Farage hits back at expenses claims

UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, uses his column in the Independent today to address the Times front page article yesterday on his alleged misuse of EU funds.

With a post on the UKIP website naming journalists at The Times whom, it claims, “have family or personal connections to the Conservative party” and “are from immensely privileged backgrounds that have enabled them to prosper as part of the ‘chumocracy’ run by David Cameron”, Farage in his column reiterates his belief that the threat posed by UKIP to the ‘establishment’ is the reason behind the newspaper’s ‘smears’.

Farage argues that the framing of the story as one concerning ‘expenses’ was deliberate and intended to evoke voter anger, still raw after the Maria Miller expenses scandal the previous week.

The Guardian, in an editorial, notes the political capital Farage has made from the MP expenses story to advance his anti-establishment stance striking a chord with disenchanted voters. The editorial notes the recent study by Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford on UKIP which finds the party’s voter base to be “by some margin the most politically disaffected group in the electorate”.

Challenging UKIP’s appeal will require the mainstream parties to address the causes of widespread voter disaffection if they are to stem the numbers of them turning, as Lord Ashdown said, to the ‘arms of demagogues’.