Frequently asked questions
What is wrong with the EU?
The shorthand answer is its requirement to control. At the moment we in the UK can do something as long as it is not against the law. Under the EU we will only be allowed to do something if the EU says we may. That is why they require our Government to rubber stamp literally thousands of "Directives" a year.
Why does Britain need the UK Independence Party?
Because our main political parties are committed to keeping Britain in the European Union! UKIP urges that we leave the EU and return to being a fully parliamentary democracy. The corrupt, outdated EU is unique in the world. It's not even a proper free trade area - it's a Customs union.
Where can I read the UKIP Manifesto?
Click on to the main UKIP website [from the list on the left of your screen] and then click on Manifesto. You can save a copy, It is probably best to save the Clear version rather than the pretty coloured one, it is easier to read.
How do you hope to achieve your objective?
By showing that Britain's membership of a single European State is not inevitable and not in the country's best interests. By standing in elections. UKIP candidates give people the opportunity to show they support this view. We already have 12 members in the European Parliament (MEPs).
What do UKIP MEPs do in the European Parliament?
They work to raise public and media awareness of the EU agenda. Only a party formally opposed to EU membership can properly expose the awfulness of what goes on - from the way MEPs have to vote ‘en bloc' for a hundred motions they have no time to read to the scandal of their expenses rackets.
If we leave the EU, won't we lose out on European trade?
Why should we? Trade is a two-way affair. EU countries won't want to stop selling us their cars, wine and food. Neither Norway nor Switzerland belongs to the EU, yet both do proportionately more trade with it than we do. World trade liberalisation measures, which the EU often does its best to obstruct, mean that .tariff barriers will become a thing of the past. So much for the ‘advantages' of EU membership!
But can we afford to leave the EU?
Britain already pays £30 million A DAY into the EU budget, and it will be a lot more when East European and Balkan countries scramble aboard. Any ‘grants' and ‘subsidies' graciously handed back by Brussels have strings attached - and they must be ‘matched' with yet more of our own money.
Our EU contributions would be better used improving our collapsing public services. The fact is we can't afford to stay in!
Wouldn't Britain lose influence in the world?
We will if we stay in the EU... When the EU finally becomes one country, with common economic, foreign and defence policies, Britain will lose its seat - and voice - on the UN, the World Bank and other international organisations - as it already has at the World Trade Organisation.
Increased ‘Qualified Majority Voting' means that Britain will even more frequently lose out to our EU ‘partners' who put themselves first. For years, we have urged reform of the Common Agricultural and Fishing Policies, which have brought British farming to its knees and all but destroyed our fishing industry. Yet the Countries that benefit from these policies stubbornly block any proposals for serious reform.
Won't foreign investors pull out if we leave the EU?
Companies invest in Britain because it's profitable for them. Our business culture, lower taxes, fewer rules and the English language have made ‘Euro-sceptic' Britain a magnet to foreign investors - many from other EU countries!
The longer we stay in the EU, the more we risk seeing investment go elsewhere. The Confederation of British Industries (CBI) reckons that the first four years of New Labour added £22 billion to British industry's costs. Much of that is the result of EU legislation, which we have no way of avoiding.
Isn't joining the single currency ‘inevitable'?
That's just what the euro-pushers want you to believe. Yet many countries, large and small, trade successfully with their own currencies. So can Britain - the world's 4th Iargest economy. London is a major financial centre. The ‘City' reckons it is stronger now than when the euro was launched!
On New Year's ‘euro launch' Day, EU commission president Romano Prodi declared: “This is not economic. This is a pure political project”. Only British politicians pretend otherwise!
But doesn't business want the euro?
Companies that call most loudly for the euro are the big corporations that can influence the EU to get the policies they want. Small businesses (that's 95% of all British companies!) have voted consistently to reject the euro and, more recently, to leave the EU altogether. Nine jobs out of ten in Britain have no connection with EU export markets - but all are put at risk by the cost of complying with EU regulations.
Surely consumers will benefit from the euro?
Hardly! Even the small savings gained from not having to change francs, marks and lira etc., are being wiped out by inter-bank euro transfer charges. Only EU bureaucrats could imagine the banks were going to work for nothing!
But there's more to it than exchange rates. Having the euro means having British interest rates set in Frankfurt. And even though the euro-zone base lending rate is way below ours, leading UK building societies do not see the euro producing cheaper mortgages in Britain. If the euro is so great, how is it that average unemployment in the euro-zone area is still twice the rate we have here?
Remember too, that the euro is a one-way street! Once in, there'll be no escape - either from the euro or the from EU itself!
What about the idea of ‘being in the EU but not run by it'?
This may sound fine, but it simply can't work. The EU is about nothing less than binding the individual nation states into one giant federation. If Continental politicians can be up front about this, why not ours? In any case, even if we could resist further federalism, we'd still be stuck with the 20,000 regulations already in force - and, of course, the EU's shameful policies on farming and fishing.
To see the EU as some kind of ‘menu' from which you can pick out the policy parts that suit shows an alarming ignorance of what the EU is all about - or an unwillingness to face facts.
But the Conservatives are Eurosceptic a bit, aren't they?
'Today" programme. 10th June 2004. John Humphreys: "So in other words your position [on the central issue of whether Britain should remain a member of the EU] is precisely the same as the Labout Government's." Michael Howard: "Oh! Absolutely."
Anything else?
Plenty. We'll lose our legal system (including trial by jury) and get indefinite detention without charge. Brussels wants to make anyone easily extraditable to another EU country - even for ‘crimes' that are not offences in Britain. Then there's the way the EU is infiltrating local government. New ‘regional assemblies', with huge committees and plush offices in Brussels, mean more bureaucracy, higher taxes and less money for essential services. British government, local and national, should answer to British voters and taxpayers.