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[/audioplayer]I’m worried about Ukip. It’s possible that my concerns are entirely misplaced but let me give you some examples of what I mean. First, a tweet from Ukip’s Newark candidate Roger Helmer (whose heroic stance on energy and climate change I greatly admire): ‘Meet Robert Jenrick, the Tory candidate for Newark: Gilded youth. Posh Tory boy. London property millionaire.’
Second, the party’s official response to a local newspaper interview given by Donna Rachel Edmunds, one of Ukip’s new councillors in Lewes, East Sussex, in which she argued — on perfectly sound libertarian principles — that businesses should be free to choose their customer base. So ardent Christian hoteliers should be at liberty to turn away gay couples as Jewish shopkeepers should be to refuse service to neo-Nazis. Ukip’s chairman Steve Crowther described this as ‘beyond what is acceptable’.
Third, the recent reactions of Nigel Farage when asked if he is a Thatcherite.
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