Donald Macintyre's Sketch: Farage fires the starting gun for Ukip’s manifesto
Unlike in 2010, Ukip has a ‘credible plan’. Just don’t mention the foreign Aids patients
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Ukip venue-wise, the Thurrock Hotel isn’t quite in the White Cliffs of Dover or the Canvey Island Movie Starr cinema class. But it’s got something. Not every hotel offers its guests (no kidding) a “Fawlty Towers ‘Dinner is Served’ Experience”, for example.
Luckily such diversions were redundant on Wednesday. For this was the Big One, the launch of the party programme which Nigel Farage assured us he had actually read – as opposed to the 2010 one he (accurately) described as “drivel”.
The excitement was reinforced by parliamentary candidate Herbert Crossman (great name for a Ukip stalwart) wandering round with two flashing red LED scrolling signs on each lapel repeatedly proclaiming “Welcome to the Ukip manifesto launch” like a train announcement.
Who said the party was stuck in the pre-digital Fifties? In fact, it’s so techno-minded that a manifesto picture (illustrating the education section) of a reassuringly bespectacled deputy leader Paul Nuttall in front of his bookshelves has been – albeit rather obviously – photoshopped to make his library seem even more richly packed with improving volumes than it is.
Farage insisted that the party had a “credible plan for immigration”, undaunted by the manifesto’s author Suzanne Evans having seemingly suggested earlier in the day that foreign farm labourers could come in after all if they were “wanted”. Sensibly, given that Brits don’t seem to be gagging for back-breaking jobs like carrot picking in Lincolnshire.
The red-headed Ms Evans, a member of the party’s Sloane Ranger tendency and mysteriously wearing an elegant black coat on the warmest day of the year so far, kept repeating that the manifesto had been independently costed.
Just as well since it envisages slashing taxes and increasing spending on everything from the NHS to “rebuilding” Britain’s army – including a shiny new military hospital – in return for junking HS2, the Barnett formula and EU membership.
(No doubt the “disclaimer” in the accompanying glossy Centre for Economic and Business Research costing document warning that the authors would not be “liable for any loss or damage incurred through the use of this report” is just routine.) Ukip was not anti-immigrant, she insisted, just anti the “immigration system”.
The most theatrical moment followed The Daily Telegraph’s Christopher Hope asking why there was only one black face pictured in the manifesto (and that was in the section on overseas aid, which Ukip proposes to slash).
There were angry groans and boos from the Ukip audience – as there had been when Farage was also asked about his opposition to foreign Aids patients coming to Britain. Then suddenly, as if from nowhere, a posse of ethnic minority Ukip loyalists stood up, triumphantly pointing at themselves amid general uproar. Which meant Farage didn’t exactly have to answer the question.
Farage was genially coy when asked about recent overtures he had reportedly made to the Tories about post-election arrangements. He hadn’t “formally” done any such thing, he insisted. What about informally? Well, “I meet people in the social environment”, he said, adding with a nicely Faragist flourish: “I’m a gregarious cove.”
Nor would he say that David Cameron’s removal was a “red line” in such negotiations, saying witheringly instead: “If I was a Conservative, I would want to get rid of David Cameron. Next time round they may choose a chap who is a Conservative.” Someone like Farage perhaps?
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