UKIP Candidate Says Nigel Farage Is "Like Mahatma Gandhi"

Sergi Singh, the party's candidate for Hull North, also compared UKIP to a chocolate bar.

An Asian UKIP candidate has compared Nigel Farage to Mahatma Gandhi, the man who led India to independence in 1947.

Image courtesy of Sergi Singh

Sergi Singh, the UKIP candidate for Hull North, told BuzzFeed News that his party leader's attempt to free Britain from the EU replicated the Indian leader's struggle for his country's independence.

"Nigel's like Mahatma Gandhi," he said. "The independence movement to go outside of Europe is really important. He's got a lot of respect around the world [because of it].

"[Gandhi] went to the British and said, 'Could you get out of my country?'"

Singh is standing in Hull North, where Labour candidate Diana Johnson won in 2010 with a slim majority of 641 votes over the Liberal Democrats.

The UKIP candidate said he trusted Farage implicitly: "I've met Nigel three or four times now, and we went for an orange juice, and he was really genuine and was just asking about Hull. I can read people within five minutes, and he's a chap who's in the right time at the right place, a bit like Gandhi."

Singh, who has been a member of the party for two years, declared that "there's no racism in UKIP".

Image courtesy of Sergi Singh

"We haven’t got a monopoly on idiots," he said. "Some people say some daft comments but we immediately expel them."

Singh also defended party members who jeered a journalist who asked why there was only one black face in the party's manifesto at the document's launch.

"Everyone is twisting it," he said. "If you had a lot of ethnic and black candidates in the manifesto then it would be overkill. It’s not an issue any more. That’s so boring."

In a recent leaflet, Singh described UKIP as being like a chocolate bar: "We are like a chocolate bar. You have the wafer bit, the caramel bit, and the chocolate bit. It's a mix of all these different things, and it tastes really good."

He told BuzzFeed News that the EU is the "biggest racist organisation in the world because they won’t let African countries bring stuff into Europe".

Singh said that everyone who wants to come into the UK should have to have a medical, and if they have HIV or another illness, they should have enough funds or travel insurance to cover it. He added that nurses tell him "the health system is full of migrants and health tourists".