You might think that Ukip’s immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe had the easiest portfolio in the party. After all, as the ComRes/ITV poll showed yesterday, Ukip is already the most trusted party on immigration. It doesn’t sound like much hard work, does it?
But Woolfe sees his job as being to articulate what the party doesn’t believe, explaining that it isn’t a party that dislikes immigrants per se, but one that wants to clamp down on mass immigration. He has just finished his speech to the conference, which he broke up with two speeches from Harjit Singh Gill, former Mayor of Gloucester, and Edward Fila. Both spoke about their experiences as immigrants or children of immigrants. The whole point of the session was clearly to show that Ukip was an outward-looking party that welcomes immigrants. When Woolfe delivered the rest of his speech, he accused Ukip’s opponents of not understanding the party’s policies or philosophy. He said this philosophy was ‘one of inclusiveness’ and that Ukip was a party ‘for all Britain and all Britons’, which was something Douglas Carswell said on his election.
The MEP pledged a points-based system that will restrict the numbers to 50,000 a year, but his emphasis was much more on the importance of Ukip being an inclusive party – an echo of the comments that Douglas Carswell has made this week.
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