UKIP asked the police to investigate the BBC after the broadcast of last week’s episode of Have I Got News For You.
The right-wing party claims that comments made by journalist Camilla Long during the 24 April episode of the satirical news quiz could hinder the electoral success of party leader Nigel Farage.
Long, who appeared on the popular comedy programme as a panelist, was defending an article she had written criticising South Thanet, the Kent constituency where Farage is standing to become an MP, where she had described as “grubby and stuck in the past”.
She said:
“I went there more than Nigel Farage”
“By the time I arrived there he’d only been a few times.”
She went on to describe a situation where she asked to old women in a casino in South Thanet about who they would vote for, and neither of them had heard of Nigel Farage.
UKIP claim that the decision to broadcast Long’s comments were a breach of the Representation of the People Act and that the party is now “at war with the BBC”.
Kent police said it had decided not launch an investigation.
Today, Nigel Farage took to Facebook to complain that his party, which elected no-one to Westminster in the last election but currently has two MPs after they defected from the Conservatives, is being ignored by the mainstream media, most notably BBc News.
He said:
“If you watch the BBC news, you’d scarcely know UKIP is taking part in this election..”
