Ukip lauds 'fully costed manifesto'

Nigel Farage famously described the UK Independence party's 2010 manifesto as "486 pages of drivel" he hadn't bothered to read. Five years on, his anti-EU party has delivered its leader a "new gold standard".

Fully costed, and independently verified by independent economic think-tank the Centre for Economic and Business Research, Mr Farage brandished the 76-page document as evidence that Ukip has finally grown up.

"We have produced a fully costed manifesto," he said as he addressed activists at the The Thurrock Hotel in Essex. "I believe what we have done with this document is the new gold standard about how manifestos in this country should be produced."

At the heart of his pitch was an offer for "ordinary people" as the Ukip leader proposed a £18bn "big tax giveaway" paid for by cutting £32bn a year from government spending by the end of the parliament.

A rise in the personal allowance to £13,000, a rise in the £40,000 tax threshold to £55,000 and a new intermediate 30 per cent rate would be funded by exiting the EU, scrapping the HS2 rail programme, cutting foreign aid and reducing funding to Scotland by scrapping the Barnett Formula.

"We genuinely want to make work pay and for people to have incentives to do better. And we believe that will unleash a kind of economic dynamism that has not been seen in this country in a long time," said the Ukip leader.

There was also an offer to small businesses, with proposals to give business rate relief on properties worth less than £50,000 and a new system to clamp down on late payments, in which persistent offenders would be fined.

The launch was a continuation of Mr Farage's determination to "professionalise" his party, ridding it of those with "extremist, barmy or nasty views", while also turning it from a one-issue political movement into a party with broader ambition.

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The broad-based offer comes as support seems to be falling away after the high watermarks of 2014 when Ukip made history as the first-ever minor party to top a national poll in the European elections before going on to beat the Conservatives in two parliamentary by-elections.

A recent "poll of polls" in The Sun newspaper suggested the party has lost a quarter of its support in four months - falling to 12.2 per cent, while polling by Lord Ashcroft has found the party's support declining in some marginal Conservative-held seats.

But the carefully orchestrated event did not entirely go according to plan as Ukip activists shouted down a journalist at the party's manifesto launch who asked why the only black face pictured in the document was on the page about overseas aid.

"Shame on you!" shouted activists as supporters from ethnic minorities stood up and rounded on the journalists seated in the audience.

The incident recalled a similar 2013 fracas when then Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom struck Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick with a copy of his manifesto after he was asked a similar question, accusing the journalist of being "racist" for asking the questions.

<>Suzanne Evans, Ukip's deputy chairman and author of the manifesto, sought to address some of those concerns on Wednesday as she insisted Ukip was not "anti-immigration".

"Immigrants are not the problem, it is our current immigration system that is broken," she said. Ukip reiterated its plan to put a five-year moratorium on immigration for unskilled workers and introduce an Australian-style points-based migration system.

Ukip also said it would limit highly skilled work visas to 50,000 a year - to the dismay of the CBI, which denounced the "arbitrary figure" as an ineffective tool in managing migration.

Mr Farage said his party's 2010 effort is "not relevant to today". "Ukip is virtually unrecognisable today to what it was five years ago. I genuinely believe what has been produced here is a first class piece of work," he said.

But the polls suggest Ukip still has a long way to go to change the broader perceptions of the party: A recent poll by YouGov found around half of Ukip voters say they are "prejudiced against people of other races".

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