Ukip causes a stir with biggest ever poster campaign costing £1.5 million but they're immediately attacked as 'racist'

Millionaire ex-Tory donor Paul Sykes is funding new controversial adverts

They claim 'British workers are hit hard by unlimited foreign labour'



Critics compared language those by the far-right British National Party

Labour MP Mike Gapes said they were 'racist' and appealed to 'all decent British Commonwealth and EU citizens' to register to vote in May's polls

Ukip was plunged into a race storm yesterday after unveiling a series of posters campaigning against EU immigration.

The party has paid for billboards across the country to be emblazoned with messages such as: ‘26million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after?’

Another has a picture of a construction worker begging on the street, with the slogan: ‘EU policy at work. British workers are hit hard by unlimited cheap labour.’

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Controversial: Ukip's new posters are being funded by £1.5m of funding from millionaire ex-Tory donor Paul Skyes to launch its biggest ever publicity drive ahead of the European Parliament elections in May

Poles apart: Deputy PM Nick Clegg, right, appealed for help from Labour and pro-EU Tories to counter the Nigel Farage's (left) arguments in the run-up to May 22 and dismissed Mr Farage’s claims to be an insurgent

The £1.5million campaign is funded by the Yorkshire businessman Paul Sykes, who is a former Tory donor.

All the posters call on voters to ‘Take Back Control of Our Country’ by backing Ukip in European elections on May 22.

But they were immediately condemned by rival politicians.

Labour MP Mike Gapes said he hoped the ‘racist posters encourage all decent British Commonwealth and EU citizens’ to vote for another party next month.

He added: ‘It is time for all democrats to expose lies and hatred being peddled by Ukip and defend British values of tolerance and respect for others.’

Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, said: ‘Don’t tolerate those who talk down Britain’s chances of competing in the global economy. I’m not with Ukip because I don’t want to stop the world and get off to sulk.’

Adverts: Under the slogan 'take back control of our country', the party complain that 75 per cent of British laws are made in Brussels and that UK taxpayers fund the 'celebrity lifestyle' of EU bureaucrats

But Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the posters were ‘a hard-hitting reflection of reality’ and only the ‘chattering classes’ would object.

One contained a dramatic image of a burning Union Jack with the European Union flag emerging from the flames. It carried the words: ‘Who really runs this country?’ Another contains a picture of Britons commuting to work on a bus next to an image of a EU official being chauffeur driven.

Mr Farage and some colleagues draw MEP salaries however and the party has been criticised by party members over alleged misuse of funds.

The posters are more polished and professional than any the party has produced before as a result of Mr Sykes offering Ukip ‘whatever it takes’ to try to top the European poll next month.

The tycoon, worth around £400million, has said the EU elections are the ‘most important for many years’, adding: ‘We have the chance to support a party that represents a complete break with the past.

‘The other parties, whatever their merits, are content to work within the existing Brussels straitjacket.’

Campaign: A billboard showing a poster for a immigration-centred Ukip campaign, in Leeds. The posters will be displayed in two waves over the next four weeks and be accompanied by adverts in digital media

Defence: Mr Farage, whose party is tipped to push the Conservatives into third place dismissed the concerns of the 'chattering classes' Mr Farage said yesterday: ‘These posters are a hard-hitting reflection of reality as it is experienced by millions of British people struggling to earn a living outside the Westminster bubble.

'Are we going to ruffle a few feathers among the chattering classes? Yes. Are we bothered about that? Not in the slightest.’ Critics compared the immigration posters to those used in the past by the far-right British National Party. The Ukip message is likely to have been targeted at voters in Labour’s northern heartland where unemployment is higher.

Growing: Ukip said today that its fast-rising membership had now passed 36,000 - only around 8,000 behind the Liberal Democrats and on course to overtake Nick Clegg’s junior coalition party by May 2015



An ICM poll published yesterday suggested that Labour will win the European elections with 30 per cent of the vote, Ukip second on 27 per cent and the Tories a distant third on 22 per cent.

Senior Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott said the posters were ‘extreme even by the standards of the Front Nationale’, the French far right party Mr Farage has tried to distance Ukip from.

The peer said: ‘This is divisive politics. The mask is off now, this has never been about Europe with them, but playing on fears of foreigners, when there are many British people working in the rest of the EU.