UKIP: Nigel Farage makes an ass of himself on BBC's HARDTalk

To see the full interview: HARDTalk

It started off so well. Farage looked calm and composed. But then it all started to go badly wrong!

Stephen Sackur tackled Farage over UKIP’s nonsensical tax policies. He pointed out that UKIP wants to cut taxes AND yet at the same time increase spending on defence, pensions, border police and prisons.

The interviewer also quoted the Director of Tax Research in the UK as saying:

‘UKIP’s figures don’t add up’.

Sackur mentioned that UKIP would slash 30-40% of all government budgets.

To do this would result in at least 1.5 million people being made unemployed. The effect on the economy would be disastrous.

And what is UKIP’s answer to this? You tell us. There is no mention in the manifesto of how they would deal with such a massive increase in unemployment.

The interviewer repeatedly asked Farage where he was going to get the money to finance UKIP’s huge public spending commitments. Farage stumbled for an answer and frankly came across as a man without a clue.

Farage was also tackled about his expenses and failure to provide a full audit of his accounts. Farage claimed that his expenses were available on his website. The interviewer pointed out that he had looked on the site and had failed to find them. Again, Farage stumbled for an answer and was exposed as a liar.

The expulsion of John West was mentioned. Mr Sackur read a quote from Mr West in which the former UKIPPER described Farage as ‘conning the party’. Farage became increasingly agitated and tried to change the subject.

Farage’s Von Rompuy outburst in the EU Parliament was also raised. Sackur described it as a ‘childish insult’. Farage desperately tried to defend his actions by claiming that the behaviour of certain MPs in House of Commons or the Australian Parliament was far worse. So that makes it ok?

Farage had well and truly lost it by this point.

UKIP’s relationship with The Northern League was then raised. Sackur pointed out that the NL was a racist and homophobic party. Farage denied it!

So what about this?

Lega Nord

Giancarlo Gentilini, Lega Nord's deputy mayor of Treviso called in 2007 for the "ethnic cleansing" of homosexuals." I will immediately give orders to my forces so that they can carry out an ethnic cleansing of faggots," he told a local television station. "The faggots must go to other cities where they are welcome. Here in Treviso there is no chance for faggots or the like."

In the same year he taunted Pecoraro Scanio, Italy's Minister of the Environment and an open bisexual, by saying: "In Gorgo, a woman was raped with a chisel in the back and in the front. I say to Pecoraro Scanio that I want the same thing to happen to his mother and his sister."

Pro-Federalist Lega Nord – the party's constitution says that the party will end its political activity when federalism is obtained - are no strangers to racially motivated violence: indeed, MEP Mario Borghezio was fined in 1993 for beating a 12 year old Moroccan child. In 2005, whilst sitting as an MEP, he was found guilty of setting fire to the belongings of immigrants under a railway bridge in Turin, during a vigilante raid. In September 2007 he was arrested by Belgian police for his part in an anti-Islamic demonstration.

The former leader of Lega Nord, Umberto Bossi, an MEP in the last parliament, was convicted of incitement to violence in 1998. He received a one-year suspended prison sentence. He had previously received a conviction for taking a 200 million bribe. In 2003 he described Africans as "Bingo-Bongos", and suggested that the Italian navy should open fire on boats carrying refugees.

Notorious holocaust denier Father Floriano Abrahamowicz is considered to be the "unofficial Chaplain" of Lega Nord. He told an Italian newspaper: "I know the gas chambers existed... but I don't know if anyone was killed in them. I know that, in addition to the official version, there is another version..." He has also been a vocal supporter of Erich Priebke, the German SS officer convicted of war crimes for a 1944 massacre in Rome, extradited to Italy from Argentina and currently living under house arrest.

The Lega has its own militant faction, the so-called Green shirts.

The Junius Team must congratulate Mr Sackur for his excellent interview. Farage was made to look a fool. Long may it continue!