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Farage unveils first general election poster

March 31, 2015 at 4:24 pm

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence party (Ukip), declared that immigration has left towns and cities in Britain almost unrecognisable for many people over the last decade. He was speaking at the unveiling of Ukip’s first general election poster, an image of the white cliffs of Dover with three escalators running up them.

The Ukip leader said he was making immigration the central plank of his campaign.

According to the Guardian, when challenged about the economic benefits of migration and its contribution to the economy, Farage said: “Even if somebody argues overall our GDP has grown, there is more to this country and the makeup of communities and our way of life frankly than just GDP figures.”

Standing in front of his new billboard in a pub car park in St Margaret’s Bay, near Dover, Farage argued that immigration does not just put pressure on wages, schools and hospitals but also stressed that immigration is changing the culture of the UK.

When asked if he could name any places changed culturally by immigration, Farage said: “Well, we haven’t got time but if we went to virtually every town up eastern England and spoke to people about how they felt their town or city had changed in the last 10 to 15 years there is a deep level of discomfort because when you have immigration at this sort of level then integration doesn’t happen.”

The Ukip leader also gave a new figure – about 30,000 – for how many migrants he would like to see coming to the UK each year. The party previously promised to cap numbers at 50,000 before Farage abandoned the target and said he would like to see it return to normality, or a range of 15,000 to 50,000.

He also emphasised the party’s policy of requiring migrants to have health insurance for the first five years and refusing entry to those with life-threatening diseases.

“There was a hell of a storm over the Aids thing six to nine months ago but at the moment you can come to Britain from anywhere in the world and be tested and get the drugs for Aids. Those drugs are about £25,000 per year, per person. A vast majority of British people don’t want that expenditure … We all want to be good neighbours and friendly with the people in our street but generally we put the interests of our family first,” he said.


This news item was first published by theguardian.