As the net migration figures come out today, Nigel Farage has never been far from a tv camera. He’s been on the BBC News Channel. on the Daily Politics, spreading his ill-informed nonsense that we have an open door to half a billion people as if the entirety of Europe was going to pack up and come here to live.
It must have slipped his mind that he was supposed to be in Strasbourg this morning, voting down the European Commission headed by Jean-Claude Juncker. He must have also forgotten to take part in the debate on the motion on Monday. The funny thing is, he’s been in Strasbourg this week, lining up to meet the Pope. UKIP MEPs don’t often trouble the Parliament with their presence, but you would think that Farage would have bothered to turn up to support his own motion! He and others including France’s Front National leader Marine Le Pen had wasted Parliament’s time with the motion which was roundly defeated this morning.
ALDE leader Guy Verhofstadt spoke against it in the debate and he didn’t mince his words:
To come forward now with a motion at a time when we are asking the Commission to look into the matter and when we are actually about to set up a parliamentary committee – what is this nonsense, to start with a motion of censure before we have even started to investigate? For me, the only interesting thing about this motion is not its content; it is the fact that, finally, Mr Farage and Ms Le Pen are now finally outing their hidden relationship. That is the most important thing about this motion: their hidden relationship; the fact that they are actually following the same populist strategy, contrary to what Mr Farage said to his voters in Britain. Indeed it is proof of the fact that UKIP is hideous, racist, xenophobic and islamophobic. Those are not my words; they are the words of the founder of UKIP, Mr Alan Sked himself.
Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder had this to say:
We all know UKIP MEPs are notorious for doing very little work, but this time Nigel Farage has failed to turn up and vote on his own motion.
This shows that this proposal was never anything more than a shameless media stunt.
While UKIP clown around, hard-working MEPs are determined to hold Juncker and the Commission to account by holding an in-depth and independent inquiry.
Photo by norbert1