"Pull your money out!" - Nigel Farage

Ukip urges Brits to withdraw their money from Spanish banks

Nigel Farage has urged British expatriates in Spain to pull their money out of the country’s banks.

The Telegraph,

23 March, 2013

The UK Independence Party leader said that the European Union had “crossed a line” by trying to extract funds from savers under the terms of the abandoned Cypriot bail-out.

Mr Farage said: “Even I didn’t think that they would stoop to actually stealing money from people’s bank accounts.

“There is going to be a big flight of money and that flight of money won’t just be from Cyprus, it will be from the other eurozone countries, too. There are 750,000 British people who own properties, or who live, many of them in retirement, down in Spain.

“Now that we see the EU are prepared to resort to anything to keep alive their failing euro project, our advice to expats living down in the Mediterranean must be, 'Get your money out of there while you’ve still got a chance’.”

Mr Farage urged George Osborne, the Chancellor, to rule out any such levy on British savers.

In a wide-ranging speech yesterday, Mr Farage also said that no immigrant should be able to claim benefits until they have lived, obeyed the law, worked and paid taxes in the UK for five years.

He also said that Ukip would not form a pact with the Conservative Party under Mr Cameron’s leadership.

Mr Farage added that his party was drawing in support from all voters, not just Conservative supporters.

“Please don’t just think that it is just tired Conservatives that are coming to Ukip,” he said.

Ukip has enjoyed a surge in popularity after coming second in the Eastleigh by-election ahead of the Conservative Party.

He admitted that some of the party’s new voters were eager to “stick two fingers up to the establishment”. But he added that a vote for Ukip is “far more powerful than a protest vote”.

Mr Farage insisted his party could win votes from across the political spectrum as their success in Eastleigh had been about more than protest votes. He added there has been a "wholesale rejection of the career political class".