Ukip exposed

While Ukip’s Nigel Farage constructs his entire campaign around a very specific image – your pal down at the pub – we’re never quite clear on which policies he supports or which beliefs he espouses.

 
But as the Guardian found today, Farage does have a specific agenda that goes well beyond concerns over the EU and immigration.

 
Not only does Farage have no problem privatising the NHS, he’d be perfectly happy doing away with the health service completely.

 
“I think we’re going to have to think about healthcare very, very differently. I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare,” he said, speaking at a meeting in Sussex in 2012.

 
“Frankly, I would feel more comfortable that my money would return value if I was able to do that through the market place of an insurance company than just us trustingly giving £100bn a year to central government and expecting them to organise the healthcare service from cradle to grave for us,” he added.

 
He later said emphatically, “This is me being completely honest with you.”

 
Much was made of Ukip repudiating TTIP, the EU-US trade deal that could open the floodgates to irreversible NHS

privatisation, but the party has hardly been consistent. In one instance, Ukip’s leadership openly embraces it. In the next, they say their previous comments were made in error.

 
As for Farage’s “man of the people” shtick, how would his views on workers’ rights be received among working people – whose votes he desperately tries to court in condescending pub photo-ops?

 
As the Guardian video shows, Farage considers employment protections an unnecessary annoyance.

 
“The problem with employment rights and protections,” he explains, are that they apply to all businesses, as he awkwardly makes the case for denying workers their statutory rights “to free up the labour market” for “small businesses”.

 
In a previous Ukip party manifesto, the party explicitly attacks employment rights and vows to “put an end to most legislation regarding matters such as weekly working hours, holidays and holiday, overtime, redundancy or sick pay, etc.”

 
Conveniently, as Left Futures notes, sections on employment rights in the manifesto have disappeared after drawing media attention.

 
Unite head of health Rachael Maskell argues that, though they may present themselves in a different manner aesthetically, Ukip and the Tories have identical political aims.

 
“There is no disguising that UKIP are no different from the Tories,” she said. “Both parties are set on ridding the country of our NHS and selling it off to their friends running companies who would rather invest their profits in offshore accounts rather than investing in our health.”

 
“It is clear that only Labour can save our NHS,” she added, pointing to the Labour-supported Clive Efford’s bill, which seeks to reverse the worst of the Tories’ NHS privatisation measures to date.

 
As UniteLive reported earlier this week, the bill will be introduced to Parliament on November 21.

 
Unite political director Jennie Formby agreed that Labour was the only political party currently committed to protecting public services like the NHS.

 
“Ukip clearly can’t be trusted on the NHS and despite their opportunistic efforts to pose as champions of our health service, we have seen through them and know them to be liars and opportunists,” she said.

 
Formby noted recent comments made by Paul Nuttall, Farage’s second in command and rising star in Ukip, which praised the privatisation process and called for it to be speeded up. In classic Ukip fashion, these comments posted on his website mysteriously vanished.

 
“There is only one party committed to saving our NHS and repealing the hated health and social care act – and that’s Labour,” Formby added.

 
Want to show your support for the NHS? Come join Unite in an all-night vigil outside Parliament from 7pm on November 20.