David Cameron must take some of the blame for the deaths of hundreds of migrants in the Mediterranean because of his fanaticism in toppling Muammar Gaddafi, Nigel Farage has said.

The Ukip leader said the prime minister and other European leaders must take responsibility for destabilising Libya when they ousted the Gaddafi regime in 2011, arguing that fewer migrants attempted to cross the sea before then.

Farage made the claim after hundreds of people were believed to have drowned 60 miles off the Libyan coast early on Sunday. The disaster comes less than a week after 400 people drowned in a similar incident near the island of Lampedusa.

700 migrants feared dead in Mediterranean shipwreck off Libya Read more

The UNHCR blames the deaths on anti-immigrant rhetoric from politicians across Europe, including Britain, blocking attempts to introduce large search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean.

Farage said: “It was the European response that caused this problem in the first place. The fanaticism of [the former French president Nicolas] Sarkozy and Cameron to bomb Libya – what they have done is to destabilise Libya, to turn it into a country of much savagery and a place where for Christians the situation is virtually impossible.



“We ought to be honest and say we have directly caused this problem. There were no migrants coming across from Libya in these quantities before we bombed the country and got rid of Gaddafi, however bad he may have been.”

The Ukip leader said he did not have a problem with offering refugee status to “some Christians from those countries”.

Speaking in Portsmouth on Sunday, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, described the situation as “unacceptable to anyone who believes in the basic dignity of some of the most vulnerable people in the world”. He added that Italy and the EU must enter into “an arrangement which is sustainable”.

He said: “Clearly, the Italians felt that the previous arrangements were acting almost as a spur to people coming across from North Africa on these boats in these very overcrowded, dangerous conditions.



“The new arrangements are also clearly leading to circumstances which are unacceptable to us. We need to have a long, hard collective think about what the best arrangements are.



“I suspect in any sustainable arrangement, it will be as important what you do on land as what you do on sea. What you see on the sea is, in a sense, a symptom of many people leaving their homes and their villages. So any sensible approach would have to involve a step change in investment in humanitarian help in those communities where, at the moment, people are leaving and taking their life into their own hands.



“We are dealing with the symptoms and I don’t think the cure is at sea. I actually think the solution is what happens in those communities where people are so desperate, so frightened, where they are leaving in such large numbers. But that’s the kind of thing you need to do collectively.”

Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “We are seeing tragic scenes for the second time in days. European leaders must work together to stop more of these drownings taking place. Those dying in the Mediterranean are some of the poorest men, women and children in the world. We must act to stop these awful scenes.”

Farage made his comments on the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme, despite being locked in a row with the broadcaster about the makeup of the studio audience in last week’s opposition leaders’ debate.



He has questioned what he saw as a leftwing bias in the audience for Thursday’s TV debate. Ukip is considering a formal complaint after party lawyers sent a letter to the BBC requesting details of the company used to select audience members; how the company was chosen; who at the broadcaster was involved in the instruction of the company; and what research had been done into the ownership of the company and political makeup of its staff.

Farage told the Sunday Express: “There is certainly potential for complaint. I can’t comment on whether there will be a legal complaint because there are precise details about broadcasting legislation, so I will let my lawyer deal with that.”