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Ukip politicians condemn leadership candidate's '£9,000 to leave UK' idea

John Rees-Evans
John Rees-Evans Photograph: Vickie Flores/Rex/Shutterstock

Senior Ukip politicians have condemned a party leadership candidate’s suggestion that British dual-nationals could be paid up to £9,000 to leave the UK.

John Rees-Evans, a controversial Ukip activist who is currently the fourth favourite for the party leadership, suggested a scheme to persuade dual-nationals to leave Britain would help him reach a goal of reducing net migration to minus 1 million a year and could also boost international trade ties.

Peter Whittle, Ukip deputy leader and leadership frontrunner, called the suggestion “utterly and entirely wrong”, while party leadership rival Jane Collins MEP told the Mirror the policy was similar to the BNP’s 2010 manifesto.

Addressing a meeting in Leigh, Greater Manchester, Rees-Evans suggested the foreign aid budget should be cut from more than £13bn a year to £1bn, with £12.3bn then spent on incentivising British citizens with dual citizenship to leave the country, citing British Indians and Tanzanians, whom he said could set up their own businesses.

“It’s not going to be fascist. I’m not interested in using eugenics or any evil things like that,” the former soldier said of his plan to reduce net migration, in a video first published by the Daily Mirror.

However, he said citizens could be persuaded to leave with “£6,000 upfront and £3,000 once the programme is complete, for every man, woman and child, with benefits and healthcare”.

Rees-Evans expanded on the plan on his Facebook page after the video of the meeting was published, saying the fee would incentivise people to set up businesses overseas. “I am being accused of wanting to send people of a particular country, or countries, abroad,” he wrote. “This is absolutely not the case.

“The net effect would be a reduction in Britain’s population of up to several hundred thousands persons annually, as well as forging prolific and valuable import-free trading relationships that will create jobs in the exporting country, while reducing the cost of living to British residents.”

If the citizens decided to move back within seven years, they would repay the financial award, he said.

Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake said Rees-Evans was “openly copying the gutter politics of the BNP”. He said: “This is implicitly telling dual-nationals, who have made Britain their home, that they’re not welcome and should be encouraged to leave the country. At a time when far-right nationalism is on the rise in the US, we need to make absolutely clear that this toxic brand of politics has no place in Britain.”

Rees-Evans, who does not hold a formal position in the party, is best known for once claiming to the media that a gay donkey attempted to rape his horse.

Eleven candidates are standing in the leadership race to replace Paul Nuttall, who quit after a disastrous performance for the party in both the local and general elections.

Rees-Evans is not the party’s most controversial candidate. His rivals include Anne Marie Waters, a vocal anti-Islam campaigner whose candidacy provoked protest from some members.

Many of the party’s more mainstream candidates, including Whittle, will run on an anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism platform, given that the result of the EU referendum went in the Eurosceptic’s party’s favour.

Whittle, a London assembly member, has promised to transform Ukip into a “cultural movement” opposed to multiculturalism. Waters was deputy leader of the UK arm of Pegida, a far-right and anti-Islam group, and has called Islam “an expansionist, political, totalitarian and supremacist faith, commanded to world domination”.

Other fringe candidates include Aiden Powlesland, a parliamentary candidate at the June election who argued that the UK should mine the the asteroid belt as a post-Brexit development opportunity.

Voting opens on 1 September, with the result announced at Ukip’s annual conference at the end of that month.