Farage hits back at MP he brands ‘disgrace’

The Ukip leader said it was “very good” for his party’s chances that the electorate was getting bored with negative campaigning by Labour and the Tories.

“They are getting to see actually that the Labour and Conservative parties have very little to say other than, ‘aren’t they ghastly?’,” he said.

“This negative campaigning, I don’t think it works. We have quite deliberately got some positive messages coming up in this election campaign.”

Interviewed at his party’s North East Spring Conference in Hartlepool, he went on to brand Rotherham’s Labour MP Sarah Champion a “disgraceful woman” after she claimed his visit yesterday to her scandal-hit constituency amounted to rubber-necking.

She said it was “hilarious” that he was trapped in the Ukip office by protesters. Mr Farage hit back, saying: “She said what happened to me in Rotherham was funny. So what we are going to do next week, we are going to have 30 Ukip activists outside her office and we will hold up placards and shout abusive slogans. I wonder how funny she would find that.”

Speaking about anti-Ukip demonstrators barracking him, he said: “We have a history of protest in British politics, there’s nothing wrong with that, I have protested before outside meetings. What they should not be able to do is stop an elected politician going about his or her business or to threaten them with violence. Unfortunately, I have been encountering more of that over the course of the past 18 months or so.”