Nigel Farage is not going all the way with Tony Abbott. At a celebration of St George’s Day held in a pub in Kent, the leader of the UK Independence party (Ukip) praised Abbott for showing Europe’s leaders how to deal with the boats from Africa.

“I suspect that the Australian premier Tony Abbott actually has got this right,” said the leader of Britain’s anti-immigration party. “Unless we send the message that however difficult your plight we cannot accept you in unlimited numbers, unless that message gets sent, we may well be facing migration from north Africa over the next couple of years of millions of people.”

Farage had arrived for this little rally all smiles. “Right. OK. Very, very good. Right. OK? Ah, there we are. Brilliant,” he said as he went down the line of five military veterans gathered for the occasion. They had hoped for more. But one was a colonel. The room was hung with red and white flags of St George. Out of sight was a pile of St George hard hats.

“Why should the English get such a rotten deal?” Farage asked the cameras. “Englishness is something our political class looks down on – no, sneers about.”

He wants St George’s Day to be declared a national holiday. To celebrate what? “Balance, fairness, fish and chips, roast beef … ”



Farage is of middle height, wears a suit well and speaks with a soft burr. He clowns but is no fool. He has brought the press to Kent to help in the perhaps impossible task of winning a seat in the House of Commons. Farage has failed in the attempt six times already. One more flop and he and his party are probably finished.

Six months ago, with the backing of 19% of the electorate, Ukip was a dangerous presence in British politics. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour would directly attack the party. Farage’s people were to be wooed and flattered. The Conservatives had already offered a simple in/out referendum on Europe to be put in 2017 if David Cameron is returned as prime minister. It’s a time bomb under Britain.

But lately support for Ukip has been slipping. The party still has the capacity to do great harm – particularly to the Conservatives – but has the prospect of winning as few as three seats in its own right. One of those seats is this stretch of Kent that Farage hopes will send him to Westminster.

Though there is oddly little sign in most of the country that the UK faces a general election in a fortnight, along the roads in the seat Farage must win are placards, banners, bunting and the occasional parked truck with huge photographs of the leader and the slogan: “Can you trust him to control our borders?”

Farage was all over the mass drownings in the Mediterranean this week. He has been praising Australia for some time for its control of immigration – he loves the points system – and after the terrible news broke of hundreds of deaths at sea, Farage began to sing Abbott’s praise for showing how to stop Africans crossing to Europe by sending out a message.

“If the message [is] that Italy and Greece particularly will accept anyone who comes and gives them passports that say European Union, they will all be able to come to this country,” he warned. “If Mr Cameron signs up to this idea of burden sharing what we will see is the beginning of a common EU immigration and asylum policy and we want no part of that.”

But when asked by Guardian Australia if he supported Abbott’s actual strategy for stopping the boats, the Ukip leader sidestepped smartly.

“No. No. Mr Abbott was making a general point that if you say everyone is welcome then a lot more people will come. It’s a very interesting injection into the debate in Britain and Europe.”

What about the machinery? Is he endorsing immigration detention, detention of children, forced pushbacks? Farage made it clear he was not. “Some of the ways that Australia acts on these things,” he said, “are tougher than we in Britain can perhaps stomach.”

All Farage could suggest the UK might do to deal with the catastrophe on the Mediterranean was to deploy “what we have left of the Royal Navy” to prevent people drowning.



The cameras were hungry for more. Farage climbed behind the bar, put on a party apron in the colours of St George, pulled a beer and proposed a toast: “Hurrah for England.”