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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew

Farage uses 'piggy in the middle' jibe to mock Cameron's EU stance - Politics live

Nigel Farage at the Ukip conference
Nigel Farage at the Ukip conference Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Afternoon summary

  • Nigel Farage has mocked David Cameron as “piggy in the middle” while attacking his stance on Europe. (See 1.41pm)
  • Farage has claimed that “the tide has turned” in relation to Britain’s relationship with the EU, and that the refugee crisis has helped boost support for EU withdrawal. Staying in is starting to look riskier than leaving, he told a briefing.
  • Farage has criticised Business for Britain for not being fully committed to EU withdrawal. Ironically, in the light of the way he used his speech to complain about how Eurosceptic groups have been historically riven by division, he said that he expected the new Leave.eu to become the official lead group for the out campaign and criticised Business for Britain for not engaging with it.t Sources close to Business for Britain dismiss this, suggesting Leave.eu is little more than a Ukip front. (See 4.31pm.) Business for Britain campaigners are setting up a new cross-party group due to launch soon. But Farage claimed that, by delaying, they were giving David Cameron a head start.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Q: If Banks is not associated with Ukip, why is he here in the room?

Because Ukip and Leave.eu are now joined, says Farage.

And that’s it. The briefing is over.

Q: If you are not going to lead the out campaign, who should?

Whoever the best person is, says Farage.

He says there may be a TV debate. But there may not be one.

And it is important to have lots of voices on the out side, he says.

Q: Why won’t you work with Business for Britain?

Farage says he invited them to the conference. But they are not yet committed to leaving the EU.

Arron Banks is here. He says he has had lunch with Matthew Elliott, who runs Business for Britain. He tried to get Elliott to engage with Leave.eu, says Banks. But Elliott refused to engage.

Farage says these are very able people. But they have refused to engage. By not committing now to campaigning for out, they are giving the prime minister a head start.

Farage says he thinks the Electoral Commission will designate Leave.eu as the main campaign. They have the support of six groups, he says.

Q: Did you hear about the row between Arron Banks and Douglas Carswell?

I heard about it, says Farage.

Q: Are you happy to have a donor threatening your MP with desselection?

Farage says Banks is not in a position to threaten Carswell with desselection.

He says Carswell may have a problem with Banks. And Banks may have some “residual loyalty” to his former Tory colleagues.

Q: You said some time ago that you did not think you would be the best person to speak for the out campaign in debates. Do you still think that?

Farage says that will be up to Leave.uk

Q: People see it as a Ukip campaign.

Farage says you could say that Business for Britain is also backed by Ukip money.

Q: Do you see events as moving your way?

Farage says he thinks “the tide has turned” this summer.

The migration crisis has helped to change public opinion, he says.

It is beginning to look riskier to stay part of this than to leave the EU, he says.

Nigel Farage's briefing

Nigel Farage is holding a briefing.

He says that he expects Business for Britain to join Leave.eu.

He predicts that Leave.eu will attract so much public support that people will feel obliged to support it.

In his speech Nigel Farage claimed that Leave.eu, the new out group, was the organisation that the Electoral Commission should pick as the lead campaign group on the out side. (See 1.41pm.)

But Business for Britain and those allied to it do not accept that. One source said Leave.eu was essentially “a Ukip campaign” and little more. Business for Britain is affiliated to the out campaign which has not formally launched yet but which is being run by Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings. The Conservative group Conservatives for Britain is also part of this coalition. One source involved with it said it would be better qualified to meet the Electoral Commission criteria (see 2.47pm) than Leave.eu. “You need to have cross-party support, you need to have financial backing, and you need to have the ability to campaign,” he said. He questioned whether Leave.eu would meet these conditions as well as the new organisation.

Ukip’s isn’t the only party conference kicking off today. The Green party is also gathering for its largest ever autumn conference, in the same venue that the Liberal Democrats welcomed their new leader Tim Farron last week.

The party’s leader Natalie Bennett told an audience of around 500 people in Bournemouth that global politics was moving towards policies the Greens have consistently pursued for decades.

Bennett said historians would look back and see 2015 as the beginning of great political change, “the year that a fundamental shift in politics saw it move away from the mantra of ‘greed is good, the environment doesn’t matter’ that rose with Margaret Thatcher and will fall with David Cameron”.

Greek leader Alexis Tsipras this week in his victory speech thanked the European Greens for their support for a different kind of Europe. The clear re-election of Syriza in Greece and the strength of Podemos in Spain are just two examples of the future of politics in Europe.

Bennett, who has been the party’s leader since 2012, said that Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide victory in the Labour leadership election, the Green party’s best ever election result in May and the domination of the SNP in Scotland were all evidence that politics was moving towards the Green party’s position.

The party’s position as the more leftwing alternative to Labour has been thrown into question by the election of Corbyn, who champions many traditional Green policies.

In a veiled reference to the divisions that have emerged in the Labour party since Corbyn’s win, Bennett said: “In the Green party we know what our policies are, we know that our values and principles are solid, unmovable foundations. We don’t tack around with the political winds: we stand up for what we believe in.”

It would not be a Ukip conference without some sort of row, and today’s altercation has been between Douglas Carswell, the sole Ukip MP, and Arron Banks, the Ukip donor who has set up Leave.eu. The BBC’s Robin Brant has the details.

And this is what Banks is saying about it.

Smoking ban has done more to destroy working class communities than pit closures, says Aker

During a fringe event in Doncaster entitled “Who stands up for the working class?” Tim Aker, Ukip MEP, made a rather startling claim: that Labour’s smoking ban has done more to destroy working class communities than mine closures.

The Labour party as people perceive it doesn’t exist any more. It ceased being a Labour party when it ceased actually representing people, and started lecturing working people.

You’ve only got to look at one of the most damaging things the Labour party has done. They say all the time, despite ignoring the facts, that it was the pit closures which destroyed working class communities. I would put it to you that the smoking ban has destroyed more communities than any pit closure has done. Because when people don’t have a place to meet, when they don’t have a place to socialise they retreat in.

Updated

Here is a Guardian video with highlights from Nigel Farage’s speech.

BBC 'only interested in anti-Ukip stories', says Ukip MEP William Dartmouth

William Dartmouth’s speech is now on the Ukip website. Here is the passage where he attacks the BBC (or the main passage where he attacks the BBC - there were plenty more.)

The BBC is a statutory corporation operating under a Royal Charter. It is paid for, by what is, in effect, a compulsory poll tax on us all. The BBC Charter states it has, and I quote, a “mission to inform, educate...”

But on the European Union, “the mission” is thrown out the window. Basically the BBC is only interested in carrying stories which put us and our cause in a bad light. The BBC replaces its mission to inform by a mission, to make as much mischief as possible, for all of us who are eurosceptics.

We saw during the general election campaign the over the top interview with Nigel as UKIP Party Leader, the audiences at Question Time, the loaded interruptions from the Dimbleby brothers, and the rest. Being in favour of a European superstate runs through the very DNA of the BBC.

The evidence is clear. The BBC is already doing everything it can to stack the odds in the referendum. It is high time this stopped.

Sadly, the British mainstream media behave like sheep. They don’t even have the independence of lambs. They follow the establishment line.

If you are looking for an alternative take on the Ukip conference, Sam Hooper is also covering it on a live blog at Semi-Partisan Politics. It’s more partisan than this blog, but it’s insightful, and well worth reading.

Ukip says it would spend an extra £5bn putting up public sector pay

Mark Reckless, the former MP who is now Ukip’s director of policy development and its economic spokesman, gave a speech to the conference a few minutes ago, and he had a policy to announce.

At the election Ukip proposed abolishing inheritance tax. George Osborne, the chancellor, has not adopted this idea in full, but in the summer budget he did raise the inheritance tax threshold and Reckless said this amounted to a partial victory for his party.

As a consequence, he said, the party was dropping the commitment to abolishing inheritance tax in full and instead identifying an alternative use of the £5bn it would cost - raising public sector pay, which is currently subject to a 1% annual cap on pay rises. Reckless explained:

If public sector pay rises at that 1% a year, or barely 5% over the parliament, then the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast implies that private sector pay will increase by 25% over the same period.

5% v 25%. How can that be fair? How could we recruit and retain the quality staff we need for our public services? Why do the Conservatives so dislike people who work in the public sector? And who will defend those public servants when Labour is riven by extremism and division?

Ukip will. It is not just people in the private sector who deserve a pay rise but public servants too.

And unlike the other parties, Ukip can find the money to pay for fairer treatment of public sector workers, from the £55m a day we give the EU.

So I have an announcement.

Instead of using £5bn of the Brexit dividend to abolish remaining inheritance tax, Ukip would use that £5bn to give public sector workers a pay rise.

We would end the government’s 1% pay cap in the public sector, except for those at the top end who already earn more than £50,000. The extra £5bn could fund 2% rises every year, or one 5% pay rise above the government’s policy.

The party says this would particularly benefit Wales, where 21.4% of people work in the public sector, compared to 16.1% in England.

The Electoral Commission has not yet issued detailed guidance as to how it will choose the lead campaign organisations on the in and the out side in the EU referendum if there are rival candidates. But, according to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act, it should choose the organisation that “appears ... to represent to the greatest extent those campaigning for that outcome”.

(It’s not just Katie Hopkins; James Delingpole has a claim to this title too.)

The Ukip conference is back from its lunch break, and the first speaker is Andrew Allison from the Freedom Association. He is talking about its campaign against the TV licence.

As Nigel Farage arrived for his speech they were playing The Final Countdown - by Europe.

Nigel Farage's speech - Summary and analysis

On the World at One just now Mark Mardell described Nigel Farage’s speech as “barnstorming”. But, at the risk of sounding like William Dartmouth (see 12pm), I’m afraid I have to disagree. Farage can rabble-rouse as well as anyone but this speech was uncharacteristically underpowered. The peroration was non-existent, the argument was often cursory and a key argument was pivoted around a dodgy joke. It wasn’t a speech to alarm the pro-Europeans.

Here are the key points.

  • Farage mocked David Cameron as “piggy in the middle” as he attacked his stance on Europe. He said there were three positions in the referendum; those in favour for EU membership, those against, and “soft Eurosceptics” like Cameron who posed as anti-European but who were set to back staying in after the renegotiation. At this point he deployed his joke about the Ashcroft claim about Cameron’s alleged student debauchery.

And then we’ve got the prime minister, or should I call him in this context, piggy in the middle.

The joke got a mixed reception in the hall, prompting Farage to say: “Well, I enjoyed it anyway.” Farage went on to say that Cameron was not asking for “anything substantial at all” in the renegotiation.

He is not asking for anything substantial at all. Nothing. Nothing. He isn’t asking for us to get back control over open borders and the free movement of people to nearly half a billion. He is not asking for us to get back the supremacy of British law in our own parliament and indeed that our own supreme court should be supreme. He isn’t even asking that our membership fee of £55m a day should be reduced. And he certainly isn’t asking for anything that the British public, in a full debate, would want to have.

  • He said that in the past the Euroceptic movement in the UK had divided because it contained too many “egomaniacs”. He made this point as he praised Arron Banks, the Ukip donor, for bringing Eurosceptic groups together behind the Leave.eu campaign.

One of the problems with the Eurosceptic movement in this country is it has been, for all the 25 years that I have been involved with it, it has very often been fractured, it has very often been divided, it has very often been a valid, pertinent and correct criticism to say that the Eurosceptic groups are all run by egomaniacs - with some exceptions, one hopes - that they can never work with each other, that they all hate each other, that they are more concerned with who is top dog on our side of the argument than fighting the enemy.

He said Ukip would work hand in hand with Leave.eu.

  • Farage said the Electoral Commission should designate Leave.eu as the umbrella group for the out campaign. This is contentious because the Business for Britain campaigners want to play this role. Farage said:

There’s been speculation about which group would get the official designation for the leave the EU campaign. But as I see it at the moment there is only one group that’s set up an umbrella that is absolutely clear about what it stands for, and that is the Leave.eu campaign.

  • He said Jeremy Corbyn was “a gift for Ukip” because he would be so unpopular with Ukip-leaning Labour voters.

I now think and believe that a whole new flank of the Labour vote in the Midlands and the north and Wales and right across this country, I believe that a whole new flank of the Labour vote is there for Ukip. I think Corbyn is a gift for Ukip.

  • Farage said he wanted the out campaign to have a “big, strong positive” message about who Britain would be able to strike its own trade deals outside the EU. It was the in camp who were negative, he said, because they did not think Britain was good enough to survive outside the EU.
  • He said Eurosceptics backing a two referendum strategy were fundamentally wrong. Boris Johnson is one person reportedly interested in the idea of voting no to EU membership, in the hope that a no vote could encourage Brussels to offer Britain a better deal that could feature in a second referendum. Dominic Cummings, a leading campaigner associated with Business for Britain, has also been pushing the two referendum idea, but with a different ulterior motive to Johnson; he has suggested presenting the first vote as provisional could make it easier for the out camp to eventually win.
  • Farage appealed to Eurosceptics to put country before party in the campaign.

I have to say to you, as the leader of this party, as somebody who has given over 20 years of his life to helping build this party, while of course I want us to do well as a party and succeed in those elections there is something that is actually dearer to my heart than party politics, even if it’s Ukip.

I want us to summon every resource of energy that we can find in our bodies and our minds, I want us to dedicate ourselves wholly to winning that referendum.

This is the moment to put country before party. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get back the independence and self-government of this nation.

Our message is clear, we want our country back.

Updated

Prepare for the gospel according to Ukip: Nigel Farage’s Christian missionaries are coming.

I’ve just been to a fringe event entitled “Christian Soldiers in Ukip: The moral case for Britain to be able to control her borders.” It began with a bible reading from Acts Chapter 17 Verse 24-26, which says:

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

There followed a sermon from Ade Amooba, co-founder of Christian Concern, a charity which provides support to b&b owners who refuse to allow same sex couples to share a bed and the like. Amooba, who moved to Britain from Nigeria 30 years ago, said God operates the ultimate border control because he doesn’t just let anyone into heaven.

Another speaker was Neville Watson, a born again Christian life coach, who stood for Ukip in Edmonton, North London, in the general election. With his charity Christian Action, he announced a “mission” to take Ukip’s message to London’s churches.

“From today we are missionaries tasked with taking the message of Ukip to churches across the length and breadth of London,” he said, to polite applause. He got a bigger clap when telling how he was effectively blacklisted by Enfield council after he suggested his church in Wood Green would find it “difficult” to marry a gay couple.

“I have nothing personal against the gay community. I really don’t,” he said. “I couldn’t, as a Christian. But all I said was what I said. That was enough for me to be ostracised.”

Updated

Farage says in the past the Eurosceptic side has been fragmented.

It has been fair to say that they Eurosceptic groups are all run by egomaniacs who cannot work together, he says.

He says he is “massively impressed” with how Arron Banks has put together Leave.eu. He is impressed that they are donating money, and campaigning well on social media. And he is particularly impressed by the fact that Banks and the others are not driven by personal political ambition. They are doing this just because they think it is the right thing do to.

He says he thinks Leave.eu should be designated by the Electoral Commission as the umbrella group for the out campaign.

And that’s it. The speech is over.

I will post a summary soon.

Farage says the out camp have to show people that the risks of staying in the EU are higher than the risks of leaving.

Let’s make the positive case for free trade, he says.

And let’s make the case for Britain asserting its place in the world.

Farage thanks Nick Clegg for agreeing to the two debates in 2014 before the European elections. As Farage said in the debates, if Iceland can make its own trade deals, Britain can too.

Farage says, as he debated this with Clegg, he realised the pro-Europeans were not saying Britain was not big enough to make its own trade deals; they were saying it was not good enough to make its own trade deals.

Farage says his side does believe Britain is big and strong enough to secure its own trade deals. That is a “big, strong positive message”, he says. The out camp can win with that.

Farage says Cameron is not asking for anything substantial at all in his EU renegotation.

He is not asking for Britain to get control over its borders, for Britain to get control over its own legal system, or for Britain’s contribution to the EU to be cut.

If this referendum were about joining the EU, we would look at the current situation and say no, it is not worth joining.

Farage says some in the Eurosceptic camp think there should be a two referendum strategy. But that would be fundamentally wrong, he says.

He thanks the Electoral Commission for getting the government to change the wording of the referendum question.

Farage says there are three sides to this campaign.

First there is the in campaign, with Richard Branson, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson.

These three get each get a boo.

Second, there is the out campaign.

And then there is the prime minister.

Or should I call him in this context piggy in the middle.

(That joke gets a mixed reception. “Well, I enjoyed it,” Farage says.)

Farage says the EU referendum is a once in a lifetime opportunity to take back the government of Britain.

People should put party politics aside in this cause, he says.

Farage says Ukip is doing better in polls now than it was at the general election.

He says Ukip will significantly increase its representation in next year’s Scottish and Welsh elections. And it is the only party represented in all four corners of the UK, he says.

(That is because, unlike some of the other main parties, Ukip operates in Northern Ireland.)

Farage says for years the commentariat swallowed the myth that Ukip would hurt the Conservatives most.

In fact, Ukip damaged Labour the most, he says.

He says Jeremy Corbyn became leader. On the day of his election it was put about by Diane Abbott that Corbyn’s victory would lead to Labour winning voters back from Ukip.

But do Ukip voters in Doncaster think it is right to get rid of the Queen, or to support the IRA, or to give the Falklands back to Argentina, or to not sing the national anthem? No, he says.

There was one factor which might have led to Corbyn appealling to Ukip supporters - his Eurosceptism.

But, within a week of becoming leader, Corbyn had been pressurised into saying that Labour would campaign to stay in the EU.

Farage says a whole new flank has opened up where Ukip can take votes off Labour. Corbyn is a “gift” to Ukip, he says.

He says Ukip got 4m votes at the election. He would have “bitten his arm off” for that result, he says. The party can be proud of what it achieved.

The fact that this delivered just one MP shows how important electoral reform is, he says. But he says that he is not holding his breathe in the expectation of this happening.

Farage says Ukip were affected at the election by fear of “that woman north of the border”.

But the party did make the argument that the government could not control immigration if it remained in the UK.

It made the argument that immigration could be good, but only so long as we had a Australian-style points system, so that the government can control who comes in.

He says he did warn of an immigration crisis “on a Biblical scale”. People did not believe him, he says. But he has been proved right, he says.

Farage says he did not expect to be here. He was set to resign after failing to win Thanet South. But the party wanted him to stay on.

Nigel Farage's speech

Nigel Farage is about to give his speech to the conference.

Dartmouth says Iceland can negotiate its own trade agreements with China. But, as long as it remains in the EU, the UK cannot. George Osborne was just engaged in “frolics” in China this week, he says.

Dartmouth says the BBC often report claims that 3m jobs would be a risk if Britain left the EU. That is “tendentious nonsense”, he says. The only people who would lose their jobs would be MEPs, he says.

He goes on:

The BBC is only interested in carrying stories that put us and our cause in a bad light.

The BBC has replaced a mission to inform with a mission to create as much trouble as possible for Ukip, he says.

You can see that from the people they select for audiences like Question Time, he says.

He says BBC coverage is staked against Ukip.

Dartmouth says Germany exports more cars to the UK than to any other country. But that’s a fact that you won’t hear from the BBC, he says.

William Dartmouth MEP is speaking now. He starts with Labour, saying that they are now looking like a cartoon. The deputy leader and leader are even called Tom and Jerry, he says.

(I suppose he wins the prize for being the first person of the conference season to try that rather feeble joke. I fear that by the time the Tories have left Manchester we will be even more sick of it.)

Bours says TTIP is the biggest threat to the NHS.

It would change not just how services are delivered, but why they are delivered. Instead of patient care being the main priority for the healthcare industry, profit would be the primary purpose.

The Tories say the NHS is not at risk from TTIP. And Labour say they want safeguards, while their MEPs are trying to push it through the European parliament.

If Labour are serious about protecting the NHS, they should stop their MEPs backing it.

And, if David Cameron thinks TTIP is not a threat to the NHS, he should introduce legislation to protect it. He may not think that that is necessary. But we do, says Bours, because we do not trust you.

Bours says last year Jeremy Corbyn’s boss, the Unite boss Len McCluskey, asked Ukip to back it’s opposition to TTIP. She said it would.

And, referring to the splits in Labour, she says it will soon look less like the Jeremy Corbyn show, and more like the Jeremy Kyle show.

She says we need to leave the EU to protect the NHS.

“I can be shouty,” she says.

(That seems a bit of an understatement. She delivered the whole speech as if she were trying to be heard in Leeds.)

Back in the conference hall the Ukip MEP Louise Bours is talking about TTIP - the transatlantic trade and investment partnership, the proposed EU/US free trade deal.

She says EU regulations prevent cancer drugs being tested on children. That means terminally-ill children do not get access to new drugs, she says. That is “barbaric”. It would be worth leaving the EU to scrap that one regulation alone, she says.

She says EU regulations prevent cancer drugs being tested on children. That means terminally-ill children do not get access to new drugs, she says. That is “barbaric”. It would be worth leaving the EU to scrap that one regulation alone, she says.

More on the tattoo.

Shelley Wilson from Sittingbourne wears a knitted Ukip jumper at the Ukip conference.
Shelley Wilson from Sittingbourne wears a knitted Ukip jumper at the Ukip conference. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Being a man of a delicate disposition, I couldn’t face going to listen to Katie Hopkins. (See 9.49am.) But Sebastian Payne from the Spectator is made of sterner stuff and has got a higher tolerance for rent-a-gobbery. He was at her fringe, and he’s posted a clip with her latest thoughts on bicameralism.

In the light of Kerrie Webb and her Nigel Farage tattoo, it is worth plugging Marina Hyde’s column from last week. Here’s an excerpt.

In Scotland there is a woman whose calf bears the inked visage of Alex Salmond, above two clenched fists whose knuckles are themselves inscribed – in a tattoo-within-a-tattoo – with Saor Alba (Free Scotland). In Derbyshire there is a woman with Nigel Farage’s face tattooed on her biceps. To anyone toying with investing in some Corbyn body art, I’d say: pile in. The exposure is always generous, and there’s probably a bonus if you do it Millwall-style on the inside of your bottom lip.

Political tattoos are very new politics. And should you politely counter that statement by pointing out, for example, that street gangs have long had what amount to political tattoos, you would very much be old politics. Consequently, I would despise you.

This is from Paul Haydon, a Lib Dem press officer in Brussels.

Ukip MEP Mike Hookem says 90% of people in Calais camp are 'economic migrants', not genuine refugees

Here is the text of Mike Hookem’s conference speech.

  • Hookem said that 90% of the people in Calais trying to come to the UK were “economic migrants”, not genuine refugees. The BBC and other news organisations were not reporting this, he claimed.

But, unlike what the BBC and other news media organisations will have you believe, many of those I saw sleeping rough in Calais and the rest of northern France were not refugees fleeing Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. Instead, the vast majority - over 90% in my estimation - were Eritreans, Somalis, Sudanese, Pakistan and Nigerians. Many of these people are not refugees. Instead they are economic migrants with no legal right to enter the UK.

I’ve taken the quote from what he said. In the text released by the press office, the 90% figure does not appear.

  • He said the migrants in France were a threat to British hauliers. He said he had visited Calais and northern France three times after a constituent told him that British drivers were at risk, and he described his experiences.

In the course of my first and three subsequent trips to northern France, I would:

Be threatened with a gun;

Disturb a group of migrants cutting through the tunnel fence;

Get tear gassed in a riot;

Come face to face with people traffickers;

Be surrounded by gangs of migrants wielding crowbars as I sat helpless in a truck;

And end up climbing the fence to the Eurotunnel twice, because one national newspaper did not believe I could have done it the first time.

However, I must admit, climbing the fence was quite amusing, as one social media user accused me of climbing a fence in my back garden.

I only wish my house was big enough to have a fence of that size.

But even this had a serious point.

If a 61 year old man could easily scale the fence to the Eurotunnel tracks, then so could many of the fit, young migrants who can be seen roaming the streets of Calais in their thousands.

  • He claimed that the migrants posed a terrorist threat.

However, the most worrying aspect for me as UKIP defence spokesman is the reports we have of Islamic State terrorists now operating in the camps in Calais and the appearance of IS flags on the streets of Germany.

In March, Islamic State warned they were going to send thousands of fighters to Europe and it seems their promise has been fulfilled.

Only last week, the Director General of MI5 said the UK now faces the gravest threat we have seen since 911, due to the threat posed by Islamic state.

How long is it going to be before one of the many attacks that have failed this year succeeds?

(As I pointed our earlier, the head of MI5 has a different take on this - see 10.31am.)

While inside the Swedish Eurosceptic MEP Peter Lundgren is speaking. He says that to be among so many Eurosceptics is “heaven”. He also says he is very proud to be one of the few people in Sweden with Nigel Farage’s phone number.

Updated

Outside the conference centre, Stand up to Ukip is handing out leaflets.

Updated

Hookam says the migrant problem at Calais is not going to go away any time soon.

But the most worrying thing for him, he says, is the claim that Islamic State operatives are present in the Calais camp.

He says Andrew Parker, the MI5 director, said just last week that the threat from terrorism was growing.

(He does not say that, in the same interview, Parker actually played down the terrorism threat posed by refugees, saying this was not “the main focus of where the threat is coming from”.)

Hookam shows a film of his experiences.

Then he says the situation in northern France is “totally out of control”.

He says he has genuine sympathy for the genuine refugees fleeing war-torn countries. This gets a round of applause.

But, unlike what you will hear from the BBC, most of the migrants in northern France - 90%, he estimates - are not genuine refugees.

He says he found most of the migrants were from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan and Nigeria. They are economic migrants, he says.

In the Calais camp they have mosques, churches, shops and even a nightclub, he says.

He says those who break into trucks are committing criminal acts.

In the conference hall the Ukip MEP Mike Hookem, the party’s defence spokesman, is speaking now.

He opens by welcoming “southern softies”.

Press coverage of the migrant crisis (his term) has been misleading, he says.

He says he was told by hauliers that they were at risk because of migrants. So he made three trips to northern France to see the situation for himself, he says.

In the course of these visits, he was threatened with a gun, was tear-gassed in a riot, came face to face with people traffickers, was surrounded by gangs wielding crowbars trying to get into a truck, and ended up climbing the fence around the Eurotunnel.

He posted pictures on social media. Someone said it was the fence around his home, he says. If only his home was that big.

He says that if he, a 61-year-old, could climb the fence that easily, imagine how easily younger people would find it.

Updated

According to Lucy Fisher in the Times (paywall), Ukip has angered one of its most important donors and supports, the Express owner Richard Desmond.

The newspaper proprietor Richard Desmond was “furious” after part of his £1 million donation to Ukip was allegedly used to pay back a six-figure loan from another wealthy individual.

Senior party sources claimed yesterday that before the general election in May, Andrew Reid, the party’s then treasurer, called in a loan of about £200,000 that he had made to Ukip, subsequently repaid to him by the party.

The decision, made after Mr Desmond, owner of the Express titles, pledged the seven-figure sum, left him “unimpressed”, according to party figures. Mr Reid, a millionaire solicitor who has stepped down from his party role, is reported to have disappeared from Ukip circles, although he was reportedly spotted with the leader Nigel Farage this month at a vintage car event in Sussex.

In the main conference hall a film about the “migrant crisis” (or refugee crisis, as we would call it) is being shown.

Needless to say, it is rather different from this one - a film by the Guardian’s John Domokos about the experience of a Syrian family travelling to Western Europe. If you haven’t already seen it, it is well worth watching.

Michael Crick has found a Ukip member sporting a Nigel Farage tattoo.

The formal conference proceedings are just starting. Steve Crowther, the Ukip chairman, opens with a joke about how politics is now run by unassuming beardies. Like Jeremy Corbyn, Crowther is not smooth-chinned.

And then, to make a point, they sing the national anthem. “That’s how you do it, Jezza,” one of the speakers yells afterwards.

The Ukip press conference is at Doncaster Racecourse, which means the view from the press room is more scenic than usual for events like this.

The conference has its own celebrity guest - Katie Hopkins, the former Apprentice star turned full-time professional loudmouth.

She’s here to speak at a fringe meeting on electoral reform, a colleague told me. When I first heard this I thought perhaps they had muddled her up with the Electoral Reform Society’s Katie Ghose, but they didn’t, because Ghose is on the panel too. Apparently Hopkins qualified for an invite because she has written about how unfair the election result was in one of her Sun columns.

Ukip’s annual conference gets underway properly in Doncaster today (after a training day yesterday) and Nigel Farage, the party leader, has been giving interviews this morning. Thanks to first-past-the-post, his party had a relatively disappointing general election, but now Farage is thoroughly focused on the opportunities offered by the referendum on EU membership, which many expect to be taking place at about this time next year.

Here are some of the main points he has been making.

  • Farage said he now thought the out camp had a 50% chance of winning.

I used to think we had 33% chance of winning but now I think it is 50%.

Today what you will see on the stage are all the groups in Britain committed to leaving the European Union for the first time ever coming together under one banner. We are going to work together with them. They, I think, will be the umbrella group that will lead the campaign to leave the EU and we will play a major role with them.

This announcement makes the Daily Express splash today.

But it is not quite as straightforward as Farage claims because For Britain, the Business for Britain/Conservatives for Britain coalition, is not involved. Ukip claim that For Britain is not actually committed to out yet, but it is inevitable that they will be on the out side and many see them as the leading campaign organisation for withdrawal.

  • Farage said the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader was a “gift” to Ukip.

Patriotic old Labour voters in places like here in Doncaster, when they see a Labour leader who wants to get rid of the Queen, cosies up to the IRA, wants to give away the Falkland Islands and now, on the EU, where he was a eurosceptic for 40 years, he has been bullied by his own party into saying we should stay part of the EU and he supports unlimited immigration ... I think what Corbyn has done is to open up a whole new flank to Ukip. I think our potential with the Labour vote under Corbyn is greater than it’s ever been.

  • Farage rejected claims he had been told to keep a low profile to avoid damaging the out campaign.

That’s the sort of story that gets put out by soft eurosceptic posh Tories who think they should lead the referendum campaign. The fact that most people watching this programme have never even heard of their names suggests they are not the right people.

  • He said Ukip should consider cutting its membership fee.

If we charged 3 for membership we would have a surge in membership. The fact is we charge 30 for membership, something I think we do need, actually, to look at and address.

  • He said he had concerns about David Cameron being criticised for what he did in his youth.

The fact that David Cameron comes from an upper class background and was a member of all sorts of eccentric dining circles at Oxford didn’t surprise me and I don’t suppose it particularly surprised the British public. I don’t think it really makes any difference. The one concern I have got is that if every indiscretion any of us commit as youngsters was to be made public in 20 or 30 years’ time then nobody would ever enter politics.

My colleague Rowena Mason has filed a very good feature on the state of Ukip as the conference starts, which is also worth reading.

I’ve just arrived in Doncaster. Here is the agenda for the day.

9.45am: Session on the refugee crisis, with Mike Hookem MEP

10.40am: Speech by Peter Lundgren MEP from the Swedish Democrats

11am: Session on leaving the EU, with Louise Bours MEP and William Dartmouth MEP

12pm: Nigel Farage speaks

2pm: Mark Reckless, the former MP and now Ukip’s director of policy development, speaks on the economy.

2.15pm: Speech from Joram Van Klaveren from Voornederland

2.35pm: Steven Woolfe MEP speaks on “A challenge to the City”

2.50pm: Helle Hagenau, former secretary general of Norway’s “No to EU” group, speaks

3.10pm: James Carver MEP speaks on “The Commonwealth Dividend”

4pm: Farage is expected to hold a press briefing

If you want to follow me or get in touch on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Updated

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