Business big guns will come round – Farage

AN increasing number influential business leaders in Birtain are moving over to the Euro-sceptic camp, according to UKIP leader Nigel Farage.

Farage was speaking exclusively to TheBusinessDesm.com before addressing an audience of 400 North West business leaders and UKIP supporters at The Bolton Whites Hotel next to the home of Bolton Wanderers, the Macron Stadium.

Although it was billed as a chiefly “a-political” gathering by the UKIP hierarchy, in reality is was an anti-European love-in where supporters queued for autographs and photographs with the outspoken UKIP leader.

Anticipation had been heightened after he battled through traffic driving from his Kent homeland to make his way to the North West.

Farage cited the example of vacuum cleaner inventor and entrepreneur Sir James Dyson who had been an advocate of Britain staying in the EU and joining the Eurozone until a few years ago.

“Sir James has done a complete 180 (degrees),” said Farage. “I have heard that now Sir James thinks his business and Britain would be better off outside the EU because there are too many restrictions and Germany is too dominant.

“All I will say is that I have not made any contact with Sir James, but his views are now unrecognisable to the ones he was putting forward several years ago. I strongly believe other important figures may follow his example.”

Farage said there would be the most unpredictable General Election in living memory in May and the North West would be at the heart of it.

And in a mixed message he was clearly targeting Labour voters and owners of small businesses in his address.

“The Labour Party was always credited with being the party for working people,” he said. “But I think a lot of patriotic Labour voters do not recognise it as the party their grandparents fought for.

“We are in a big Labour heartland here, and our message is to patriotic Labour people is ‘we’ve destroyed the BNP, now come and join UKIP.”

Farage also claimed the big three major parties had nothing to offer small businesses.

“Small businesses are more important to the economy of this country than the multi-nationals, something which the other parties seem to have forgotten.”

Mr Farage was speaking before it emerged that UKIP MEP Amjad Bashir quit the party to join the Conservatives.