UKIP’S BENNETT IN WALKOUT
Ukip’s new Assembly leader, Gareth Bennett, walked out when we challenged him on immigration. This is a transcript of the interview which ended halfway through when the South Wales Central AM took off his microphone and left the building. Ruth Mosalski re
WE WANTED to ask Ukip group leader Gareth Bennett about some of his more controversial views – but halfway through our interview, he walked out.
Gareth Bennett was elected to the National Assembly in 2016, and after throwing his name into the leadership ballot was elected on Friday as their leader in Wales.
In an interview at the Western Mail’s office, we asked Mr Bennett to explain how he felt about his rise from council candidate to group leader and how he saw the future of the group.
We had also drawn up a list of comments that Mr Bennett has previously made to ask him if he stood by them and why he believed them to be true.
Here’s what we wanted to question him on:
■ 1. He was previously banned from speaking in the Assembly after saying there had to be a limit to transgender rights or there would be a “total implosion of society”;
■ 2. Before his election in 2016 he said “the ethnicities... possibly the Eastern Europeans” were causing litter problems in a Cardiff suburb;
■ 3. That the burka is part of an “alien culture” and parts of the Cardiff suburb Canton were like “Saudi Arabia”;
■ 4. That non-Welsh-speakers are being discriminated against;
■ 5. Plaid and Labour are pushing Wales towards a “Stalinist police state”; and
■ 6. The 2011 referendum giving the Assembly law-making powers was a “con trick” and most recently that the Assembly should be scrapped.
But during questions about a woman we interviewed last week and why her choice to wear the burka was different from any other woman’s choice, Mr Bennett stood up and said he was leaving.
Before this, when asked how he was feeling after his election to head of an Assembly group, he said: “Well, I suppose I’ve been a member of the Assembly for two years so there has been something of a transition.”
He admitted it had been a “turbulent” time for Ukip, but said the change of national leader was “nothing to do with the Assembly group”.
“It’s been a pretty turbulent period, I would agree with you. I think one of the problems was that we were slightly fortunate in the Assembly elections in the timing of it, it was slightly before the Brexit referendum so the single issue most people associated Ukip with was Brexit, which wasn’t essentially anything to do with the Welsh Assembly, but the issue of Brexit helped to get us elected”.
He said there was no planning in the national party about what happened after Brexit. “No-one seemed to know.”
Asked if there were an Assembly election soon, would Ukip get in with the same numbers, Mr Bennett said: “It’s difficult to know. The polls seem to indicate we are rising again so we possibly would get people in but we haven’t risen to the levels of the opinion polls that we were in 2014-16.”
Asked if it was going to be a hard party to lead, he said he didn’t anticipate problems from former leader Neil Hamilton.
“The difficulties may not lie with Neil, the difficulties may lie elsewhere. I agree with you, it has given the appearance of an unruly group.”
Asked if the party was still relevant, he said: “That’s a very good question, that’s why I stood in the leadership election with the policies that I stood for because I wanted to make us relevant.”
Mr Bennett was banned from speaking in the Assembly for a year after complaints about the language he used about the transgender community.
In our interview, when asked if he stood by those comments, he said he had given a “kind of” apology to y Llywydd Elin Jones “to get back into the Assembly” so he had to be “careful” in what he said.
“I can’t go back on what I said in my apology,” he said.
He said when his comments became a “major news item” he “got a lot of publicity for it”, but he said he didn’t anticipate he would be banned from speaking in the chamber.
Asked if he did it for publicity, he responded: “I wasn’t totally aware when I wrote that speech, and then made it that it was going to be a massive controversy, sometimes it’s difficult to anticipate where the controversy is coming to come.”
Asked if he realised speaking about transgender issues would create headlines, Mr Bennett said: “Sometimes I say things that I think are common sense and that lots of people say and believe, and yet you go into the Welsh Assembly and suddenly all these people are up in arms and I think, ‘Oh, I forgot, they’re not living in the real world, I’ve got to say different things in here’.”
Asked what he thought the “real world’s view” of transgender people is and whether that is what he projected that day, he replied: “I was projecting the majority opinion of people in Britain.”
He said his comments were particularly about the “nuttiest elements” of the transgender community in relation to the Gender Recognition Bill.
He said he didn’t believe many “elements of the transgender community didn’t agree with it”.
Asked whether he stood by his comments, he said: “I broadly stand by the points that I made at the time.”
The questions about immigration from Ruth Mosalski (RM)
■ RM: Before you were elected in 2016 you said that people of “different cultural attitudes” were responsible for rubbish being left on the streets of Roath, and most recently you’ve said burkas are a part of “alien culture” and that areas like Canton feel like “Saudi Arabia”.
■ GB: “Indeed.”
■ RM: “Do you believe immigration is impacting Cardiff negatively?”
■ GB: “Of course it is.”
■ RM: “Why?”
■ GB: “Because of the reasons you just explained to me, as well as other reasons, compression of wages, pressure on public services, such as health and education, pressure on the quality of education, there are manifold reasons why it’s having a negative impact.”
■ RM: “Cardiff is a city known for immigration, built on immigration. The docks, dock workers, Tiger Bay, Shirley Bassey, Betty Campbell – one of the best teachers we’ve ever had in Wales. They were all here because of immigration. Do you really say people like that are impacting our city badly?”
■ GB: “Shirley Bassey was born in the 1930s, she grew in the 1950s, Betty Campbell was a similar generation. Why are you extending my comments about immigration today, to things that happened in the past?”
■ RM: “So it’s immigration today you have a problem with?”
■ GB: “That’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about immigration in the 1940s.”
■ RM: “So what about the shopkeeper at the end of my road, who’s open every day when I go to work and when I go [home] from work, has kids at our schools, he’s a part of my community, what’s he doing wrong?”
■ GB: “Did I say he is doing something wrong?”
■ RM: “So who is doing something wrong?”
■ GB: “I’m talking about a net impact of immigration, you are talking about individual people.”
■ RM: “Of course I am, they are part of our community.”
■ GB: “You can’t have a whole policy based on individual people doing good. You’re talking about wanting to know from me what I think about the net impact of immigration, is it positive, is it negative? And then you say, ‘Ooh, this shopkeeper is a nice guy’, ‘this person in the army is a nice person’, you’re reducing things to absurd levels. If we’re talking about policy formulation, you have to look at the whole picture and you have to look at the net impact.”
■ RM: “But Cardiff is made up of communities...”
■ GB: “Cardiff is made up of many communities, yes. Cardiff is also short of housing, is bringing in 330,000 people every year into the UK and Cardiff having some of those people coming in, is that going to have a positive impact on the housing shortage, is it?”
■ RM: “I believe immigration has a great benefit on our city, yes.”
■ GB: “On the housing shortage?”
■ RM: “It would depend on who those people are and what their stories are, but you won’t let me talk about individuals.”
■ GB: “It is not about individuals because you cannot construct policy on this story, and that story.”
■ RM: “So then how can you say this person is taking a house off this person if we’re not talking about individuals?”
■ GB: “If an immigrant gets ahead of a local person in the housing queue, then how is that not having a negative effect on the local person?”
■ RM: “They will have been assessed by the same criteria, same council guidelines, the same rules. Why is it any different?”
■ GB: “The rules are absurd. The rules should favour local people, with strong and well-established links in that community. Otherwise they are totally absurd.”
■ RM: “Immigration doesn’t mean someone who has been here five minutes, 10 minutes or a week, does it? An immigrant could have been on the housing waiting-list just as long as someone from Cardiff?”
■ GB: “This is just mere semantics. Try and look at the broader picture. You’re not really getting anywhere with this. You need to look at the broader picture. You need to look at the broader impact on housing, you need to look at the impact on education, you need to look at the impact on the NHS and you need to stop looking at individuals and because I like this bloke in the corner shop that means immigration is wonderful. That is merely infantile.”
The topic then changed to Mr Bennett’s comments about the burka
■ RM: “On Friday I interviewed a young lady called Sahar. She’s in her thirties, she’s Welsh and has lived in Cardiff all her life. She told me she chooses to wear a face veil in the way I choose to wear high heels sometimes. Why do you believe it’s not her choice to decide what she wears?”
■ GB: “I believe that if every person took a choice on what to wear, would there be any limits on what they did? What if you went outside the house naked? Would that be OK?”
■ RM: “It depends if I cause offence to someone, the criminal offence is whether
I cause offence to someone.”
■ GB: “So causing offence to someone is something that can be taken into account?
So if someone goes out into the street...
■ RM interjects “in a criminal sense”.
■ GB: “If it wasn’t against the law it would be OK then, would it?”
■ RM: “The other week in Cardiff there was a nudist bike ride. The reason things like that are allowed to happen is it’s not causing public offence. Can we go back to the question? Why is Sahar allowed to choose what to wear, and I am, but she’s wrong?”
■ GB: “Will you allow me to answer your question?
■ RM: “If you answer it.”
■ GB: “Will you listen? Will you actually try to learn something?”
■ RM: “Please don’t patronise me. What’s your answer to that question?”
■ GB: “Right, you are a useless interviewer, you come in here with preconceived opinions and ideas, you have no ability to engage with the argument, and that was the worst interview I’ve ever had since [chief reporter Martin] Shipton, who also works for your organisation.”
■ RM: “You’re an elected individual and we’d really like to finish this interview”.
■ GB: “No, absolute rubbish, Ruth”.