Ukip promises a ‘spectacular’ as Farage prepares return to Edinburgh

The Ukip leader will be back in Scotland next week.

As Nigel Farage prepares to return to Edinburgh, a senior Ukip figure has admitted the party includes “nutters” and “idiots”.

But Ukip claim they were forced to change plans for this week’s event due to Scottish Government pressure.

Ukip leader Farage will return to Scotland’s capital on Friday, almost exactly a year after he was last there.

On that occasion, protesters effectively ran him out of town. First pursuing him into a pub and then seeing him escorted by police into a waiting taxi.

However Ukip are promising a “spectacular” return to Scotland for their leader this week.

As he’s campaigned around the country in the run-up to the Euro elections later this month Farage has faced protests in Newcastle and Swansea.

He was hit by an egg on a walkabout in Nottingham last week.

Police are bracing themselves for a repeat of last year’s disturbances when he is in Auld Reekie.

Ukip are trying to keep details of the event under wraps to avoid attracting unwanted attention but David Coburn, their Scottish leader, said: “It’s going to be spectacular.”

Ukip had hoped to hold the rally in Glasgow but claim they were forced into a change of plan.

Explained Coburn, who tops the list of Ukip MEP candidates in Scotland: “We had booked the Piping Centre in Glasgow.

“But then they turned round and said no, claiming they would not host political meetings.

“Yet when I was showed round the venue it was set up for a Business For Scotland event. Isn’t that group political?

“I think the Piping Centre just feared they’d have their funding cut by the Scottish Government if they hosted us.”

The Scottish Piping Centre in Glasgow refused to comment.

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “The Scottish Government had no involvement.”

Ukip have found the going increasingly tough as the Euro elections draw nearer and the party is subject to growing scrutiny.

However, many still predict they will come first in the May 22 vote and, in Scotland, one poll recently gave them 18% support, more than enough to see Coburn returned as an MEP.

Coburn only came to the head of Ukip’s Scottish operation after the previous leadership team resigned en masse.

He said: “They were well meaning chaps but they didn’t understand modern politics.

“You’d have one man talking about tea and one talking about toilet roll.

“Now we have a very strong team and a clear message and, according to the polls, we’re doing very well.”

And in the best Ukip traditions he takes criticism of the party on the chin after a major donor last week was found to have claimed there is no such thing as rape within marriage, that gay people cannot love and that women should not wear trousers.

Reports of the views of Demetri Marchessini, the party’s sixth largest donor, follow a council candidate quitting Ukip after saying Lenny Henry should move to a “black country” and another earlier in the year blaming flooding on gay marriage.

Coburn said: “Every party has its fair share of nutters, we’ve got some idiots same as everyone else.

“Politics attracts the sort of people who shout at parking meters.

“We get all sorts, some have some pretty off the wall views but if they go completely off base then we go through the proper procedures.

“The minute we see something like this we do something about it. We’re not racist, we’re not sectarian, we’re not even right-wing.

“We are a libertarian party, we’re not in the nanny business. We believe in persuasion, not dictation.”

The single issue driving Ukip in the polls is immigration and the Government’s Immigration Bill comes back before Parliament this week.

However, it is set to ping-pong between the Commons and the Lords as the parties squabble over the measures in it.

Particularly contentious are plans to strip suspected terrorists of citizenship.

Said Coburn: “None of the other parties are serious about immigration but someone has to tackle it.

“Labour want to build in so many safeguards you might as well not bother.

“The Tories have had five years to get immigration down to the tens of thousands like they pledged and that’s not going terribly well for them.

“The only way of stopping mass immigration is to get out of the EU.”