Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with Henry Bolton UKIP Leader

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

NIALL PATERSON: UKIP has a new leader, and if you think you’ve heard that before it is of course because you have. Henry Bolton is the fourth leader in the space of a year and he joins me now. Mr Bolton, many thanks for being with us.

HENRY BOLTON: Good morning.

NP: I’m going to be frank, I know you like plain speaking in UKIP but like many other people, until recently I hadn’t heard of you so I have been trying desperately to get to grips with you. I discovered this morning, thanks to the Sunday Times, that in an interview with Russia Today you said that you could strangle a badger with your bare hands, is that correct?

HENRY BOLTON: They gave me a few options of ideas for an initiation ceremony into the leadership of UKIP and the one that was probably more suitable for me was chasing a badger across Dartmoor, capturing it and then breaking its neck with ones bare hands, which was a slightly unusual thing but…

NP: Yes and possibly the strangest question I’ve ever asked myself but certainly you mentioned the …

HENRY BOLTON: It was a little odd.

NP: The political journey that you’ve been on is quite remarkable from back in 2005 when you stood as a Lib Dem candidate against Phil Hammond of all people to now being the leader of the UK Independence Party.

HENRY BOLTON: Quite an interesting journey indeed. I joined the Lib Dems because I was actually a UN governor, an administrator but effectively a District Governor in Kosovo and I was mandated amongst other things to help local political parties develop and build themselves in preparation for the first elections to be held there and I wasn’t going to join the Tories or Labour party and I wanted to find out how a political party worked so I joined the Lib Dems. And then I saw the light.

NP: Indeed, we’ve got this photograph of you from during the campaign and it certainly suggests that on paper at least you’ve got the most interesting CV of any party leader at the moment, perhaps of any politician that I’ve ever met. You were a soldier, you were a copper, you were a diplomat as you mentioned, Head of Border Security for 56 countries, extended service in Afghanistan. Let’s deal with your military service, ’79 to ’90, who were you in with, where did you serve?

HENRY BOLTON: I started off as a junior leader, as a trooper, then I became a Lance Corporal in the Royal Hussars, a cavalry regiment, Chieftain then Challenger tanks and later the reconnaissance troop, I served in Germany, Belize and the UK. Later on I was commissioned into the TA as an infantry officer and was a Company Commander in the Infantry.

NP: How much do all of these separate experiences shape your role as leader of UKIP, especially the administrative side?

HENRY BOLTON: Hugely. Many people maybe watching now will appreciate that the military really operates on a firm logistical and organisational basis, that’s the foundation of being able to conduct the operational piece and it’s the same with a political party I think. If you’ve got a sound administrative logistical base then you can project your politics and that’s what I found in my work, is that the combination of the military and the policing experience has been extremely useful in the international diplomatic work.

NP: Would you describe yourself as more of a technocrat than a populist, in the Farage mould?

HENRY BOLTON: No, I wouldn’t call myself a technocrat. I am about delivering an operational effect if you like, to use that military terminology. What we want to bring about is change for the better in this country and that’s the effect we need to deliver so it is about organising ourselves to do that and having the correct policies in place. It’s not about technical work, it’s about motivating people, inspiring the British people to go forward.

NP: One of the stories that the viewers might be interested to hear is that where you nearly were killed by an Islamic suicide bomber, what happened there?

HENRY BOLTON: Yes, a specific case – and I wouldn’t say I was nearly killed because it was around the corner …

NP: My apologies, blown off your feet.

HENRY BOLTON: Yes, knocked to one side certainly. It was 10th April 2012 I think in Helmand, there was an attack on a police post very close to where I was standing, I was having a conversation with a US Navy pilot at the time and a lot of gunfire, I rather oddly said ‘There’s the sound of musketry’ and then there was an explosion.

NP: Do you think that your personal experiences of terror, the Gulf, the Taliban, have they shaped your view of Islam in any way?

HENRY BOLTON: I’ve worked a lot in the Islamic world, in the Middle East, in central Asia, as well as Afghanistan and of course I’ve learnt a lot about the religion there, the routine and the way that it shapes society and people’s thinking and approach to life so it has certainly built a very thorough awareness of it all. So it has been an education, yes.

NP: Faith schools, particularly Islamic faith schools, have been in the new a lot lately and we have another quote from you, it says basically this: “In some of our communities we have lost the British identity, we have schools where they are almost 100% Islamic, we’ve got Islamic schools, I’m with Anne-Marie Waters on this issue.” What did you mean by that?

HENRY BOLTON: What we’ve got, this is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we have our own culture and our laws and our society, even if people aren’t generally practising Christians, are built upon centuries of Christian teaching, of right and wrong and there are subtle differences between the different religions in this respect.

NP: Well there are a lot alike, obviously.

HENRY BOLTON: Yes, absolutely and so what I’ve got a concern with is for example the use of Saudi Arabian textbooks in our schools, the education that is conducted primarily not in the English language.

NP: Okay, so to be clear, you don’t have a problem with the existence of single faith schools that follow the Islamic faith?

HENRY BOLTON: No, not with single faith schools and what I would like to see is that those schools are funded and follow a curriculum that is designed here in the UK and that the teachers are people who have been trained in the UK rather than in countries that have a very different social construct to our own.

NP: In terms of an eye-catching policy which has previously been proposed by UKIP, banning the burka, where do you stand?

HENRY BOLTON: I stand on trying to solve the problem. If the problem is, and it is, a question of identifying individuals either face to face or through CCTV and it is a problem because of face coverings, then the face coverings need to be banned.

NP: So anywhere where there are CCTV cameras? I am trying to work out what you mean by this because it does sound pretty much like you are saying in public places you shouldn’t wear a burka.

HENRY BOLTON: I am not saying ‘the burka’, I am saying ‘full face covering’.

NP: So big hats, bee keepers masks and the burka.

HENRY BOLTON: Not many people walk down their high street in a bee keepers mask.

NP: But lots of people walk down the street with a motor cycle helmet on.

HENRY BOLTON: Correct and I don't think they should.

NP: And a lot of people walk down certain high streets with burkas on.

HENRY BOLTON: If we look at some of the recent jewellery robberies and so on, there has been a difficulty in identifying the culprits because they have been wearing motorcycle helmets so this is about solving the problem and the problem is not the burka as a religious dress so …

NP: But the policy which I think you are proposing right now, burkas along with other items, would be banned in public places?

HENRY BOLTON: As a list of face coverings but certainly not because it is a Muslim item.

NP: No, no, but to be perfectly clear UKIP’s current policy is that the burka would not be allowed in public places along with motor cycle helmets, big hats and …

HENRY BOLTON: You are asking my opinion, that policy was in the 2017 manifesto and I have said that we are going back to the 2015 manifesto as our baseline for policy development.

NP: Can we talk on Brexit for a second, your core task, as you described it in your acceptance speech? What is the party’s position on transition?

HENRY BOLTON: We shouldn’t have a transition, absolutely not.

NP: So that just means, even if one is required, if we get to the point of …

HENRY BOLTON: Let’s talk about why this is being talked about by the government. It is because they have conducted absolutely no planning and preparation and even the Chancellor has said the other day that he is not prepared, or he doesn’t want to release funding from the Treasury to support planning and preparation for a no deal Brexit. Well that is negligent in the extreme in my view and if we get to the point where we leave the European Union, and we want to leave asap and we have got a campaign that is called Out Now. Now is a process, now is about preparing ourselves to leave when we need to …

NP: I mean you said to my colleague Lewis Goodall, after you’d been elected as leader, that we might need a transition period to avoid a car crash so on a point of principle you don’t want it but in terms of the practicalities of Brexit you accept the need?

HENRY BOLTON: Let’s say we get to the 19th March 2019 and no planning and preparation has taken place because the government has failed to put anything in place for the next day. Now we’ve got a choice haven’t we? If we have got nothing in place to manage the consequences of leaving or we need a bit of time to put it in place and in such circumstances, if the option is put it in place and spend a bit of time doing it or just face the disaster then I’m saying that we need to put the things in place. The fact that we have not been doing that is in my view absolutely negligent.

NP: The reason we are talking about a transition period with greater intensity now is that it does seem increasingly likely, the odds are shortening on a no deal Brexit. Do your views chime with those of Nigel Farage, that actually it wouldn’t be that bad a situation, we could swiftly move over to WTO rule?

HENRY BOLTON: Yes, I do, I share that opinion.

NP: Excellent. In terms of immigration though, where should we be setting the limit? I understand that your party has long maintained that we need to get it under control but what does that mean?

HENRY BOLTON: Well there are two things here, or at least two things. One is that we are as a country being swamped by the fact that we are having a net immigration that is approximately the size of Wolverhampton or Hull every year. That’s difficult to cope with in terms of our services and our infrastructure when we are cutting police by 25% for example, local government in some cases by up to 50%, so you have got that problem and to get on top of that we need to ramp up policing again, we need to reverse those cuts and local government cuts but we also need to …

NP: How many people should be coming into the country?

HENRY BOLTON: I am not going to give you a figure.

NP: Why not?

HENRY BOLTON: Because it is an arbitrary figure isn’t it?

NP: You told your party conference the present rate of immigration is unacceptable so that to me rather suggests that you know what is acceptable?

HENRY BOLTON: It is and it is virtually uncontrolled and what I am saying is …

NP: But if you are telling me that the current rate is unacceptable, that implies that you have a figure in your mind for what is acceptable so why don’t you tell me what it is?

HENRY BOLTON: In an ideal world, and I am not saying this is practical, we should be aiming, certainly for the next few years, to zero net immigration but the chances of hitting zero net immigration, it’s a very difficult target to hit if for no other reason than the fact that net immigration is also affected by the number of people who leave the country and we can’t control how many people leave the country so in terms of the overall number of people coming in, the ideal would be to bring it down to zero.

NP: I am afraid to say that sounds slightly like the answer a technocrat would give, the idea that actually I can’t give you a total because it’s all dependent on this other figure which is outside my control. Every other party leader has at least a rough idea in their head of what immigration should be into this country.

HENRY BOLTON: No they don’t, they are answering your question.

NP: But they can’t hit their target but they’ve certainly got a target.

HENRY BOLTON: No, of course they can’t and I am not going to be going around saying I’m going to be doing XYZ and that UKIP is going to be doing XY and Z knowing that we can’t so in future when people hear something coming out of my mouth and when I say we are going to do this, it will be because I sincerely believe that we can achieve that. If I give you an arbitrary figure of 20,000 people net immigration, then nobody listening here will really truly believe that we can hit a specific figure of 20,000 so you are going to hear from me what we can deliver.

NP: Henry Bolton, many thanks for being here.

HENRY BOLTON: You’re very welcome, thank you.