Nigel Farage MEP

EMILY MAITLIS: Welcome Nigel Farage.

This Georgia crisis I guess in some ways has shown a real coming of age for the EU in terms of its diplomatic power hasn't it?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well the EU always loves a crisis 'cause it's an opportunity to have a big summit which we're having tomorrow and to say we must advance the policy.

I mean don't forget there shouldn't be an EU foreign policy until the Constitutional Treaty becomes law.

But they're not going to worry about that. They're going to sit down tomorrow and they're going to try and come out with an EU policy.

Now they'll find it difficult because there are big differences in opinion between Germany and Poland say as to what should be done towards Russia.

But the one thing they all appear to be agreed upon is that the European Union should continue to expand to the East. Now I think that NATO and the EU encroaching upon Russia over the course of the last ten or fifteen years has been a proactive thing to do and quite frankly the wrong thing to do.

EMILY MAITLIS: So you have sympathies with Russia in this situation?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well I'm not saying that I agree with their actions or their behaviour but I do think that it, you know we shouldn't be surprised if the Russians appear to be getting somewhat more paranoid because they feel threatened by what are military alliances moving onto their borders. I think the whole policy has been a mistake.

EMILY MAITLIS: But surely you can see that EU membership, NATO membership has been a huge driver of democracy in these parts of the world.

NIGEL FARAGE: No. I don't think it has at all. I mean they were, they were, once the wall came down, once everything changed, they were developing their own democratic systems anyway. I think the point is that by joining the EU in fact what they're doing is losing control over their own lives.

I mean we in Britain have seventy five per cent of our laws now made in Brussels and the same is happening to those new countries in the East. So, so no it isn't as simple as that.

EMILY MAITLIS: All right. Well where does this actually leave Georgia? Because you I imagine, UKIP I imagine values the independence of a sovereign territory.

NIGEL FARAGE: Of course.

EMILY MAITLIS: Now President Saakashvili is desperate to protect that sovereign territory with his acceptance into NATO. Should that be sped up now?

NIGEL FARAGE: We believe in sovereignty. We believe in national self determination. Of course we do. But we also believe that Britain right at the moment is actually engaged in too many foreign wars and some of the rhetoric that one sees through the newspapers in Britain today is highly dangerous stuff.

EMILY MAITLIS: But what ..

NIGEL FARAGE: We should not be getting too involved in this.

EMILY MAITLIS: But you can't have it both ways can you? You can either say we want to respect Georgia's boundaries. We want to make that territory safe. We accept that that will come with NATO membership.

NIGEL FARAGE: Well I don't think the situation in South Ossetia is all that straightforward actually given the number of Russian speaking people that live there. You know it isn't as straightforward as people sometimes are pointing out.

And I repeat if we take NATO, if we take the European Union and we keep moving these boundaries further to the East and closer to Russia we are stirring up and provoking a confrontation that could come perhaps in the space of the next few years. We shouldn't, we simply shouldn't be doing it.

EMILY MAITLIS: Let me bring you a little closer to home. Conference season starting. UKIP next weekend.

NIGEL FARAGE: Yeah.

EMILY MAITLIS: The Tories are really resurging. They're at the top of their game at the moment. Isn't UKIP struggling for something to say?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well no. We've got lots to say. It's just that right at the moment the debate that we want to have isn't being had. You know you can go through every day's news stories. You can talk about hips, you can talk about post offices, you can talk about rubbish collections.

You talk about all these things. What no one's saying is the reason we've got all these things happening is because European law is being imposed upon Britain. And Labour don't want to discuss it. The Lib Dems don't want to discuss it.

EMILY MAITLIS: But the Tories are pretty united on that one.

NIGEL FARAGE: They're - I tell you what ..

EMILY MAITLIS: A broadly Euro sceptic position.

NIGEL FARAGE: No, not at all.

EMILY MAITLIS: Well in terms of the Constitutional Treaty.

NIGEL FARAGE: In fact the fault lines, no the fault lines within the Conservative Party as to our future relationship with the European Union are very, very serious indeed.

And our job with our conference next week and heading on is to say look we've got a European election next year, let's turn that into a referendum on our current relationship with the EU.

EMILY MAITLIS: And it is your business, UKIP, to talk about Europe. But if you look around, you look at the papers what most people are worried about now is the economy. You haven't really got a place in this debate.

NIGEL FARAGE: Well I think the economy (sic) and membership of the EU are in fact very, very closely intertwined. You know what we're saying is we're going through a bad time economically.

What we should be able to do is to forge trade relationships with the rest of the world, the growing parts of the world, and we can't do that if we stay part of the European Union.

EMILY MAITLIS: Nigel Farage, thank you very much indeed.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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