One man's mission to reduce UK immigration

The UK Independence Party is hoping to win its first seat in the British Parliament next week, after a rapid rise in support for its anti-immigration policy.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage

Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage. Source: AFP

It opposes the amount of migrants arriving in Britain through the open borders of the European Union, and the man leading the charge is its colourful, and controversial, leader Nigel Farage, who Dateline profiled in a special report on this week's program.

“We are now signed up to a system where 485 million people have the right to come and live and work and settle in Britain,” he tells Mark Davis as he follows him at work.

“We have no control over quantity, we have no control over quality, we can’t even deport criminals.”

Already well known for his controversies and gaffes, British politics didn’t appear to take Farage quite so seriously until his party won 24 seats in the recent European elections.

Now, he and his colleagues are at the heart of the parliament they oppose.

“It’s almost heresy for someone like me to come here and, irony of ironies, take a front seat position in the parliament,” he says. “I mean it’s absolutely hilarious.”

But it’s no laughing matter for voters.

“How can we compete with other countries in Europe if they are controlling our power base?” one voter asks Mark.

“I’m not being xenophobic or anything like that, this immigration with just a little tiny country,” says another.

And Nigel Farage is in no doubt about the heart of his party’s support base.

“I think in upper middle class dinner parties, if you said you were UKIP you probably wouldn’t get invited back,” he says.

“But I think among the mass of the population it’s seen to be perfectly reasonable, decent, respectable thing for us to say.”

Next week, UKIP will be challenging two by-elections, with polls predicting a win for them at Clacton in eastern England, where the UKIP candidate defected from the Conservatives.

And in recent days, another Conservative MP has made the same move, with UKIP already looking ahead to the full national election in Britain next year.

“The goal’s clear, we want to hold the balance of power in the next parliament,” he says. “When I said to people three years ago we could win the Euro elections, they all laughed at me. Well…”

See Dateline’s profile of Nigel Farage in full above and read more on the Dateline website.




Share

3 min read

Published

Updated

By SBS Dateline

Source: SBS


Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world