Ukip's manifesto has a 'half black' person in it as well as a 'fully black' person, says Nigel Farage
Ukip leader defends charge manifesto is dominated by white faces
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Your support makes all the difference.Nigel Farage has rejected claims that Ukip’s manifesto is dominated by white faces, arguing that there is in fact a “half black” person pictured in it in addition to another “fully black” individual.
Coverage of the manifesto’s launch was dominated by an incident in which Ukip activists jeered a journalist who asked why the policy document only included one black face – a woman in traditional African dress on the page about overseas development.
But when asked about the incident today on the radio station Magic, Mr Farage said: “Well firstly there was one fully black person. There was another one of our leading spokesman who is half black and that didn't get a mention. So the premise was wrong.”
Mr Farage defended his party’s record on race, arguing that other parties did not practice what they preached.
“We're a non-racist, non-sectarian political party but we don't have all female quotas, we don't have all black quotas, we treat everybody as being equal,” he said.
“Over 10% of our candidates come from BME backgrounds. We're probably more diverse in our membership than some of the other parties who talk about all of this in a sort of 'holier than thou' way.”
Mr Farage appears to have been referring to Steven Woolfe, who is the head of Ukip’s Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) group.
Mr Woolfe, who is also the party’s finance spokesperson, is of mixed ethnic heritage. His images appears on page 10 of the manifesto.
The Ukip leader said earlier this year that his party wants to scrap laws that prevented racial discrimination.
Asked whether he would retain the laws during the Channel 4 documentary, Things We Won't Say About Race That Are True, Mr Farage said: “No, because … we as a party are colour-blind.”
A poll by YouGov conducted in February this year found that 48% of Ukip supporters admitted to being prejudiced “against people of other races”.
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