Nigel Farage will claim that half a million Islamic extremists could cross the Mediterranean and gain access to the UK as a result of European Union policies to address the migrant boat crisis.

In an extreme heightening of his pronouncements on immigration, Farage will travel to Strasbourg on Wednesday to say the EU policy “poses a direct threat to our civilisation”.

He will also claim it could lead to the UK having to take a fixed quota of immigrants from North Africa and will challenge David Cameron to stop this.

Farage will say: “The clear demand for the rapid implementation of a common EU migration and asylum policy, to be confirmed in a vote in the European parliament, would be wholly unacceptable to a United Kingdom that already has levels of immigration that are too high, and as Isis have previously threatened, could lead to half a million Islamic extremists coming to our countries and posing a direct threat to our civilisation.”

The intervention appears to be an intensification of his “shock and awe” strategy as Ukip struggles to gain attention in the face of the main battle between Cameron and Ed Miliband.



This first emerged in the leaders’ debate when Farage brought up his opposition to treating foreigners with HIV on the NHS without prompting, drawing condemnation from the other party leaders. Farage acknowledged in a recent interview with BBC2’s Newsnight that some of his rhetoric about immigration has been designed to “get noticed”.

The Ukip leader will take time out from the campaign trail in the UK to appear in the European parliament, where he is hoping to confront European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker about the collective response to the migrant boat disasters.



Farage already opposes the idea of the UK joining EU-wide efforts to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean after two tragedies in which hundreds of people have drowned trying to reach Europe from north Africa.

He has previously said that “waves of millions” of Africans could be allowed to come to the UK if the EU presses ahead with a common response to the crisis, which he believes amounts to a collective immigration policy. Farage has said the UK could take some refugees but only Christians.

Before the meeting, Farage said: “This is the biggest crisis the European Union has faced – it is actually bigger than the eurozone crisis.”

A senior Ukip source said: “He is going to warn of the threat of jihadists. Not millions of jihadists but millions of people coming to the UK, of which some will be jihadists... He is also going to say we don’t like the idea of burden-sharing. But that is a core part of being in the EU.”



The source added that the party leader would claim that “as Isis have previously threatened, it could lead to half a million Islamic extremists coming to our country and posing a direct threat to our civilisation”.

A Ukip spokesman said Farage would specifically challenge Cameron to oppose point seven of the European council’s conclusions, which, he said, calls on the EU to create a voluntary pilot project to have a unified immigration and asylum policy.

Earlier on Tuesday, Farage claimed that the worst form of racism in the UK was hatred of English people by Scots.



In an interview with BBC Radio 5’s John Pienaar, he accused the Scottish National party of being “openly racist”. He said: “The biggest racism I’ve seen in British politics is happening north of the border with the SNP, where some of the anti-English hatred is reaching a truly astonishing level and I would think that if the BBC are worried about racism that’s where they ought to be looking.”

It is understood the Ukip leader considers his trip to Strasbourg part of his UK general election campaign, making the point that this is where real government power currently lies.

After becoming more confident about his chances of winning his target seat of South Thanet in Kent, Farage has been on tour this week. He travelled to Hartlepool on Tuesday where he issued a challenged to Labour, saying its vote was as “soft as a rotten window pane”.

• This article was amended on Wednesday 29 April 2015. In it the European council was mistakenly referred to as the Council of Europe. This has been corrected.