Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with Gerard Batten MEP, UKIP Interim Leader

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON, SKY NEWS

NIALL PATERSON: You may well have noticed that an earthquake hit the United Kingdom yesterday, shaking the very foundations of the nation. No, not the dismissal of Henry Bolton as UKIP leader but an actual seismic event that rattled windows across Wales and the West of England. Many dubbed it underwhelming, certainly not an accusation that could be levelled at the toppling of the UKIP leader yesterday with the lurid accusations about law suits and love affairs. Taking over the reins of the party as interim leader is Gerard Batten who joins me now from east London. Mr Batten, a very good morning to you. So, so long Henry Bolton, we hardly knew you, good riddance to bad rubbish?

GERARD BATTEN: No, I wouldn’t put it that way. Good morning, Niall, by the way, no I wouldn’t put it that way. We all had high hopes that Henry was going to do a good job, we also [fought?] him as long as possible, unfortunately his position became untenable and it would have been much better if he had accepted that at the end of January and gone but he didn’t but we are now pleased that the party has reached its decision and we wish Henry well in whatever he chooses to do next in his life and good luck to him.

NP: And so, as so often appears to be the case these days, the question is who will lead the party next? I mean Mr Bolton hasn’t ruled out standing, do you think that’s a good idea and will you be standing?

GERARD BATTEN: Well I don’t think it would be a good idea because I don't think he is going to get very far. He got 29% last time of the vote and I don't think he’d get anywhere near that next time. He may well be free to do that under the rules and if he wants to waste his money and be a contender then that’s up to him, if he wants to give it another go but I think he would be much better advised to draw a line under this and get on with enjoying the rest of his life doing something else.

NP: What about you then?

GERARD BATTEN: I’ve been given the job as interim leader. My job is to try and stabilise things now and get it back on track and do the urgent things that need to be done. I haven’t made a decision about whether I go for it full time or not, I’m going to wait and see how things go on. I have had any, I don’t have any ambitions to be leader, I could have run on the three previous occasions but much prefer to support other people so I will wait and see how things go. I have only stepped up to do this in order to help the party which I believe in and a cause which I believe in and I’m going to see how things go over the next few weeks and months.

NP: But here’s the thing, you are the seventh leader of UKIP in 18 months, since the vote to leave the European Union. Isn’t the truth of the matter that UKIP is now an irrelevance, a joke and not a particularly funny one at that?

GERARD BATTEN: Well UKIP has achieved something marvellous in the last 25 years. There was no opposition to the European Union and in that space of time we have managed to secure the referendum and we managed to win the referendum and get the result and Brexit isn’t delivered yet and our political establishment are doing everything they can to actually not deliver it or in their view the very best that they can come up with is a withdrawal agreement where we leave in name but not in reality and UKIP still has a very big role to play in making sure that we hold the government to account and talk about Brexit and I want to get immediately back on that, that’s our number one priority, so that we actually get what we voted for and we don’t allow it to be betrayed. There are lots of other issues where UKIP can stand up for policies that represent ordinary people and that’s the sort of course that I want to lay out for us in the coming months.

NP: Isn’t the problem you face pretty much the same as other UKIP leaders, that actually whilst you want to get onto the matter of talking about policy, there is other stuff around, you know, Henry Bolton and his chequered relationship history, with you it’s comments that you have made time and time again about Islam. I just want to ask, do you still believe that no new mosques should be built in Britain?

GERARD BATTEN: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that last bit, the sound isn’t very good.

NP: Do you still believe that no new mosques should be built in this country?

GERARD BATTEN: Well it’s interesting, isn’t it, that Islam doesn’t allow a Christian church or a Sikh temple or a Buddhist temple to be built in its heartland because it’s forbidden in the Koran but we are supposed to be building things here. So what I would say is, that might be my personal opinion, policy wise what I would certainly want UKIP to do is to adopt a policy that says that no foreign money should be allowed to fund extremist mosques and Imams which what we’ve allowed Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to do over decades and why we have such a problem with literalist and radical and extremist Islam in our countries now is because it’s actually financially supported and exported to us by those types of countries. They’ve exported their ideology to us and we have to sit and think that we’re powerless to do anything about it, well I don't think we are and I think we should do something about it.

NP: Okay, so you do still believe that no new mosques should be built in Britain, do you still believe that all Muslims should sign a charter of understanding, a code of conduct that demands that they renounce violence and certain passages from the Koran?

GERARD BATTEN: Well this is very interesting, thank you for asking me about it. I thought you might do that and I’ve got the little offending piece of paper here. Some years ago I commissioned a document from a former Sharia lawyer who rejected Islam to actually lay out all of the texts in the Koran which allow people to justify violence and extremism and what we did at the end of the document, which was my idea – I didn’t write the document – this is my idea, was a little affirmation in which we asked people to actually reject those texts, those violent texts as extremists texts and let me tell you, five little points we asked them to accept: the equality of all human beings before the law, equal rights for women in principle and in practice, the rejection of coercion and intimidation and violence in the name of religion, religious freedom from persecution and tolerance of other religions and their beliefs and rejection of religious teachings that discriminate against others on the basis of their religious beliefs. Now they are things which are inimitable to a literalist radical interpretation of Islamic text and I don't think it’s unreasonable for people who come and live in our country should reject these dark age ideologies which many of them bring with them and we can see the problems existing in countries like France, Sweden, Italy and the UK precisely because Western governments haven’t addressed these problems.

NP: Okay, so you do still think Muslims should sign this charter of understanding. On that point, there is something fairly heinous stuff in the Old Testament. It’s been a while since I’ve been at Sunday School and of course the programme means that I can’t go any more but Leviticus is full of things that frankly would lead to Christians being asked to sign a charter of understanding by your logic.

GERARD BATTEN: Well what we did is we invited people to reject those texts and to accept those principles which I think any reasonable person in a Western liberal democracy would accept, you know, equality of people etc. They are the ones with the ideology, they are the ones with the problem because it’s their extremist ideology – kill infidels wherever you find them, make war on infidels, strike terror into the hearts of infidels, that’s their ideology so they’re the ones that have to address it and start actually understanding the problems that have been brought into our country. It isn’t us who have created the problems, we’ve allowed it to happen but it is an ideological problem and the only people that can address that are the people who are supposed to support and follow that ideology and I hope more and more of them will reject it and integrate into our Western liberal democracy where we have things like tolerance and acceptance.

NP: You keep talking about ‘they’ and ‘them’ and I’m not entirely sure to whom you’re referring so just one straightforward question, do you still believe that the three million British Muslims are adherents of a religion that, quote, is a ‘death cult born and steeped in 1400 years of violence and bloodshed that propagates itself by intimidation, violence and conquest.’ You wrote that in your blog after the Westminster attack, it’s still there this morning, do you believe that three million British Muslims are adherents of a death cult?

GERARD BATTEN: I believe, what I wrote there about Islam is factually and historically true and anybody that cares to look at the history of Islam over the last 1400 years will see that that is true. It was propagated by invasion, by violence and by intimidation and if you look at every continent in the world where you have the Islamic beliefs then you have violence and if … it glorifies death, they believe in propagating their religion by killing other people and martyring themselves and going and getting their 72 virgins. Not all of them, that’s not saying that all of them do believe that or do that, I’m saying that a significant minority believe that and they are the problem but the trouble is they are justified in those beliefs by a literalist interpretation of their own so-called Holy texts and …

NP: You didn’t use the phrase ‘significant minority’ on your blog, you just said Islam is a death cult. Here’s the thing, David Cameron once described your party as a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, he was being generous wasn’t he?

GERARD BATTEN: Well he’s free to say that because we live in a free country, nobody wants to go and blow him up or cut his head off because he said nasty things about other people. It’s a free country and we have the right of opinion and I’m expressing my opinion and I think you’ll find that a lot of people who listen to what I say and have read what I have written actually agree with it and what I’m hoping is that there are other people who nominally follow the Islamic religion will actually understand that the problem lies with their ideology and they can actually make the necessary adjustments to integrate into our Western liberal tolerant society which is what we all want to live in. We all don’t want to go in fear of terrorist attacks or violence or intimidation by people who follow a particular ideological belief, who wants to live in that kind of society, I certainly don’t and I doubt that you do either.

NP: Gerard Batten, thanks very much for joining us on the programme, appreciate it.