SOUTH West Green MEP Molly Scott Cato has risibly called Ukip leadership favourite Diane James MEP’s comments that Nigel Farage should be offered a peerage “absurd” and “dangerous” as Mr Farage apparently “ferments hatred and xenophobia”, and he is “unfit to represent our diverse and multicultural society in the UK.”.

Quite apart from the fact that Nigel Farage has been doing just that –-- continuously representing the South East of England, one of the most diverse and multicultural parts of the UK in the European Parliament for well over 17 years now, it is quite hard to see how someone who is married to a German woman, who is bringing up his children to be bilingual in both English and German, and who is himself the descendant of Huguenot refugees from France can seriously be called xenophobic or ant-immigrant.

The fact of the matter is that neither Ukip nor Nigel Farage are anti- immigration. They are anti-uncontrolled immigration -– the kind of immigration which puts downward pressure on wages for ordinary working people, puts rents up, causes house price inflation, and puts pressure on hospitals, schools and other public services.

Ukip is also against using the taxes of hard-pressed workers in this country to pay welfare benefits to children resident not in the UK but in other EU countries, as well as many other abuses of the UK’s welfare system.

On the contrary, the Green Party is in favour of unlimited immigration to this overcrowded island not just from the EU, but also from the whole world, irrespective of whether the immigrant is a political or an economic refugee, and irrespective of whether the immigrant concerned can speak English or has a skill which he or she can bring to the marketplace and thus not be reliant upon welfare benefits to survive. I ask your readers to decide –--- who is “absurd and dangerous”, –-- Molly Scott Cato or Nigel Farage? I think I know what the answer will be.

Stuart Love

Chairman Ukip Stroud