Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 6 February, 2005 16:8
Please credit Sunday with Adam Boulton, Sky news

6th February, 2005

 

Interview with Robert Kilroy Silk, MEP

 

Any excerpts used to be attributed to Sky News’ ‘Sunday With Adam Boulton’

programme.

Boulton : What is the basis on which you are the leader of Veritas?

Kilroy Silk : It is temporary. An interim until we have a proper election when the members are fully joined and the branches are up and running and we will have an election. But at the moment ,of course,  I have been elected by the steering group that was set up to form a new party.

Boulton : Who are all these people? We saw them at your launch…...

Kilroy Silk : They are people from all parts of the country, all ages, all sexes, all colours, creeds, the lot.. Actually it is quite extraordinary, I did a public meeting in Stoke on Trent on Friday evening and it was a standing room only, there were 300/400 people there, it was the first public meeting I have addressed since I joined and left UKIP where there was a cross section of the population.

There were young people, a lot of women, younger women, elderly couples together, a Hindu man who wants to be a candidate, a Muslim man and a black woman  who want to be candidates. You ask about the people. The people in the party come from no party; the Labour Party; the Conservative Party; the Liberal Democrats; and some of the fringe parties as well. Masses from UKIP as well.

Boulton : Would you accept BNP members?

Kilroy Silk : Absolutely not, no way shape or form.

Boulton : So somebody leaves the BNP and says they want to join Veritas would you accept them?

Kilroy Silk : If someone had, a long time ago, been a member and they were honest with us, and they told us and they said that this was something, an aberration,  and they regret it and they have moved on and it was a mistake that they made, then we would look at it. I think everyone should be given a second chance just like Dennis Healy was once a communist.  I think Peter Mandelson was too, I think. We all make mistakes and we move on. But we will have no truck with xenophobia, homophobia or racism or any kind of discrimination.

Boulton : You say you have 70 definite candidates already.

Kilroy Silk : No I think we have well over 100. We are meeting the BBC on Tuesday to talk about our party political broadcast.

Boulton : And you want to fight in half the seats is that right?

Kilroy silk : No, lots of confusing things are being said so lets get things straight. We will fight in as many seats . . .

Boulton : You said a majority……

Kilroy Silk : I don’t know whether I did, but ok. We will fight in as many seats as we can where we have credible candidates . . .

Boulton : But that is a lot of money so where is the money coming from?

Kilroy silk : Well we will see. It is coming in at the moment in large and small amounts. Not the kind of amount that we want. Clearly if we are going to fight a campaign that the British people would want, if they want their interests on immigration, asylum and British identity really brought to the forefront of the campaign, and to say the things they are thinking and express them clearly, we need a lot more money.

Boulton : I saw your opening speech and the two issues you talked about repeatedly, I was interested that you didn’t talk about Europe so much, were immigration and crime. Now on immigration we have got the Conservative Party and the Labour Party both saying they are going to come forward with tougher proposals. What are Veritas going to offer?

Kilroy Silk : What we will offer is something that you can believe in…and that we won’t tell lies and you can trust us. Why I talked about immigration and asylum at the launch last week was because I wanted to identify here a current programme where both the leaders are talking about issues and are lying to us. Because neither Howard or Blair can actually implement their immigration and asylum policies because we have had Mr. Fratini come along and smack them on the hand and say ‘sorry fellas , you can’t do this, you have already conceded control of your borders to the European Commission’. So you can’t control immigration. I mean what sort of a country is it? We can’t control our borders..we can’t decide who comes in ….

So they are misleading us again.

Boulton : So step one on immigration is get out of the EU is it?

Kilroy Silk : Of course it is. If you want to control immigration you have to control your borders. That means leaving the EU. If you want to control asylum, all the conventions and the rest of it,  you have to leave the EU. So that is fundamental to us of course.

On immigration, you might want to ask Damien and Dominic this in a moment, they are sliding over the EU business. When they say they are in control, we will still be taking for instance, the 191,000 people who came from Eastern Europe and registered here between May and September, and both of them are in favour of Turkey entering.

Boulton : So what are you saying on immigration? Are you saying you are going to send home all the Poles and the Czechs?

Kilroy Silk :  No. We will be announcing our policy the week after next on immigration and asylum. It will be very thorough, very startling, and very well thought out and researched I promise you.

I think that Tony Blair’s policy of  taking school girls out of schools in Portsmouth and Plymouth as he is doing today, 15 year olds and deporting them is cruel. I think that what Howard is proposing, to actually say to the twenty thousandth and one asylum seeker who bears the scars, who clearly is in danger of their lives and is in persecution , sorry no you go away? That person has to be taken in and cuddled and looked after and adjusted.

Boulton : So no quotas?

Kilroy Silk :  I haven’t said that…And Blunkett’s attitude of threatening to take children away from their parents and put them into care if they wouldn’t be deported… all that is cruel and we will have no truck with that.

But what we will have is firm but fair control of our borders. It will be policy that is distinctive from both the Conservatives and Labour. It is a policy which is believable because we will actually be able to introduce it because we will have withdrawn from the EU and we will be governing ourselves.

Boulton : Would you campaign for the death penalty?

Kilroy Silk : No I wouldn’t.  

Boulton : So there is no question that that would become party policy?

Kilroy silk : Like hunting, the death penalty, abortion, all those things…. I have always consistently voted against the return of the death penalty.

Boulton : We all thought you were going to stand against Geoff Hoon…but you’re not.

Kilroy Silk : That is what the press wanted me to do and that is what made the most interesting story. Even when I said to several people, this is not on the cards, I have been tempted, I like the idea but I have not been thinking about it, they insisted on going with the story because it is what they wanted me to do.

Boulton : So why have you chosen the constituency?

Kilroy Silk : Because, its like Geoff Hoon’s constituency where we came top in the June elections, we came top in those Labour areas as well as in the Conservative areas….

Boulton : ….Well that was the UK Independence Party, it wasn’t Veritas….

Kilroy Silk : Well yes, of course, but they think they were voting for both, for me and the party, and you know that as everybody there knows that….everybody  tells me in the street ..we voted for you. So it is one way we came top. We had really good support on the ground, people like Alex Stevenson who is also the candidate in neighbouring Amber Valley and he has got a really good team of support. That is important to have that, we are a small party, we need that.

To be honest with you , I spend a lot of the time there talking to people quite in casual ways, not about politics , it is when I feel very at home. The people are very similar to my family and to where I was born and brought up in Birmingham, an outer council estate of Birmingham, born in the slums. It is very similar to my former Labour constituency, the outer edge again, council houses of Liverpool. They are straight talking people, I feel comfortable with them.

Boulton :  Finally, you taught politics I think before you became an MP, you certainly know how the British political system works, how difficult it is for small parties. So, how many MP’s are you going to get?

Kilroy Silk : The science would say none. I know that. I am realistic. I know that the psephologists say that we haven’t got a chance, particularly with First Past The Post. But science also said we couldn’t win a seat in East Midlands. Before I stood, the day before I put my nomination papers in . the U-Gov Poll  asked who would you vote for?

For UKIP they said 5%. With Robert Kilroy Silk as a candidate it went up to 15%.

We were still 1% short. We won, against the science. Against the odds.

Boulton : What odds do you give yourself then?

Kilroy silk : Whatever I say I am going to be a hostage to fortune. I don’t know. It is up to the people of  Erewash, isn’t it?

Boulton : Robert Kilroy Silk thank you very much.