madkins
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It feels like the BNP - only in blazers
Gaby Hinsliff reports on how anti-immigrant arguments could win the UK Independence party 12 European Parliament seats
Sunday May 30, 2004
The Observer
Welcome to the campaign trail with what Knapman - leader of the UK Independence party - claims is now Britain's fastest-growing party, capitalising on a myriad different half-understood tussles with Brussels.
Under the headline 'Immigration soaring' , a cartoon depicts 'overcrowded Britain', a shanty-town jumble of houses: across the sea, streams of eastern European immigrants pour into an entrance labelled 'Channel Funnel'. Inside, the leaflet a
ds: 'At last! A party that takes a firm line on immigration.'
While Westminster obsesses over a far smaller threat from the BNP, UKIP is poised to snatch up to 12 seats in the European P
arl
ament in June's elections with its anti-migrant policies - an end to econ
omic migration, drastic curbs on asylum-seeking, scares about immigrants overloading GPs' surgeries - and anti-European sentiment.
UKIP's contra-tactics are working. It says it has quadrupled its membership to 31,000: a recent YouGov poll put it three points ahead of the Liberal Democrats, only five behind Labour and 13 behind the Tories among those certain to vote in June - which YouGov's Peter Kellner believes is a better predictor of what would happen on a low turnout than conventional polling, which gives UKIP only 5 per cent.
The cover of UKIP's manifesto depicts three nappy-clad babies, adding: 'This is their country - make sure it stays that way.' Inside, it proclaims five essent
ial rights for voters, including freedom from Brussels, freedom from crime and freedom from 'overcrowding'. Britain, it says, is already 'bursting at the seams', its towns near-gridlocke
d, its hosp
ital waiting lists growing (official statistics say they are falling).
The influx of immigrants 'ad
ds considerably to our problems, increasing social tensions', it adds: 'We cannot sustain this increase, which compares with a city the size of Cambridge coming into Britain every six months it must stop!
Skara Brae,
madkins
Gaby Hinsliff reports on how anti-immigrant arguments could win the UK Independence party 12 European Parliament seats
Sunday May 30, 2004
The Observer
Welcome to the campaign trail with what Knapman - leader of the UK Independence party - claims is now Britain's fastest-growing party, capitalising on a myriad different half-understood tussles with Brussels.
Under the headline 'Immigration soaring' , a cartoon depicts 'overcrowded Britain', a shanty-town jumble of houses: across the sea, streams of eastern European immigrants pour into an entrance labelled 'Channel Funnel'. Inside, the leaflet a
ds: 'At last! A party that takes a firm line on immigration.'
While Westminster obsesses over a far smaller threat from the BNP, UKIP is poised to snatch up to 12 seats in the European P
arl
ament in June's elections with its anti-migrant policies - an end to econ
omic migration, drastic curbs on asylum-seeking, scares about immigrants overloading GPs' surgeries - and anti-European sentiment.
UKIP's contra-tactics are working. It says it has quadrupled its membership to 31,000: a recent YouGov poll put it three points ahead of the Liberal Democrats, only five behind Labour and 13 behind the Tories among those certain to vote in June - which YouGov's Peter Kellner believes is a better predictor of what would happen on a low turnout than conventional polling, which gives UKIP only 5 per cent.
The cover of UKIP's manifesto depicts three nappy-clad babies, adding: 'This is their country - make sure it stays that way.' Inside, it proclaims five essent
ial rights for voters, including freedom from Brussels, freedom from crime and freedom from 'overcrowding'. Britain, it says, is already 'bursting at the seams', its towns near-gridlocke
d, its hosp
ital waiting lists growing (official statistics say they are falling).
The influx of immigrants 'ad
ds considerably to our problems, increasing social tensions', it adds: 'We cannot sustain this increase, which compares with a city the size of Cambridge coming into Britain every six months it must stop!
Skara Brae,
madkins