Nigel Farage once asked for the endorsement of the former Conservative MP Enoch Powell, who warned that immigration could lead to ‘rivers of blood’ in 1968.
Letters unearthed from a university archive by the Telegraph found Farage unsuccessfully requested the backing of the rightwinger Powell in 1994 and Ukip later twice asked the politician to stand as a candidate for the party.
Farage has long openly admired Powell, once calling him his political hero. While acknowledging that Powell got it wrong about people of different nationalities and races being unable to mix, the Ukip leader has said the central thrust of Powell’s arguments about immigration hold true.
On Thursday night, Russell Brand, the comedian and campaigner, accused Farage of being a “pound shop Enoch Powell” who needed to be watched carefully.
Powell was sacked from the shadow cabinet after his famous speech to the West Midlands Conservative Centre in 1968 at which he warned against immigration from the Commonwealth and new race relations laws.
The speech said: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”
He left the Conservative party in 1974 over its decision to back joining the European Economic Area and then won a seat in Northern Ireland for the Ulster Unionists.
A Ukip aide said Farage had asked for the endorsement because of Powell’s position as a renowned eurosceptic, having urged Tories to vote Labour to keep Britain out of the EEC. It was nothing to do with Powell’s rivers of blood ideas, he added.
