Britain will be hit by a Romanian crime wave next year when more Eastern Europeans will be free to move across the European Union, Nigel Farage warned today.
In remarks that he said would be “severely criticised” by his political rivals, the UKIP leader said that crime could increase when hundreds of thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians arrived from next year, when restrictions on their movement across Europe are lifted.
Addressing his party’s annual conference in London, Mr Farage said that immigration was “the biggest single issue facing this country”.
In his first conference speech since UKIP’s surge in support in May’s local elections, he said that a “Romanian crime wave” represented an “even darker side to the opening of the door”.
“London is already experiencing a Romanian crime wave,” he said. “There have been an astounding 27,500 arrests in the Metropolitan Police area in the last five years alone - 92 per cent of ATM crime is already being committed by Romanian gangs.
“And this surely gets to the heart of the kind of immigration policy that we want, we should not be opening our doors on January 1 to Romanian criminal gangs, we need to get back the power to deport those who come here and commit offences.
“And Mr Cameron, Clegg and Miliband are you listening? Because we demand action.”
He used the address to warn party members that they should expect to be the targets of smears from the other parties. Some UKIP members have already been outed as former BNP members and embarrassed for controversial statements on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“What they have decided to do is not to go for the ball but to go for the player,” he said. “I am afraid we will be subject to a whole series of smears running up to next year’s elections and the elections beyond.
“This is a rough, tough old game and I would ask you, as our party faithful, as our loyalists, to remember those up at the front leading the charge for Ukip need a lot of strong physical and moral support from you as well.”
Mr Farage said his party was on course to “cause an earthquake” by winning next year’s European elections after winning a 23 per cent share of the vote in this year’s local elections.
He called on voters to turn next year’s European elections into a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.
“Let’s make it that referendum and let us use it as an opportunity to send an earthquake through Westminster politics,” he said. “And let us stand up collectively as a nation and say: We want our country back.”
