Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Brexiteers scrape the barrel for votes
Some people have accused the Remain campaign of being negative but whatever the outcome of the vote on 23 June, the worse tactics have surely come from those wanting us to quit the EU.
Nigel Farage has taken his campaign to new depths over the last few days when he resorted to the “age-old racist” claim that migrants put British women at risk of sexual assaults:
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Farage - who is campaigning for Brexit with the unofficial, immigration focused Leave.EU campaign - said the “nuclear bomb” of the referendum campaign was the mass sex attacks which happened in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
In January, reports emerged that over 1,000 women had been sexually assaulted and robbed during the German city’s New Year’s celebrations.
As the details began to emerge it was discovered that the majority of the perpetrators were of North African or Middle Eastern descent - though only three had recently arrived as refugees from Iraq and Syria contrary to earlier reports.
Asked whether he believed such attacks could happen in the EU, Mr Farage said: "It depends if they get EU passports. It depends if we vote for Brexit or not. It is an issue."
Quite rightly, Conservative peer and former foreign office minister Baroness Sayeda Warsi, Shami Chakrabarti, the chair of the Labour anti-semitism inquiry and former director of Liberty and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, a Labour peer and anti-racism campaigner have all signed a letter to the Guardian calling on Farage to apologise for his comments.
This sort of racism has no place in British politics. It is a mark of where UKIP place themselves on the political spectrum that they are willing to tolerate this sort of inaccurate and objectionable rhetoric from their leader.
Nigel Farage has taken his campaign to new depths over the last few days when he resorted to the “age-old racist” claim that migrants put British women at risk of sexual assaults:
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Farage - who is campaigning for Brexit with the unofficial, immigration focused Leave.EU campaign - said the “nuclear bomb” of the referendum campaign was the mass sex attacks which happened in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
In January, reports emerged that over 1,000 women had been sexually assaulted and robbed during the German city’s New Year’s celebrations.
As the details began to emerge it was discovered that the majority of the perpetrators were of North African or Middle Eastern descent - though only three had recently arrived as refugees from Iraq and Syria contrary to earlier reports.
Asked whether he believed such attacks could happen in the EU, Mr Farage said: "It depends if they get EU passports. It depends if we vote for Brexit or not. It is an issue."
Quite rightly, Conservative peer and former foreign office minister Baroness Sayeda Warsi, Shami Chakrabarti, the chair of the Labour anti-semitism inquiry and former director of Liberty and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, a Labour peer and anti-racism campaigner have all signed a letter to the Guardian calling on Farage to apologise for his comments.
This sort of racism has no place in British politics. It is a mark of where UKIP place themselves on the political spectrum that they are willing to tolerate this sort of inaccurate and objectionable rhetoric from their leader.
