Last night Nigel Farage gatecrashed the Labour hustings to press the leadership hopefuls on how the party of the proletariat could possibly still claim to act in the interest of working people. The UKIP leader also said he gave his backing to Corbyn to win.
Introducing himself as “Nigel from Kent,” Mr. Farage said “its great to see Labour discussing immigration,” and asked the candidates if they would consider leaving the EU to increase the wages of “working folk,” which have been undercut by mass-migration. Three said they preferred staying inside the political union in interests of big business.
“We have a Labour party which appears to be in hock to the corporates, to the big businesses that now dominate out lives and want to pay people as little as possible. And I want to say, from a UKIP perspective, thank you all four of you,” he said.
Jeremy Corbyn conceded there was some room for renegotiating with Brussels following the treatment of Greece’s left-wing government; Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Andy Burnham all said they could not imagine voting to leave under any circumstances.
Farage said it was “sad that Labour had lost sight of democracy, something it believed in 40 years ago at the last referendum.”
Cooper said Nigel and other Eurosceptics wanted to make the UK a “darker, narrower, more impoverished place.” Corbyn refused to acknowledge the statistical fact that UKIP are the most working class party in the country, calling UKIP “the party of despair and cynicism.”
When asked whom he would support in the leadership race, he said: “Well, at least Jeremy Corbyn’s a socialist, and that is what the party is supposed to be.”