Nigel Farage believes that the Northern Ireland peace process was based on an “utterly and entirely loathsome” surrender to terrorists which saw the release of hundreds of prisoners, a video of the Ukip leader shows.

According to the footage, dating from around 2007, Farage even criticised the decision of the late Rev Ian Paisley to enter government with Sinn Féin. Paisley, the founder and leader of the Democratic Unionist party who died last year, entered into government with Sinn Féin in 2007, providing a continuous administration in Northern Ireland for the first time since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Farage’s comments surfaced in a YouTube video just days after he claimed to run the only political party that speaks for all four countries of the UK, as he has elected representatives in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

YouTube footage of Nigel Farage talking about the Northern Ireland peace process

In the video, Farage said: “I find the whole peace process, so called, in Northern Ireland loathsome. Utterly and entirely loathsome. I think to have released back into the community over 400 convicted murderers some of whom served sentences short as 18 months.

“That is not what I call a peace process. That is what I call surrender to the wrong ’uns. You know both from the Protestant and the Catholic side and so I am sickened by the whole thing. I am very surprised that Paisley has been prepared to go into government with Sinn Féin, IRA. I really am very surprised by that.”

Asked whether Farage still stood by his statements, a spokesman for him said: “He feels that back in 1998 he did not understand why 420 murderers were let back into the community.”

The position was criticised by the Tory MP Conor Burns, who said: “It shows a naivety that would be almost touching were it not so serious. The peace process in Northern Ireland needed compromises that were very hard to stomach.

“But the reality is that a child in today’s Northern Ireland grows up in a place incomparably better than the dark, violent and divided society I was born into. For someone who leads a party aspiring to be a truly national party, not to acknowledge that is bewildering.”

