Farage racism row grows as he insists: Romanians ARE more likely to commit crime

Nigel Farage makes the startling claim during a live radio interview



Farage branded a 'political Pied Piper' by presenter James O'Brien

UKIP leader said it was 'perfectly legitimate' to highlight crime figures by nationality



Nigel Farage yesterday stoked the row over his ‘racist’ attack on Romanians by insisting that they were more likely to commit crime than other immigrants.



The UKIP leader said it was ‘perfectly legitimate’ to point out ‘where there are differential crime rates between nationalities’.



The defiance came 24 hours after an interview in which Mr Farage, whose wife is German, claimed people would rather live next door to Germans than Romanians.



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Nigel Farage said people 'have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door'

When asked what the difference was, in an interview considered so disastrous that his senior media aide, Patrick O’Flynn, interrupted to try to stop it, Mr Farage said: ‘You know what the difference is.’



Yesterday, rather than apologise, the UKIP leader declared: ‘Where there are differential crime rates between nationalities, it is perfectly legitimate to point this out and to discuss it in the public sphere.’



He added: ‘Police figures are quite clear that there is a high level of criminality within the Romanian community in Britain.



‘This is not to say for a moment that all or even most Romanian people living in the UK are criminals.



‘But it is to say that any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door.’

LBC presenter James O'Brien said Farage was 'one of the slickest and most dissembling political leaders in living memory'

Mr Farage emphatically denied UKIP was racist and said his comments about Romanians moving in were being criticised by media commentators who lived in ‘million-pound houses and for whom the prospect of such a turn of events is not a real one’.



Meanwhile, the LBC presenter who conducted the original interview has branded Mr Farage ‘one of the slickest and most dissembling political leaders in living memory’.



In an article for The Mail on Sunday, James O’Brien writes today about the radio interview with Farage, saying that the UKIP leader’s ‘cultivated “pint and a fag” facade’ had slipped.



Mr O’Brien says: ‘When the man who leads the party lets his mask slip briefly, it is hardly surprising that people are beginning to ask questions about his convictions.’



The radio presenter described Mr Farage as a ‘political Pied Piper’ leading blindly dancing followers.



To make matters worse for Mr Farage, the multi-millionaire funding his party issued a veiled warning that he could walk away unless UKIP won this week’s European elections.



Nigel Farage insisted that UKIP was not a racist political party

Paul Sykes, who is financing UKIP’s £1.5 million poster campaign, revealed that he has made no commitments to the party beyond this Thursday.



He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I have told them – I am doing nothing until I see the European results.



‘When I know the vast majority of people are voting UKIP, have voted to leave the EU, then I’m going to roll my sleeves up. But we need that first.’



The frank remarks will send a shiver down the spine of Mr Farage, who will recall how Mr Sykes spectacularly abandoned the party shortly after the European election campaign of 2004.



The former member of the Con­servative Party, who is worth an estimated £650 million, dumped UKIP after it announced it was out to ‘kill’ the Tories.



However, Mr Sykes also stressed yesterday that the UKIP of 2014 was a far more impressive operation and made clear he is now a ‘lot more’ committed to the party.

