It was good to see my local Ukip MEP on Question Time last night. He’s missed so many votes and committee meetings in the European parliament that I was worried he had fallen into a hole.
Paul Nuttall, who gladly takes an £86,000 a year salary and many more thousands in expenses from the institution he so passionately wants to abolish, has bothered to turn up to just 43 per cent of votes in the European parliament – coincidentally just enough to continue receiving his salary. And he doesn’t attend any meetings of the parliamentary committee he is elected to serve on.
Based on that shoddy performance Nuttall owes hard-pressed north-west taxpayers £245,000 over the course of the current five-year parliament. Perhaps he’d like to donate it to a local charity.
When he does bother to vote he’s certainly not sticking up for the interests of the people of the north-west, nor does it seem he is putting into practice his party’s desire to cut money, waste and bureaucracy in Europe’s institutions. A few weeks ago he voted against cutting the European Union budget and against scrapping the parliament’s monthly travelling circus to Strasburg which will cost EU taxpayers £900m over the next seven years, money that could be better spent on creating jobs for some of Europe’s millions of unemployed young people, including tens of thousands in Nuttall’s own constituency.
And equal pay for men and women, legal protection for LGBT people, prevention of violence against women and girls and EU funding for his region are just some of the 57 per cent of votes he hasn’t even bothered to attend.
Yet it seems Ukip insincerity knows no bounds as Nuttall has called for performance related pay for European civil servants!
The fact that the pay of civil servants makes up a tiny proportion of the EU budget is inconsequential to the permanently outraged parliamentarians of Ukip. This is the typical populist nonsense we hear on a regular basis from Nigel Farage and his cheerleaders – headline-grabbing announcements which do nothing to address the serious issues the EU is grappling with.
As we get closer to the European elections, it’s important that we make sure voters know the facts about those claiming to represent them in the European parliament under the Ukip banner. Disgraceful attendance records, voting against UK interests and outrageous views such as those expressed by Stuart Agnew last month that women can’t be successful in the workplace because babies get in the way.
Farage and Nuttall might put in a good turn on Question Time, but they and their party’s representatives are throwbacks to a bygone age of misogyny, homophobia and racism, taking millions of pounds from the EU while doing nothing to represent the interests of those they claim to represent. Let’s send them packing in May.
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Kevin Peel is a councillor on Manchester city council and tweets @kevpeel
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I happen to agree with the above article – anti-EU people shouldn’t vote for people to go to the EU.
ever heard of fighting the enemy from within?
You can vote for who ever you want to as long as their name is on the ballot paper. Its called democracy.
Knocking UKIP for non-attendance at Strasbourg is all well and good, Kev. But they have a simple defence (attendance is a waste of time). So it’s not a good line of attack.
Much more interesting is Farage’s recognition that “some things matter more than money” and “the social side matters more than the pure market economics.”
I agree with Nigel. Not for a second do I take his line on immigration or the EU. But he is quite right that our country’s future cannot be good if it follows a neo-liberal path. And the same goes for the EU with its ‘ordoliberalismus’ variant.
What Labour needs to do to win potential UKIP votes is to discuss how we can become again a place where neighbours reach out to each other (and lend the proverbial cup of sugar) even if a neighbour occasionally has an unusual accent (whether it’s Estonian or Estuary). Those values are real British values and are worth more than money.
The way to win potential UKIP votes is not to hurl insults but to engage in a discussion around real British values of neighbourliness and fairness. How Labour will strengthen them. While UKIP will destroy them.
Too late. 80% of people in Britain want immigration cut further.
Good argument Kevin and a very accurate account in regard to their toxic policies and disregard for equality.