Farage accused of smearing Ukip defector amid attack on his integrity

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/25/ukip-farage-smear-claim-defector-attack-tories

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The Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, has been accused of engaging in a “desperate” smear operation after he launched a withering attack on the integrity of one of his MEPs who defected to the Tories.

Grant Shapps, the Conservative chairman, said claims that Ukip was about to suspend Amjad Bashir before he jumped ship were “complete nonsense” and that the Conservatives were satisfied Bashir had a clean record.

“[This is] absolute desperate stuff by Ukip, who discovered that he was defecting and then came out with all this,” he said.

But Bashir’s credibility as a Conservative champion suffered a blow when George Galloway claimed that he had been a council candidate for the far-left Respect party before the 2012 elections before being deselected. “Clearly Bashir does not have any real political principles or commitment, only naked opportunism and self-interest,” Galloway said.

Farage told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show that Ukip had become increasingly alarmed by Bashir’s behaviour and that other Ukip MEPs had been “begging” him to get rid of Bashir in October and November last year.

He said Bashir “didn’t tell us the truth about the employment of illegal immigrants in his business”. He also alleged there were “some big open questions in Brussels about money” involving the MEP and that Bashir had associated with political extremists from Pakistan.

Farage said the final straw came on Friday, when there was a hustings meeting in West Yorkshire “where gerrymandering appears to have taken place”.

In a subsequent television interview, Bashir said the extremist allegations related to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a legitimate political party in Pakistan which he had met in connection with his role as a member of the European parliament’s human rights committee.

As for the gerrymandering allegations, he said he did not even attend the meeting in Keighley on Friday to choose Ukip council candidates where this supposedly took place. “I deny it completely,” he said, adding that it was “a bit rich” for Farage to accuse him of this given Farage’s own role in getting his favourites selected as candidates.

A Conservative spokesman said that, although a restaurant run by Bashir’s sons had been fined for employing illegal immigrants, Farage himself actually defended Bashir when this first emerged, saying that Bashir was not running it.

The spokesman said he could not comment on the Brussels money allegations because there were no allegations to respond to. Asked to explain what Farage was talking about, a Ukip spokeswoman was unable to provide further details.

Ukip sources claim Bashir a meeting on Tuesday to discuss his conduct and that, after he failed to turn up, he was sent an email saying he was being suspended. But a Tory source said Bashir did meet Farage on Tuesday, at the European parliament, where Farage asked him to stand as a parliamentary candidate in the election.

Asked about the Galloway claim, a spokesman for Bashir said he had never had anything to do with Respect.

Farage used his set-piece appearance on Marr’s show to announce that Ukip wanted to use the money saved from leaving the EU to put an extra £3bn into the NHS. But his interview was largely taken up with having to respond to the damaging revelations.

Farage was also asked about two revelations involving Matthew Richardson, Ukip’s party secretary and a member of its national executive council.

The Sunday Mirror published quotes from two speeches Richardson gave in the US in 2010 to conservative audiences, in which he described the NHS as “the biggest waste of money … in the UK” and said it was at the heart of “the Reichstag bunker of socialism”.

And the Sunday Times revealed that Richardson told a meeting last month: “I’ve said before, people talk about Ukip being bigots. There are hundreds of thousands of bigots in the United Kingdom and they deserve representation.”

On the bigot comment, Farage said Richardson and colleagues had been having a drink after a long meeting and that Richardson was just using a joke that the late Tory MP Eric Forth used to tell.

And, on the NHS comments, Farage said Richardson was a member of the Conservatives when he made them.

Farage, who in the past has called for the NHS to be replaced with an insurance-based system, said Ukip had had an extensive debate about health policy and that it was committed to a free NHS, funded by taxation.

Ukip would put an extra £3bn a year into the health service by using the money saved from not having to pay for EU membership, he said. He also claimed that Ukip could save £2bn a year by tackling health tourism and said the party would not charge tuition fees for students doing medical degrees.

Farage said it was very unlikely that Ukip would join a formal coalition with the Conservatives after the election, but he offered new details of the conditions he would demand in return for Ukip supporting the Conservatives in a less formal arrangement.

He would insist that only British citizens could vote in the in/out referendum, he said. “Because at the moment there are four million or so EU citizens living in Britain who I do not think should be allowed to vote in that referendum,” he said.

He also said he would call for an immediate referendum and demand equal spending limits for both sides.

Farage also said he would regard Ukip getting three or four seats at the election as a good result, and dismissed claims that he was angling for a seat in the House of Lords. “I have never heard such rot in my life,” he said.