Nigel Farage Prefers Poorer UK with Fewer Migrants

Ukip party leader Nigel Farage has said lower economic growth is worth immigration cuts.

According to Ukip, the social and cultural effects of immigration are detrimental, despite many economists linking immigration to higher personal wealth and increased growth.

Farage stated: "If you said to me, would I like to see over the next 10 years a further five million people come in to Britain and if that happened we'd all be slightly richer, I'd say, I'd rather we weren't slightly richer, and I'd rather we had communities that were united and where young unemployed British people had a realistic chance of getting a job."

However, the Office for Budget Responsibility believes 240,000 new migrants a year would strengthen the economy. According to the public body, it would grow at a rate of 2.7% over the next 50 years, resulting in less public debt.

Farage backs an Australian-style work permit scheme to target a skills shortage. He went as far as suggesting a five year postponement on people settling permanently in the UK.

Farage's proposed moratorium or a halt on immigration would see the economy grow at a comparatively lower rate of 1.9%.

Farage recently backed the central "principle" made by Tory politician Enoch Powell's notorious 1968 "rivers of blood" speech.

On Sky's Murnaghan show, he read several lines and agreed it was accurate for areas of the UK: "The indigenous population found themselves made strangers in their own country, their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition".

In 2008, he named Powell as his political hero in an interview with Total Politics magazine - although he said he was not thinking of the "rivers of blood" speech.