UKIP's Nigel Farage promises political 'earthquake'
(about 2 hours later)
UKIP leader Nigel Farage has defended a poster campaign claiming millions of Europeans are after British jobs as "a hard-hitting reflection of reality".
UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage has said there will be "an earthquake" in politics if he triumphs in next month's European elections.
The posters - with messages including a warning British workers are "hit hard by unlimited cheap labour" - come ahead of May's European elections.
Launching UKIP's campaign, he argued his policies on immigration and the EU were "straightforward" and "simple".
UKIP leader Nigel Farage launched UKIP's campaign for the European and local elections in Sheffield.
He called posters claiming millions of European workers are after UK jobs "a hard-hitting reflection of reality".
Labour MP Mike Gapes attacked the UKIP posters as "racist".
Mr Farage said he employed his German wife as a secretary as "nobody else" could do the job, with its long hours.
"This is a campaign designed to sow fear and animosity and hatred towards immigrants," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
The European Parliament elections take place on Thursday, 22 May, with UKIP widely predicted to improve on its performance in 2009.
Mr Gapes, one of the leading backbench voices against a referendum on Britain's EU membership, claimed UKIP was following a pattern set by "far right" parties in Europe such as France's Front National and the Dutch Freedom Party. UKIP has publicly shunned both of those parties for their "extreme" views.
The party is calling for the UK to leave the EU and for a tightening up of immigration rules, with ultimate powers over this area of policy to be transferred from Brussels to Westminster.
'Stating facts'
'Get back control'
The Labour MP was one of a number of critics to express their dismay with the UKIP campaign on social media.
Launching his party's manifesto in Sheffield, Mr Farage said: "We want to have, post-EU, a sensible, open immigration policy that says we welcome people, but we have got to control the quantity and the quality of who comes to Britain.
Tory peer Lord Deben, after retweeting comments featuring pictures of the posters, wrote: "UKIP stands for the worst in human beings: our prejudice, selfishness, and fear."
"And at the moment we have turned our backs on talent from India and New Zealand because of an open door to Romania and Bulgaria. And that doesn't make any sense."
But UKIP's deputy leader Paul Nuttall denied the campaign was racist and inflammatory, telling Today: "It's stating facts.
He added: "So we are going to fight this campaign with a straightforward, simple manifesto, but a message to the British people which is this: These are the most important European elections that have ever been fought in this country.
"The fact of the matter is we have got wage compression in this country, we have uncontrolled borders to the whole of the European Union and the only way we are going to get control of our own borders is by leaving this club."
"We have got a chance, four-and-a-half weeks from now, of causing such a shock in the British political system that it will be nothing short of an earthquake. If UKIP win these elections, a referendum and an opportunity for us to get back control of our country will be one massive, massive step closer."
The poster campaign, backed up by newspaper and online adverts, is the party's biggest publicity drive to date. The party says there 764 posters "at this stage", mostly in urban areas and the north of England.
The party's posters include one showing a labourer begging for money, accompanied by the text "EU policy at work - British workers are hit hard by unlimited cheap labour".
Former Tory donor Paul Sykes is funding the £1.5m anti-EU campaign.
UK taxpayers fund the "celebrity lifestyle" of Eurocrats, warns one poster, while another asks: "26 million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose job are they after?"
One of the posters asks "who runs this country", adding: "75% of our laws are now made in Brussels."
Mr Farage said the posters were "a hard-hitting reflection of reality as it is experienced by millions of British people struggling to earn a living outside the Westminster bubble".
Another includes a picture of a labourer begging for money accompanied by the text "EU policy at work - British workers are hit hard by unlimited cheap labour".
"Are we going to ruffle a few feathers among the chattering classes? Yes," he said. "Are we bothered about that? Not in the slightest."
UK taxpayers fund the "celebrity lifestyle" of Eurocrats, warns another.
Mr Farage was asked by BBC political editor Nick Robinson why he employed his wife Kirsten, who is German, as his secretary, rather than employing a British person. He replied: "I don't think anybody else would want to be in my house at midnight, going through emails and getting me briefed for the next day."
And another poster has the text: "26 million people in Europe are looking for work - and whose job are they after?"
Pressed on whether his wife was an example of a European person taking a British person's job, he replied: "Nobody else could do that job - not unless I married them."
'Ruffle feathers'
Mr Farage said his wife earned a "modest salary for working extremely unsociable hours for me and being available up to seven days a week. It's a very different situation to a mass of hundreds of thousands of people coming in and flooding the lower ends of the labour market in Britain."
UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the posters were "a hard-hitting reflection of reality as it is experienced by millions of British people struggling to earn a living outside the Westminster bubble".
A number of critics expressed their dismay with UKIP's campaign on social media, with Conservative peer Lord Deben tweeting: "UKIP stands for the worst in human beings: our prejudice, selfishness, and fear."
"Are we going to ruffle a few feathers among the chattering classes? Yes," he said.
Labour's Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said UKIP had "lowered the tone of the European debate" and its stance was "hypocritical" because it had criticised Home Office vans carrying posters urging illegal immigrants to "Go home".
"Are we bothered about that? Not in the slightest."
However, former Tory donor Paul Sykes, who is funding UKIP's £1.5m anti-EU campaign, told the Daily Telegraph it was "an essential public awareness campaign" on the effects of Brussels.
Paul Sykes said in a statement that he was "supporting the biggest advertising campaign in UKIP's history to bring home to the British people what is at stake".
Mr Sykes is paying for the adverts directly instead of handing the cash to UKIP, allowing him to retain some editorial and financial control.
"The European elections are the most important for many years," he said.
He added that the other parties were "content to work within the existing Brussels straitjacket".
"An overwhelming victory for UKIP will break the political mould in the UK, forcing Labour and the Lib Dems to back a full-scale referendum and intensifying the popular pressure for that to be staged as early as general election day 2015," he said.
Editorial control
Mr Sykes, one of Britain's richest self-made businessmen, has a long history of funding Eurosceptic campaigns including a £1.4m donation to UKIP ahead of the 2004 European elections.
The BBC understands he is paying for the adverts directly instead of handing the cash to UKIP, allowing him to retain some editorial and financial control.
Mr Sykes also wanted to make sure his money was used for campaigns he supported and was not used up in general party administration, BBC Political Correspondent Alex Forsyth said.
She said he had helped to design the posters and was clear they should include messages he supported.
"I view UKIP's new advertising campaign - which I am funding to the tune of £1.5 million - as more of an essential public awareness campaign," Mr Sykes told the Telegraph.
"Its real purpose is to show the British people just how many of their democratic rights and powers successive governments have quietly smuggled away to Brussels," he added.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, meanwhile, has accused Mr Farage of being the sort of professional politician he has himself criticised and ridiculed what he said was Mr Farage's claim to be leading a movement of "insurgents" against the EU and the other UK parties..
"Of all Nigel Farage's far-fetched claims - and there are many - the most outlandish is the idea that UKIP's call for an exit is the insurgents' battle cry," the Lib Dem leader wrote in the Guardian.
"He and I were elected to the European Parliament on the same day in 1999. I left after five years. The UKIP leader is still there."
And he criticised UKIP as "simply the fresh face of a long-standing Eurosceptic establishment, supported by many in the Tory party and significant parts of the press".
