Nigel Farage has kicked off the first day of Ukip party conference at Doncaster Racecourse with a speech claiming that anti-EU groups are united and ready to push for a UK exit from the European Union:
‘We are together, we are united, and we believe that the tide has turned. I believe that we are on course to win the most historic and the most important political victory in any of our lifetimes.’
United as they may be, perhaps one of the brains at Ukip ought to have done a bit more research regarding their conference venue before going ahead with the booking. For all their preaching about the need to leave the EU for the good of the country, it turns out that Doncaster Racecourse hasn’t done too badly out of Britain’s membership; the racecourse is in part paid for by EU money.
A 2008 report by the Government Office for Yorkshire and The Humber reveals that the racecourse received £1 million of EU funding.
This money was part of European funding which ‘invested significant amounts of money in South Yorkshire to develop business prospects, improve communities and increase opportunities for people’. In fact between 2000 and 2008, over £820 million went from the European Union’s Structural Funds budgets to supporting South Yorkshire’s economic transformation. As for the racecourse specifically, this money went towards ‘supporting the racecourse’s conference and exhibition facilities’. Precisely the area Ukip are currently making the most of.
A Ukip source tells Mr S that the party isn’t taking the revelation too badly. ‘We are entirely at ease, after all, we only get 50 pence in the pound for what we put into the EU. We are delighted the racecourse could wring it out of them.’
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