Ukip bans disabled man as candidate

12 April 2012

The UK Independence Party has told a man that he cannot be an election candidate in a target seat because he is disabled, it has been claimed.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said Jack Biggs was not up to the task of fighting for a priority seat on Weymouth and Portland Borough Council.

But he denied discriminating against Mr Biggs, 65, and accused him of blackmailing the party into withdrawing a candidate standing against his daughter.

"I could run down the street but I couldn't make an Olympic athlete. This man couldn't do the job just as other people can't do it because they are busy. We are not discriminating against anybody, we are being used here as an object of political blackmail."

Mr Biggs, who has had both knees replaced, was told by Ukip's South Dorset Constituency Association that he could not be a full candidate in view of his registered disability.

Association chairman Vicki Sharp offered instead to allow him to stand as a "paper candidate", a phrase used to refer to a token candidate who is not expected to win.

Mr Farage told Sky News: "He can stand as a candidate for Ukip, she made that perfectly clear, as a paper candidate, we'll give him some help. But he could not be a mainline candidate if he physically could not do the job.

"We are thin on the ground in Dorset, and our priority candidates who we are trying to give some backing to, some financial backing and all the rest of it, our priority candidates have to be able to do the job."

Mr Farage said Ukip had had "plenty" of disabled and blind candidates in the past. He added that Ukip had correspondence from Mr Biggs in which he threatened to go to the press unless Ukip agreed not to stand against his daughter in the elections. "He has tried to set us up here, by blackmailing us, (by saying) he'll go to the press if we stand against his daughter, and that is the real story," he said.

Mr Farage went on to insist: "He was able to stand - he wasn't able to stand as a target candidate, because he wasn't able to go out and do the work in the ward."

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