Interview: The Ukip MEP
Gerard Batten, Ukip MEP for London
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Wednesday, 03, Jun 2009 12:00
London's Ukip MEP talks to politics.co.uk about Tories, the European parliament and how much of his expenses he claims.
By Ian Dunt
Gerard Batten, London's Ukip MEP, has a personal manifesto. It explains the values under which he goes about his European business. I first met him three weeks ago, on the first day of the expenses scandal, in a café in East London. And the first question I thought to ask was: Tell me about your expenses.
"The personal manifesto is two sides of a sheet of paper where I lay down the basis on which I'll vote," he replies. "And in it I said I'll take the expenses because that's supporting me in my job of people working to Britain to national independence.
"Now what we do is we always vote for transparency so if there's a vote before the parliament - let's say they want to reduce the expenses or for them to be visible to people - we always vote in favour of that. But while they [expenses] are there, I don't see why I should be disadvantaged from doing my job while other people are taking advantage of them.
"MEPs, including me, earned more money doing what we're doing before we did this. I do it because I enjoy working for the cause that I work for."
It's a fairly curious position, I put it to him, to be working every day in a place you intend to destroy. What's that like on a day-to-day basis?
"The only people I can't stand in there are the British MEPs who either pretend that it isn't happening, like Labour and the Lib Dems, and the Conservatives who pretend they're going us protect from it all and then they're Europhile when they get there," he says.
"A Tory – it wouldn’t be fair to tell you who he was - told me recently that out of all the Tory MEPs, about a third are eurosceptics, about a third are europhiles and the other third couldn’t care less so long as they get in their expenses. And I think this is typical Tory because they face both ways at the same time.
"I'd rather sit down with a genuine out-and-out believer in the United States of Europe because he's doing what he believes and I'm doing what I believe. It's the Tories that I can't stand: out of the whole lot, to me they're the worst."
And how does it work exactly? His job is to go and end the place he sits in every day. But if the only purpose of being there is to vote, doesn't the vote itself give life to the institution? Suddenly it seems strange and slightly barmy to send eurosceptics to the European parliament, even if I understand why people vote Ukip.
Batten, for his part, just votes against everything.
"If it's apparently good or beneficial legislation - which doesn't happen very often - then I abstain or don't vote at all," he adds. "Because on principle I can't accept that the EU has a right to legislate us. Once you accept that for one particular piece of legislation, then you have to accept it for all - in which case there's no point me being there. I might as well leave that to a Tory or a Lib Dem.
"Within a directive, there is often an element that would limit the power of the European parliament, so we occasionally vote for something because it limits the power of the EU. But when you get to the end of a directive, we always vote against."
That's how you do it, according to Ukip. They face sustained competition this year, from Libertas and the Conservatives, who have redoubled their eurosceptic credentials since last time by breaking free of their previous grouping. But Ukip remain the eurosceptic party of choice for many. With the country going to the polls tomorrow, we'll soon find out if they've managed to keep that title.