Nigel Farage has talked in the past about his readiness to prop up a Labour minority government – he gave an interview to the Sunday People in October in which he said the Labour leader would just have to offer a referendum and a deal would be possible.
But the fact that he has repeated it to the New Statesman this week is hardly helpful when his party is going head to head with the Tories in Rochester. His comments to Jason Cowley help David Cameron’s squeeze message, which is that if you vote Ukip, you get Miliband.
Ukip are trying to sound as though they don’t care that this is getting so much pick-up, with a party source saying:
‘They [the Tories] are the ones who want to do a deal with Labour! Just 24 hours ago the Prime Minister asked the people of Rochester to set up a deal with Labour, the Greens and the Conservatives to defeat Ukip.
‘We don’t want to do deals with anybody, but we will do deals to get our country back. We would do a deal with the devil to get our country’s freedom back.’