The confusion of Ukip’s immigration policy

Immigration is a pretty important driver for voters who turn to Ukip. So you would have imagined that the party might have spent a while really making sure that its own policy on the matter is crystal clear.

This morning in Dover, Nigel Farage said ‘I’m saying a net level of about 30,000 a year is roughly what we had for 50 years from 1950 almost until the turn of the century’. This seemed to be a bit of an about-turn from the Ukip leader’s decision earlier this month to ditch the 50,000 cap on the number of migrants arriving in the UK each year.

Farage dropped the 50,000 target live on the Today programme just days after his immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe set it out at the Ukip conference. I understand the reason behind this confusion was that Woolfe hadn’t checked his speech with the right colleagues before delivering it, and was therefore aware of the impending U-turn.