Letter to the editor ISN
Dear Editor
The piece by Hannah Strange (UK faces electoral threat from far right - 3 May 2006) includes a comment by Tony Travers of the London School of Economics. He claims that the UK Independence Party are, "far right" and brackets the party with the BNP. This is wrong and offensive. The UK Independence Party is a non racist and non sectarian party with broadly libertarian ideals of personal and national independence. We believe in freeing our people from state control and our country from the control of the undemocratic and bureaucratic European Union. Recent opinion polls put support for our position on Europe at around 50% of the UK population. Indeed tomorrow's Eurobarometer poll will show that even the EU accepts that only 31% of the UK population supports it.
How do you square that with the description far right? At local elections our message is one of greater degrees of independence from centralised authority and a strong direct democracy agenda that takes power out of the hands of officials and gives it to local people. Again not a traditional far right approach.
We do question unlimited free immigration and the poverty of the multiculturalist agenda, but there again so does Trevor Philips of the CRE and Archbishop John Setanu.
Maybe next time your correspondent would speak to us rather than reprinting tired and inaccurate cliches.
Yours sincerely
Nigel Farage MEP
Leader of the UK Independence Party Group
in the European Parliament
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