Ukip leader is open to coalition with Tories

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage used a visit to the Black Country to raise the possibility of forming a coalition with the Conservatives after the next election.

Recent opinion polls have seen Ukip in third place, ahead of the Liberal Democrats, although they are now back in fourth place. Mr Farage said he would join forces with the Tories, in exchange for a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. He addressed a meeting of around 200 people in Sedgley at the Dormston Sports and Arts Centre last night.

It came just hours after Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg renewed their pledge to work as a coalition government during a visit to Smethwick.

Mr Farage, aged 48, yesterday delivered a letter to Downing Street challenging the Prime Minister to a debate on whether or not to give Britain a referendum on EU membership. But he said: "If he gave me a free and fair referendum I would do a deal with anyone, possibly the devil himself."

He said he believed the party could see its first MP elected at the 2015 General Election and was expecting to increase its number of MEPs in 2014.

The party won two of the six West Midlands seats at the European elections in 2009 although one of its members, Nikki Sinclaire, now sits as an independent after falling out with Ukip.

Mr Farage said: "The EU costs us £51 million a day. Its regulations and environmental legislation are damaging employment prospects because it encourages manufacturing to be transferred out of this country to the rest of the world."

Mr Cameron has ruled out a straight in-out referendum on Europe but is open to the idea of a public vote once stability has returned to the eurozone. On election day in May 2010, Mr Farage was in a light aircraft crash after a Ukip banner it was pulling got tangled.

He was pulled from the wreckage still wearing his rosette. He said: "When people ask me how I am I say compared to the alternative, pretty good. I was pretty bashed up."