“We’ll get a handful of seats, I think—but no one knows,” said Nigel Farage. Pressed on what a handful means, he joked: “it depends on how many fingers you’ve got on your hands—four? Five?”
In any case, the UK Independence Party will field “630 to 640 candidates” for the 7th May general election, contesting almost all of the United Kingdom’s 650 parliamentary seats. “It’s always good to have more money, but we’re managing with the funds we’ve got,” he said. Polls show that Ukip’s support is down to around 14 per cent, five points behind its peak late last year, but that immigration, the issue with which the party is most closely associated, still tops the list of voters’ concerns. Ukip is thought unlikely to win more than four to six seats under the first past the post system. But the high chance of a hung parliament, and the party’s insistence on an early referendum on membership of the European Union as the price for any support of the Conservatives, means that its performance could still have a significant impact on the next government.
More than that, though, the election will show whether Ukip has managed to convert antipathy to immigration and the EU into a lasting political force. It will show whether Farage has managed to marshal its more unruly members into something that resembles a modern political party that could survive even without the unifying pull of its leader’s charisma. The Ukip spring conference in Margate was a notably gaffe-free and professional affair, and Farage has a bracing schedule for the final weeks before the election. Speaking to Prospect between a meeting at his publishers (to mark the launch of his new book The Purple Revolution, which charts the rise of Ukip) and a London housing event on Tuesday prior to the Budget, he was more disciplined and less garrulous than he has seemed for months.
“One of the big elements of Ukip’s support is non-voters,” he said. “For me, the most remarkable result so far was the Rochester and Strood by-election [which was won by the Conservative defector Mark Reckless on 20th November]. We polled 42 per cent of the vote, the Conservative share was down by around 14 per cent, and Labour’s by 11 per cent. The Labour switch to us was significant in Rochester and Strood but it is non-voters coming to us that mean the sums are up in the air. Nobody knows what the impact of Ukip is going to be.”
When will we see the long-awaited Ukip manifesto? “As late as possible—maybe 15 to 18 days before the election,” he said. “This campaign has been terribly mishandled and is in danger of boring the pants off people. Having a fixed-term parliament has taken the excitement out of it. Nobody is listening to politicians—they make new promises every morning—it’s extraordinary. We are trying to lay out our broad principles, we will put more meat on the bones but we’re not going to run at this like a bull at a gate.”
The rise and rise of Nigel Farage
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He denied twice unprompted the charge that he is better at criticising the ills of Britain than he is at offering solutions. Yet he is undeniably at his most eloquent when describing what has gone wrong. He is passionate on the problems of inequality in Britain. “The rich have got remarkably richer, especially in London,” he said, adding “I’m a massive believer in social mobility.” He’d like people on the minimum wage not to pay tax “so that there is a real incentive to get off benefits.” He has already called for more selective grammar schools, but would also like to see more technical education available “from the age of 14”; like many Labour strategists, he is a fan of the German education system. Britain has made “bad mistakes” in further education,” he said, by encouraging “too many people to go to university, study a series of ’ologies, and leave up to their necks in debt.”
He is also passionate, in principle, about cutting the budget deficit. Ukip would support a Conservative government in passing its budget “if they’re serious about budget deficit reduction” he said, citing the failure to cut it further as one of the government’s biggest failings. “They are going to have to make very clear commitments about where money is going to be saved. It’s all been Jackanory for the past five years.”
Yet he does not himself have a clear prescription for some of the biggest chunks of government spending. State pensions are “terribly difficult,” he admitted. “We haven’t concluded what shape our policy will take yet and it is scary. We know we will have to pronounce on it before the election.”
What would he cut? He has long made clear his antipathy to the “white elephant” of the HS2 rail link and to foreign aid, but thinks it’s nonsense even to talk of ring-fencing spending on the National Health Service, as the Conservatives and Labour have promised to do, given the strains on it from an ageing and rising population. “Even ring-fencing it is a waste of time—it’s moonshine to think we can.” The NHS can get more efficient, he suggested—but that is a prescription, or rather a hope, on which many governments have fallen back.
He does not have detailed plans for the NHS’s reorganisation but is adamant that Ukip could improve efficiency. “I’d be dead without it,” he said, adding that “like most families” his has experienced the best and worst of the NHS. Emergency care saved his life in 1985 when he was hit by a car, and in 2010 when the light aircraft he was flying in crashed. But an NHS consultant misdiagnosed his testicular cancer when he was 21. When he eventually went to private care on the urging of his employer, he was rushed straight into surgery. He lost a testicle but fortunately the cancer had not spread.
“We’ve reached a ridiculous point in the debate over health in Britain. Every time I’m on Question Time all the other politicians say is how wonderful the doctors and nurses are. Then everyone claps. Just because I’m not scared to criticise the NHS doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s important.”
But his clearest suggestion of how to cut NHS spending is simply to reckon that if the UK population swells, “the rich” may choose private care instead of the NHS, saving resources. “For a working person, it is very hard to get a GP’s appointment.”
At the heart of the Ukip manifesto, when it does emerge, will be the pledge to try to force a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU before the end of 2015. He has ruled out full coalition with a minority Conservative government but would consider a looser “confidence and supply” working relationship on that condition. “My view is that the EU is a total failure,” he said when asked if he could consider any renegotiation of the terms of the UK’s membership, as David Cameron is seeking. “I know and quite like Mr [Jean-Claude] Juncker [the European Commission President]—he’s rather jolly—we just have different views. There is no negotiation on offer, they would rather Britain left than start unpicking the EU treaties. Neither [Angela] Merkel or anyone other leader would stand for that.”
A recent ComRes/ITV News poll found that Ukip remains Britain’s most trusted party to control immigration. More than a third (36 per cent) back Ukip to control immigration, well ahead of those backing the Conservatives (19 per cent), Labour (14 per cent) and the Lib Dems (4 per cent). Farage is advocating an Australian-style points based system on immigration. In making his case for a “return to normality” he points out that from 1950 to 1998, the average net migration flow was around 30,000 people per year, sinking to around 15,000 in the mid 1980s. In the year to September 2014 the figure was around 298,000. “There are about 200 countries in the world which have a proper immigration policy—they decide who comes, in what quantity and what quality of people they take. That’s what we used to do and that’s what I am arguing for.”
What if an EU referendum did go ahead and the vote were to stay in? Surely Ukip would be finished? Citing the example of the SNP’s surge after its independence referendum defeat in September, Farage said, smiling: “It’s bizarre—if you had asked me that a year ago, I would have said we would disappear for a decade at least, but now, seeing what happened in Scotland, who knows? I haven’t got a crystal ball. All I know is that no free people would ever willingly give up the desire to govern themselves.”
Read more on Ukip:
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A lot would hinge on how the referendum campaign was conducted, how funding for it was allocated and who was eligible to vote. Farage said he would insist as part of any electoral deal that the four million EU citizens living in the UK, including his German wife Kirsten, would be barred from voting. He was more vague on the question of the 1.8m Brits living abroad in Europe, conceding that their eligibility to vote is a contentious decision which could impact significantly on the result.
He was defensive in response to the suggestion that Britain’s departure from the EU might prompt a fresh independence referendum in Scotland. “I don’t think there is a strong desire for EU membership in Scotland. It’s possible, but who are we if we stay in the EU? Not a sovereign democracy, that’s for sure.”
Last month’s ComRes/ITV News poll found that 44 per cent of voters thought Ukip was a “racist party” with just 36 per cent disagreeing, up 12 points from last April after revelations about views held by party members. “Any attempt to paint Ukip as a racist party is without foundation. It is untrue,” he stated. “What I am convinced of is that everyone who thinks we are racist is white. I don’t think the black community believe it at all.”
Farage rejects the view that support for his party is a protest vote. “In the past voting for Ukip was a way of sticking two bloody great fingers up... But that’s not the case any more. They see Ukip as offering hope.”
