Undaunted by the hostile welcome in Edinburgh last month and his thwarted campaigning in Aberdeen on Tuesday, the Ukip leader insists his party will take a Scottish seat in next May's European elections
Nigel Farage seems serious about muscling his way in to Scotland's relatively crowded political landscape. Brushing aside his often thwarted efforts to campaign twice in Scotland, the UK Independence party leader now claims there will be a Ukip MEP elected here next May.
Speaking to reporters in Aberdeen on Tuesday evening, after downing a beer at the Staging Post pub before his flight home to London, Farage said Ukip's campaigning in the Aberdeen Donside Scottish parliament byelection was a taster before his anti-EU party geared up fully for next May's European elections.
Insisting his candidate Otto Inglis would save his deposit this Thursday (that would be a first for Ukip in a Scottish domestic election) and push either the Lib Dems or Tories into fourth place, Farage said:
I will be coming back to Scotland more regularly because we're going to win representation in the European parliament from Scotland next May. That is the objective and I see the Donside byelection as the starting point for that.
Despite having to hastily rearrange his press conference and then scrap a planned high tea with Aberdeen's depute leader, Marie Bolton, Farage claimed that voters in the north east were listening to his message about independence.
He claimed SNP voters were receptive to the arguments that true independence needed to start with leaving the EU; his message is that claiming Scotland can be truly independent by leaving the UK but remain in the EU, as a far smaller and less influential member, is a constitutional non sequitur.
Of course we're getting it on the doorstep here. All the feedback we're getting is that SNP voters are saying they will vote Ukip because they see that step one is for the UK to be independent of Europe, and then have the debate about Scotland being independent.
It is a bold prediction. Despite Farage's smooth lines and apparently guileless belief in his party's allure, the challenge of winning one of Scotland's six closely fought European seats is far greater than he admits.
There is one bit of electoral data in his favour: perhaps unsurprisingly, Ukip does best in Scotland in Euro elections. In 2009, it polled 57,788 votes and – for very rarely for an election in Scotland, saved its deposit. (Its vote slumped compared to 2004, however, when it polled 6.7% in Scotland).
And Peter Adams, the party's Scottish regional organiser, said the party was quickly gaining members in Scotland. It now had about a thousand people signed up; even Aberdeen oil industry entrepreneurs with new inventions to sell are happy to be seen courting him. (Farage visited one firm, Rig Deluge, on Tuesday to see a new oil rig fire safety device)
But to win a Scottish Euro-seat next year, Ukip must hope to more than double its 2009 vote, and leapfrog both the Greens and the Lib Dems. Ukip came last in 2009. In contrast, the SNP garnered 321,000 votes; Labour 230,000, the Tories 186,000, with the Lib Dems on 127,000 and the Greens taking 80,000.
We don't yet know how intensely Scotland's big four parties will campaign in the Euros, given that election takes place just a few weeks before the official start of the far more significant (and very expensive) Scottish independence referendum campaign.
Nor do we know whether that referendum will make Scotland's 4m voters more or less inclined to vote in the Euros. Turnout in 2009 was at 28.5%; a low turnout like that could well amplify Ukip's very deliberate appeal to protest voters and Europhobes.
But Scotland isn't England. Despite Ukip's relatively strong showing in the recent English council elections, and recent opinion polls putting it third behind Labour and the Tories, in Scottish domestic elections it has been irrelevant.
Several other minority parties, particularly the Scottish Green party, and previously the Scottish Socialist party, have seen MSPs and councillors voted in. There are now 14 green councillors across Scotland.
And the electoral evidence suggests that 58,000 votes is likely to be very close to Ukip's ceiling in Scotland.
In Scottish parliamentary and Westminster elections, it polls below 1%; there are no elected Ukip politicians in Scotland – it is only jurisdiction within the UK to have that distinction. Outside England, where it has more than 200 councillors and 10 MEPs, Ukip has an assembly member in Northern Ireland's Stormont assembly and a Welsh MEP (John Bufton, who pushed the Lib Dems into fifth place in 2009).
Identity politics and disputes about state and political power focus far more heavily on Scotland's place and experience within the UK; Europe is generally seen in a more benign light.
But that is relative too: while euroscepticism is less pronounced in Scotland, the most recent detailed survey, by Ipsos Mori for the Times in February, found that 34% would vote in a referendum to leave the UK, with 34% of pro-independence voters believing an independent Scotland should quit Brussels entirely too. And it is those voters whom Farage hopes to target.
But the trouble for Farage is this: there is scant polling evidence that Scottish voters – generally a subtle electorate which behaves differently depending on the election, see continuing EU membership as a greater, more significant political issue that Scotland's place within the UK.
• There is an interesting footnote to Farage's abortive attempts to have high tea with Councillor Marie Bolton, the depute leader of Aberdeen city council.
She said on Wednesday it was her decision to cancel the event, after the local chief superintendent warned her that demonstrators were using Twitter and other social media to set-up a protest outside the Town House council offices.
This broadly confirms Nigel Farage's own account of what happened, though Bolton denies she came under police pressure, as Ukip insinuated on Tuesday. She told the Guardian:
They're not in a position to tell me to cancel anything. All they [the police] can do is make me aware of the facts and it was my judgement coming into play [to cancel the tea].
Bolton said she feared a repeat of the rowdy scenes in Edinburgh in May – when Farage was forced by police to take refuge in a pub after being harassed by protestors, and did not want her staff's safety put at risk as they left the building at the same time:
My whole purpose in asking Mr Farage to the Town House was that I had been very embarrassed by the damage caused to Scotland with what happened to Mr Farage in Edinburgh. It was ugly and there was a lot of anti-English feeling. [I] wanted to give a far better impression of Scotland.
It was purely to project a more positive image and just to say hello to Mr Farage, to speak to him as an MEP; Aberdeen is always looking to Europe for additional funding support, so we were going to have an opportunity to have a brief word with him about that.
For their part, there was little sign or evidence that the small group of protesters there were planning or itching for trouble; the police were not there, even though the Town House is some 50m from the city's police HQ.
However, one protester from the Town House demo was later arrested: he had chucked Coca Cola on the retreating back of Farage's London organiser in a spat at the Staging Post, after he and Farage had had a heated debate about Sharia law and Norway's place in Europe. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 hours ago.
Nigel Farage seems serious about muscling his way in to Scotland's relatively crowded political landscape. Brushing aside his often thwarted efforts to campaign twice in Scotland, the UK Independence party leader now claims there will be a Ukip MEP elected here next May.
Speaking to reporters in Aberdeen on Tuesday evening, after downing a beer at the Staging Post pub before his flight home to London, Farage said Ukip's campaigning in the Aberdeen Donside Scottish parliament byelection was a taster before his anti-EU party geared up fully for next May's European elections.
Insisting his candidate Otto Inglis would save his deposit this Thursday (that would be a first for Ukip in a Scottish domestic election) and push either the Lib Dems or Tories into fourth place, Farage said:
I will be coming back to Scotland more regularly because we're going to win representation in the European parliament from Scotland next May. That is the objective and I see the Donside byelection as the starting point for that.
Despite having to hastily rearrange his press conference and then scrap a planned high tea with Aberdeen's depute leader, Marie Bolton, Farage claimed that voters in the north east were listening to his message about independence.
He claimed SNP voters were receptive to the arguments that true independence needed to start with leaving the EU; his message is that claiming Scotland can be truly independent by leaving the UK but remain in the EU, as a far smaller and less influential member, is a constitutional non sequitur.
Of course we're getting it on the doorstep here. All the feedback we're getting is that SNP voters are saying they will vote Ukip because they see that step one is for the UK to be independent of Europe, and then have the debate about Scotland being independent.
It is a bold prediction. Despite Farage's smooth lines and apparently guileless belief in his party's allure, the challenge of winning one of Scotland's six closely fought European seats is far greater than he admits.
There is one bit of electoral data in his favour: perhaps unsurprisingly, Ukip does best in Scotland in Euro elections. In 2009, it polled 57,788 votes and – for very rarely for an election in Scotland, saved its deposit. (Its vote slumped compared to 2004, however, when it polled 6.7% in Scotland).
And Peter Adams, the party's Scottish regional organiser, said the party was quickly gaining members in Scotland. It now had about a thousand people signed up; even Aberdeen oil industry entrepreneurs with new inventions to sell are happy to be seen courting him. (Farage visited one firm, Rig Deluge, on Tuesday to see a new oil rig fire safety device)
But to win a Scottish Euro-seat next year, Ukip must hope to more than double its 2009 vote, and leapfrog both the Greens and the Lib Dems. Ukip came last in 2009. In contrast, the SNP garnered 321,000 votes; Labour 230,000, the Tories 186,000, with the Lib Dems on 127,000 and the Greens taking 80,000.
We don't yet know how intensely Scotland's big four parties will campaign in the Euros, given that election takes place just a few weeks before the official start of the far more significant (and very expensive) Scottish independence referendum campaign.
Nor do we know whether that referendum will make Scotland's 4m voters more or less inclined to vote in the Euros. Turnout in 2009 was at 28.5%; a low turnout like that could well amplify Ukip's very deliberate appeal to protest voters and Europhobes.
But Scotland isn't England. Despite Ukip's relatively strong showing in the recent English council elections, and recent opinion polls putting it third behind Labour and the Tories, in Scottish domestic elections it has been irrelevant.
Several other minority parties, particularly the Scottish Green party, and previously the Scottish Socialist party, have seen MSPs and councillors voted in. There are now 14 green councillors across Scotland.
And the electoral evidence suggests that 58,000 votes is likely to be very close to Ukip's ceiling in Scotland.
In Scottish parliamentary and Westminster elections, it polls below 1%; there are no elected Ukip politicians in Scotland – it is only jurisdiction within the UK to have that distinction. Outside England, where it has more than 200 councillors and 10 MEPs, Ukip has an assembly member in Northern Ireland's Stormont assembly and a Welsh MEP (John Bufton, who pushed the Lib Dems into fifth place in 2009).
Identity politics and disputes about state and political power focus far more heavily on Scotland's place and experience within the UK; Europe is generally seen in a more benign light.
But that is relative too: while euroscepticism is less pronounced in Scotland, the most recent detailed survey, by Ipsos Mori for the Times in February, found that 34% would vote in a referendum to leave the UK, with 34% of pro-independence voters believing an independent Scotland should quit Brussels entirely too. And it is those voters whom Farage hopes to target.
But the trouble for Farage is this: there is scant polling evidence that Scottish voters – generally a subtle electorate which behaves differently depending on the election, see continuing EU membership as a greater, more significant political issue that Scotland's place within the UK.
• There is an interesting footnote to Farage's abortive attempts to have high tea with Councillor Marie Bolton, the depute leader of Aberdeen city council.
She said on Wednesday it was her decision to cancel the event, after the local chief superintendent warned her that demonstrators were using Twitter and other social media to set-up a protest outside the Town House council offices.
This broadly confirms Nigel Farage's own account of what happened, though Bolton denies she came under police pressure, as Ukip insinuated on Tuesday. She told the Guardian:
They're not in a position to tell me to cancel anything. All they [the police] can do is make me aware of the facts and it was my judgement coming into play [to cancel the tea].
Bolton said she feared a repeat of the rowdy scenes in Edinburgh in May – when Farage was forced by police to take refuge in a pub after being harassed by protestors, and did not want her staff's safety put at risk as they left the building at the same time:
My whole purpose in asking Mr Farage to the Town House was that I had been very embarrassed by the damage caused to Scotland with what happened to Mr Farage in Edinburgh. It was ugly and there was a lot of anti-English feeling. [I] wanted to give a far better impression of Scotland.
It was purely to project a more positive image and just to say hello to Mr Farage, to speak to him as an MEP; Aberdeen is always looking to Europe for additional funding support, so we were going to have an opportunity to have a brief word with him about that.
For their part, there was little sign or evidence that the small group of protesters there were planning or itching for trouble; the police were not there, even though the Town House is some 50m from the city's police HQ.
However, one protester from the Town House demo was later arrested: he had chucked Coca Cola on the retreating back of Farage's London organiser in a spat at the Staging Post, after he and Farage had had a heated debate about Sharia law and Norway's place in Europe. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 hours ago.