Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Gerard Batten UKIP Leader
Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Gerard Batten UKIP Leader
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY
SOPHY RIDGE: Well five years ago, UKIP topped the polls in the European elections, today they languish on around 3% of the vote and they could be wiped out. Well joining us now is the party’s leader, Gerard Batten. Thank you very much for being on the programme this morning.
GERARD BATTEN: Good morning, Sophy.
SR: It feels like we should start with those polls doesn’t it, let’s have a quick look at one of the latest polls in the newspapers today ahead of those European elections. You can see there the Brexit Party tearing away in top spot, UKIP on 3% and the Brexit Party are effectively mopping up the Leave vote, what’s the point of UKIP?
GERARD BATTEN: Well if you believe them, Sophy. The poll that I’ll believe will be the one on Thursday and if you look at the events of the last six weeks and month where we’ve had real elections with real voters, I mean we got 8.6% in the Newport West by-election in Wales which is not one of our natural territories, in the local elections just a couple of weeks ago we got 56% in Derby, we got 40% in Sunderland, we were getting high teens and 20s in other places.
SR: But the Brexit Party wasn’t standing, that was key wasn’t it?
GERARD BATTEN: It wasn’t standing and I believe a lot of this is designed to be a kind of false … sorry, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t actually believe the polls, I think the Brexit Party is being bigged up because it doesn’t represent a real domestic threat after the European elections and I think the poll I am really going to take notice of is the one on Thursday and as I’m going round the country – and we’ve gone round in our campaign bus for the last couple of weeks talking to people – we are still picking up enormous support as we go out and talk to ordinary people.
SR: So how many MEPs have UKIP lost under your leadership then?
GERARD BATTEN: Well they lost a few before I came along, Sophy, so it’s not fair to say they all went under my leadership. Some of them have gone and of course Nigel in the second term managed to lose 45% which didn’t really get widely reported on, but that’s just the way it went.
SR: You still lost 16 MEPs.
GERARD BATTEN: We’ve lost some of them and some of them went, quite amusingly I think, went off to Nigel because they thought they’d get a better chance of a top list seat under Nigel but he has only actually ended up taking two of them with him.
SR: And how about councillors, how many councillors have you lost?
GERARD BATTEN: Well the actual figures were we lost 67 seats, we won 31 so we had a 36 net loss so it wasn’t as bad as has been reported.
SR: Since you have become leader you have lost 268 councillors and when you look at that do you ever think, I’m not very good at this? What’s happening?
GERARD BATTEN: Well last year when we had our first council elections, I inherited a party that was just about to implode and disappear. There was no local election campaign and we did lose about a hundred and odd seats then but I inherited no campaign, I walked straight into a maelstrom of nothing which I’d inherited. Since then we’ve built the party up, I’ve almost doubled the membership, we were at low 17,000 and are now up to about 30,000. We were financially bust, about to go broke and we’re now comfortably off, we’ve got an income of about a million pounds a year, we’ve got donations coming in so if I look at it from that point of view, well we’re really building a party that actually nearly disappeared and I didn’t do it on my own, I did it with the members behind me.
SR: If you lose your seat in the European elections will you quit?
GERARD BATTEN: I think if I lost my seat in London it would be untenable for me to continue as leader but I won’t make a decision about what I’m going to do until after the European elections because I’m getting a lot of people from within the party overwhelmingly saying to me, whatever the result is they want me to continue but I will base my decision on the outcome of the European elections and how I feel afterwards.
SR: I just want to put something to you because I went on the Leave march that happened on the day that we were supposed to leave the EU and I was really struck by a mother and daughter who approached me and they were keen to talk about why they had voted leave but they were also very keen to tell me that the half of the march cheering for Tommy Robinson did not represent them as leave voters, they were really keen for me to get that message. I just wonder if you have made a miscalculation by appearing to ally with a small minority of people who voted Leave and in doing so alienating some of the many, many millions of people who voted for Brexit?
GERARD BATTEN: Well our main focus has always been about leaving the European Union, we’ve had a policy on that as you well know for 27 years. I bought in Tommy Robinson as an advisor – and he was never a member of the party and now he is running against us in the north-west anyway – because I felt that was the right thing to do. Now only time will tell whether that decision was the right one or not but we’ve still got lots of people supporting us who don’t agree with everything we say or everything I’ve done but nevertheless the big overriding issue for them in leaving the European Union.
SR: I wonder as well what that mother and daughter would think about one of your lead candidates, Carl Benjamin, as well. I just want to … some of our viewers won’t be familiar with his views and …
GERARD BATTEN: I’m sure they are.
SR: He said about a Labour MP, “There has been an awful lot of talk about whether I would or wouldn’t rape Jess Philips, I suppose with enough pressure I might cave but let’s be honest, nobody’s got that much beer.” That’s really upsetting isn’t it?
GERARD BATTEN: It’s a bad taste joke which I wouldn’t have made …
SR: Is it a joke? I don’t understand why it’s a joke, I really don’t.
GERARD BATTEN: He has another existence as a commentator and a comedian on the internet and there’s stuff that he does. I don’t condone that, I said it’s a very bad taste joke, I rang him up and made my views very plain to him and he won’t be doing something like that again but this is one joke in an entire campaign which about more important things …
SR: But he keeps saying it though doesn’t he?
GERARD BATTEN: No, he doesn’t, it keeps being brought up by the mainstream media. I’ve answered this on every question, sorry, every programme I’ve been on. He’s done it, he was Victoria Derbyshire giving his rationale as to why he said it and I really don’t think it’s an important issue compared to the real issue which is why are we in an election which shouldn’t be being held and really the fate of the country is at stake. Are we going to leave the European Union or not?
SR: You mention that Victoria Derbyshire interview, when he was giving the interview Jess Philips sent a tweet and this is what she said: “She said I feel sick watching Carl Benjamin chuckling along to people joining in with the language he’s given them about putting a bag on my head and raping me.” I mean do you feel sick?
GERARD BATTEN: I wouldn’t make a joke like that and I don’t condone it. I don't think the bag remark was in whatever he said and …
SR: Does it make you feel sick when you look at some of the internet memes that have been …?
GERARD BATTEN: I don’t condone it, I don’t approve it, the internet is a pretty rough and ready place at the best of times but I think a lot of people were sick when she said about the 1400 sexual assaults in Cologne that it was compared to a night out in Birmingham, I don't think that was a tasteful remark either so she’s not exactly a stranger to controversy. She’s not a shrinking violet, she’s a rough, tough Labour MP.
SR: She doesn’t deserve that though does she?
GERARD BATTEN: I wouldn’t have made it and I don’t condone.
SR: She doesn’t deserve it though does she?
GERARD BATTEN: No.
SR: I just want to, and you say you have been asked about this before, you often say the reason why you are reaching out to people like Carl Benjamin and Tommy Robinson is because they allow UKIP to reach new voices, to have this internet presence that allows you to reach new audiences but I can’t help wondering if they are not getting more from this relationship than you are. You are tanking in the polls, you are losing councillors and MEPs. Are you being played here, they are getting more here than you?
GERARD BATTEN: My membership is going up and an interesting figure that was told to me last week is in the 18-25s we are now second biggest to Labour of people in that age group who intend to vote for us and approve of what we’re doing so it is actually …
SR: Sorry, you are second to Labour …?
GERARD BATTEN: Yes, Labour is on about 30 odd percent, we are on about 14% and everyone else is below that.
SR: Who did the poll?
GERARD BATTEN: I can’t remember exactly who did this polling but that was the figure that I was given.
GERARD BATTEN: Well
SR: Okay, I’m just surprised because that doesn’t chime with the one I’ve seen.
GERARD BATTEN: Well that’s what I was told and I said, are you sure about that and they said yes, that’s what it’s saying. If we’re doing that, that shows to me that we are reaching out and one thing that’s being said to me as well by people around the country in our branches is that they are bringing in a lot of younger people now as branch officers and branch activists which is great because that means that we’ve got fresh people coming through to take us through into the next load of elections which of course is going to be a general election. And one thing I thought I might get the chance to talk to you about, Sophy, is MEPs that are elected in this next Parliament, what are they going to do? With your guests earlier on you were talking about the Withdrawal Agreement, now one thing that the new MEPs will have to do, if the Withdrawal Agreement is passed in Parliament, is vote on it in the European Parliament and in fact the existing MEPs could be called back for an emergency plenary in June in order to vote on it if it’s passed by Parliament. My opinion – and I have been entirely consistent on this throughout the process – is that what’s being cooked up by Parliament, I’m sorry, what’s being presented to them by Mrs May, is a not really leaving the EU Withdrawal Agreement. So any UKIP MEPs that are elected will vote against that Withdrawal Agreement in the European Parliament as the final step in the Article 50 process and we are not just about rhetoric saying ‘Leave means Leave’, we are actually going to put the government or help to put the government back to square one so then they have to leave under their own steam and under a no-deal scenario.
SR: Okay, thank you very much. Gerard Batten, thank you very much for coming on the programme.
GERARD BATTEN: You’re welcome.