BBC suggests Ukip ‘shambles’ as Farage drops migrant cap

Nigel Farage this morning ditched Ukip’s plan to cap UK immigration at no more than 50,000 migrants a year in a move described by the BBC as a shift from “muddle” to “shambles”.

At the weekend, Ukip migration spokesman Steve Woolf said the party was proposing a 50,000 cap. But Farage told Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: “I don’t want us to have arbitrary caps. We are getting rid of caps. We have watched for the last ten days a debate with the government over caps, everybody obsessing about caps.”

Chancellor George Osborne, appearing on the same programme a little later, responded: “Nigel Farage seems to be making it up as he goes along, as much as you can follow his policy. One moment he is talking about a cap, and the next he is ditching it live on air.”

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What Ukip would advocate if it were ever to govern Britain – or, a little more likely, share power in a coalition – was laid out in a Daily Telegraph article by Farage published overnight.

Pre-supposing Britain’s exit from the EU, there would be a five-year moratorium on taking in any unskilled workers. Instead, Britain would consider applications for work visas from doctors and other skilled people the country needs, mainly from Commonwealth countries.

They would have to pass an Australian-style points test, overseen by a new Migration Control Commission. They would have to have private health insurance and would have no access to welfare benefits.

Such rigid control would bring net immigration way down from the near-300,000 point it has reached, much to the embrassment of David Cameron who in 2011 promised a reduction by now to "tens of thousands".

“I think it’s very unlikely we would need 50,000 people… the figure will be substantially lower,” said Farage. “Last year there were 27,000 people who came to this country and who qualified under the Australian-style points system, so I don’t think we are going to get anywhere near 50,000.”

In short, immigration would be “returned to normality”.

Farage’s dramatic shift on the numbers cap is not the first time Ukip have “got into a tangle over immigration policy”, as Norman Smith, the BBC’s assistant political editor, put it this morning.

“They got into a kerfuffle at the Rochester by-election when Mark Reckless [the winning Ukip candidate] suggested EU migrants would have to leave to reapply to come here, only to be countermanded by Nigel Farage.

“The danger for them is this moves from a policy muddle story into a shambles story. In other words it becomes an issue about Ukip credibility and how serious they are as a party. That does have the potential to damage them.”

Smith suggested that both Ukip and the Greens are beginning to “sweat a bit” with so much media attention focused on their policies. A general election campaign appeared to be “stretching” parties miore used to the relatively easier matter of fighting by-elections.