UKIP: ‘We want our country back’
The United Kingdom Independence Party has launched their election manifesto, declaring “we want our country back”.
UKIP will be fielding about 500 candidates in the general election and hopes to gain a foothold in Westminster politics.
Roger Knapman, UKIP’s leader said that with a referendum on the European Constitution imminent it was in the “national interest” for there to be UKIP representation at Westminster.
It is calling for the UK to withdraw completely from the EU and claims that the UK has lost its sovereignty to Brussels.
It rejects claims from the other main parties that this would cost jobs and exports, saying that current EU membership could be replaced with trading agreements.
In his foreword to the manifesto, Mr Knapman said that the UKIP is not a ‘single issue party’, but: “The point is that the single issue of freeing Britain from the EU over-rides all others – no other issues can be properly addressed while we remain in the EU.”
Speaking this morning, Mr Knapman argued he was launching the “only practical, only possible” manifesto of the week.
Seventy per cent of UK law was now made in Brussels, the UKIP leader said, and so only UKIP could have a credible immigration policy. Condemning the three main political parties, Mr Knapman said that Labour “haven’t” controlled immigration, the Tories “can’t” and the Liberal Democrats “won’t”. “Only UKIP can and will,” he declared.
Other policies include greater deregulation, reducing taxation to a single flat rate of tax, and using the money from the UK’s contribution to the EU to raise the state pension for all pensioners.
Council tax would be halved for all and the 10 pence basic income rate scrapped. Government borrowing would increase in the short term to fund the tax cuts, but UKIP believes they would stimulate economic growth and other revenues.
