MADAM – Tom Newman’s letter of June 4 (Support for UKIP is double-edge) was, I thought, courageous insofar as he voted for UKIP in the European but was highly critical of a candidate who was expressing homophobic remarks.

I am not quite sure of their raison d’être but it does seem to be based on nostalgia for a bygone age when the sun never set on the Empire and we won the war and Europe should always be eternally grateful.

Where Jonny foreigner should know his place?

Even being worried about gay marriage harks back to a time when homosexuality was illegal. We know all about their rather negative views on Europe, together with immigration, but the majority of voters know very little more.

Except, possibly, that drinking beer is good for you. Being further to the right than the Tories we can guess that they support privatisation at the cost of public services and don’t have much time for the trade union movement.

However, being a Green, I worry about their complete denial of climate change that they have, another retrograde belief, despite 97 per cent of scientists saying that climate change is here to stay unless we drastically cut our carbon footprint.

If UKIP members just have a look outside our GB weather forecasts they will glean that the weather extremes around the world are getting worse.

With erratic weather goes loss of food production, and that ultimately drives the desperation of environmental migration.

So although Mr Farage has a jolly persona his message leads us to a much darker picture.

John Marjoram

Stroud district councillor