Ahead of tonight's ITV debate, here's a reminder why Farage is no friend of workers
Nigel Farage and David Cameron will answer questions tonight on ITV about the European Union ahead of the June 23 referendum.
Farage is likely to pose as an enemy of ‘elites’ in Britain and Europe who crush the average worker while living the high life.
Immigration will also feature heavily. Leavers claim they want more people coming from Commonwealth countries and beyond after they ditch European free movement.
Here’s a quick reminder ahead of tonight’s debate why no-one should be fooled by Farage’s act as a friend of the little guy:
1. Nigel Farage wants to cut taxes for the rich. UKIP’s general election manifesto in 2015 called for raising the threshold for the 40 per cent tax rate to £55,000, the personal allowance to £13,000, and abolishing inheritance tax.
It said the party’s ‘longer term aspiration’ was for cutting the top rate of tax to 40 per cent, and for ‘restoring the personal allowance to those earning over £100,000’.
2. His ‘ordinary bloke’ act is a fraud. Don’t let the pub landlord image fool you. Farage is no man of the people. He’s the son of a stockbroker, educated at Dulwich College (a public school), and worked as a commodity broker in the City before entering politics.
He’s now an overpaid Brussells Eurocrat part-time MEP earning at least £76,000 – nearly three times the average UK salary. And his political campaigns have been bankrolled by billionaires like Richard Desmond and more recently millionaire Arron Banks.
3. His politics are essentially racist. Since becoming UKIP leader, Farage has poisoned British politics with his special brew of xenophobia. Just last year he claimed Africans were bringing HIV into the country and mooching off the NHS. Before that he warned London was experiencing a ‘Romanian crime wave’, and later said he wouldn’t feel comfortable if Romanians moved in next door.
Just this week he’s raised the spectre of Muslim rapists if we remain in the EU.
Bigotry has been a running theme in his party, as has a sustained attack on women’s rights. Lest we forget, racism and sexism are enemies of the working class.
4. He wants to scrap workers’ rights. UKIP’s manifesto wants to repeal ‘Labour’s Human Rights legislation’, probably the Human Rights Act, and ‘amend’ the EU working time directive, ‘because it actively restricts the British work ethos and therefore our economy’.
He’s also been back and forth about whether he wants to replace the NHS with an insurance-based health scheme.
5. He also wants to cut foreign aid. UKIP’s manifesto called for cutting foreign aid from 0.7 to 0.2 per cent of GDP, and for abolishing the Department for International Development, (along with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Energy and Climate Change). No help for the ‘little guy’ abroad then.
6. He wants to restrict all immigration, not just European. Far from wanting to replace EU migration with people from the Commonwealth, (who no doubt will be thrilled with the cuts to foreign aid and ‘African HIV’ speeches), Farage’s manifesto for 2015 was quite clear about restricting all immigration, using visas, withholding welfare and housing rights, and introducing an ‘Australian-style points system’.
7. He helped drive this EU campaign into the ditch. If you’re wondering why a debate about important political and social issues has turned into one about whether 75 million Turks are about to storm the continent, the horse’s mouth contains the answer. Farage was quoted in the Guardian last week:
‘Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, who is not a member of the official Vote Leave campaign, said the position taken by Johnson, Gove and Patel was vindication for UKIP.
‘Everything I’ve said on immigration, for which I’ve been condemned, is now mainstream.”
Adam Barnett is staff writer for Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter @AdamBarnett13
6 Responses to “Nigel Farage is no enemy of ‘the elites’ – as his record shows”
CR
Farage is on the periphery of the national debate.
What is important is that now we have Labour lining up with Cameron to support the neo-Liberal and capitalist EU against the real interests of the British working class who find their living standards kept low by uncontrolled immigration.
Jimmy Glesga
CR is correct any dissent will be met Greek style. The lefties who support the EU are lying to the teeth. There is no way this mega corrupt Union can be changed. Vote Out.
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If the goal is to demonstrate that Farage is an enemy of “the working class”, six of these points are irrelevant. To take point 1), for example, tax cuts for the rich are good for the rich, but that is not at all the same as being bad for the poor.
That leaves point 4). Except that the only “workers right” mentioned is the Working Time Directive, a concern of almost no one. I had a full-time minimum wage job when that came in – nothing changed.
And I don’t see why an insurance-based health care system is supposed to be an attack on the working class. Almost every country in the Western world has one. Try to name a country in western europe that has copied our system. If you can’t think of one, what does that tell you about how our system is seen?
NMac
Farage is indeed an old fashioned right-wing, racist reactionary, in the same mould as the pre-WW2 Oswald Mosley. The fact that his motley UKIP gang is supported by ex-BNP members says it all. I personally have always thought of him as an extremely unpleasant addition to the political scene. To “Jimmy Glesga” I would say the hotbed of corruption in Britain is the Tory Party – which of course is why it is under investigation by at least 19 police forces around the country.
Nigel Farage resigns - but will keep taking £76,000 from the taxpayer | Left Foot Forward
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