering them then mainly to Italian shores.  If they make their way up to Calais then they’re not allowed in, if that was the other way round and the Italians were picking up those people and delivering them to the Isle of Wight we wouldn’t be very happy would we?

NIGEL FARAGE: We’d be furious wouldn’t we?  So we don’t know what we’re doing and we have this odd relationship with Europe of course because we are members of the European Union yet we comfort ourselves that we’ve opted out of their Common Asylum Policy and yet indirectly these people can come anyway. In a sense it takes us back to the big debate in British politics over the next 18 months, what is Britain’s role, are we to have an independent foreign policy, are we to control our borders ourselves or somehow are we happy to accept that these big decisions get taken by Brussels effectively?  

DM: And the big question, talking about the EU referendum and the negotiations beforehand, have you found out satisfactorily, to your own satisfaction, what the Prime Minister will actually be asking for during these renegotiations?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well he made it clear before the election that there had to be fundamental treaty change to satisfy his demands because the British relationship with the EU was in need of reform.  I was at the summit this week and I know it has been rather overshadowed by the horrific events in Tunisia but I was at the summit and that initial request of his for treaty reform met with unanimity in the room – all 27 said no, it isn’t going to happen.  So we’re not going to have treaty change, we are not going to have fundamental reform and it looks at the moment that the renegotiations will become a technocratic backroom process.  Yes, they’ll talk about benefits for migrant workers for the first few months or whatever but in terms of Britain’s big relationship, should parliament have a veto over European laws, should our Supreme Court be supreme and can we control our borders, it looks like none of those things are even going to be discussed.  

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