Nigel Farage has hit out at the “soft Eurosceptics” who want to sideline him from the campaign to leave the European Union and listen to David Cameron’s arguments for staying, amid signs of a growing public rift among those pushing for a UK exit.
Speaking at the Ukip conference on Friday, Farage said winning the EU referendum was dearer to his heart than all other political goals, telling activists that now was the moment to “put country before party”.
But the Ukip leader urged those who genuinely wanted to leave the EU to start campaigning for that instead of waiting to hear about Cameron’s deal from Europe.
With this in mind, Farage threw his weight behind the Leave.EU campaign – which is run by the millionaire party donor Arron Banks – and not the cross-party For Britain campaign in which Ukip’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, is involved. These two groups are both vying for the Electoral Commission designation as the formal out campaign. The For Britain campaign is still officially waiting to hear what deal Cameron proposes.
“There has been speculation about which group will get the official designation for the ‘leave the EU’ campaign,” Farage said. “But as I see it at the moment there is only one group that is absolutely clear what it stands for.
“Ukip will now stand hand in hand with Leave.EU. We will work together as a united force of eurosceptic groups that want to leave the EU.”
Speaking separately at the party conference in Doncaster, Carswell said it would be “remiss of us not to be talking to both campaigns”.
He also pointed out that Dominic Cummings and Matthew Elliott, of For Britain, had both run successful referendum campaigns in the past.
“We are at a racecourse and if I were a gambling man, which I’m not, I would bet on the side that has form,” he said.
However, Carswell also applauded Banks for hiring a professional US political advisory firm, Goddard Gunster, and said Ukip would support whichever campaign received the official designation.
Attendance at the Ukip conference is down on last year after the party failed to break through at the general election, with 4m votes but just one MP.
The conference was also overshadowed by a row following comments by the newspaper commentator Katie Hopkins, who suggested the photograph of drowned three-year-old Syrian Alan Kurdi was “staged” and that the members of the House of Lords should be gassed.
Asked about the comments, Farage said he did not know whether the photo was staged but he doubted it was.
However, on the main stage, the conference was dominated by Europe and immigration, with Farage saying the referendum was the opportunity of a lifetime for British people to get their country back.
But he also criticised the “soft Eurosceptic posh Tories who think they should lead the referendum campaign” and who were waiting to see what Cameron’s renegotiation strategy with Europe yielded before they committed to campaigning to leave. This is the position of the For Britain group.
“There are some, as I would call them, ‘soft Eurosceptics’ who have suggested our best policy is to stand still and let Dave do his negotiation and see what he comes back with,” he said. “There are even some soft Eurosceptics who think we should be pushing for a two-referendum strategy ... But to wait would be a terrible, terrible mistake.”
He said the Banks campaign had managed to unite Eurosceptics who were clear they wanted the UK to leave Europe. Earlier on Friday, Farage said public concern about immigration had increased chances of a “Brexit”. “I used to think we had 33% chance of winning but now I think it is 50%,” he said.
Banks has dozens of people working in a call centre, who have signed up more than 120,000 supporters. He has also hired Goddard Gunster after Lynton Crosby, the former Tory strategist, reportedly turned down a £2m offer to join the campaign.
It has been widely seen as an attempt to challenge For Britain, which is dominated by Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, Tory donors and a handful of Labour Eurosceptics, as well as Carswell. Many in this group are known to harbour concerns that Farage could be too divisive to win wider support for the out campaign but publicly it says it wishes Banks well.
Elsewhere at the conference, activists were shown two films about migrants in Calais, with Ukip’s defence spokesman, Mike Hookem, arguing that 90% of those trying to get to the UK were not refugees butmigrants. He associated the migrants with criminality, and branded the situation in northern France “totally out of control”.
.jpg?w=600)
