The leader of Britain’s rising right-wing anti-EU party yesterday promised a political “earthquake” with victory in next year’s European elections, a challenge that could threaten David Cameron’s hopes of securing a second term as Prime Minister.
Nigel Farage, head of the anti-mass immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP), said it would overturn decades of dominance by Britain’s main three parties, the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Once derided by Cameron as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”, UKIP has increased its support to around 10 per cent, according to pollsters YouGov, after taking just three per cent of the vote in the last national election in 2010 and failing to secure a single parliamentary seat.
Farage said if UKIP wins a majority of the UK seats in the 2014 election for European Parliament it would effectively be a condemnation of “open-door immigration” and Britain’s membership in the 28-nation bloc, which the main parties generally support.
UKIP had a 16.5 per cent share of the vote at the last European elections in 2009, securing 13 of Britain’s 72 seats.
“We can come first and cause an earthquake,” Farage told his party’s annual conference on its 20th anniversary. “We’re changing the face of British politics.”
Cameron has already promised to hold an “in/out referendum” before the end of 2017 in a move seen as an attempt to placate Conservative Eurosceptics and take the advantage from UKIP.
UKIP wants to leave the EU immediately. Farage, 49, rejected the idea that withdrawal from the EU, Britain’s biggest trading partner, would damage Britain’s economy and global standing.
Yesterday he said immigrants to Britain had caused a crimewave, milked the welfare system and strained demand for housing, healthcare and schools.
“I shall get severely criticised for this, but I have to say that there is an even darker side to the opening of the door,” he said.
“London is already experiencing a Romanian crimewave.”
A former commodities trader who cultivates an image as a man of the people, posing for pictures with a cigarette and a pint of beer, Farage denies being racist or extremist.
UKIP secured nearly one in four of the votes cast at elections for local government jobs in May, buoyed by growing distrust of an EU that many see as a threat to their sovereignty.
Surveys suggest it will do even better in the European elections next year.
However, under Britain’s “winner takes all” system for national elections, it may still struggle to secure its first seat in the British Parliament in the next vote in 2015.