The prospect of Ukip gaining a Scottish seat in the General Election is “a little remote” but it is a “completely realistic objective” to use the campaign as a building block towards winning seats in the 2016 Holyrood elections, Nigel Farage has said.
Mr Farage made the comments during STV’s Tonight programme, which has conducted a series of interviews with the party leaders.
He said: “I see the General Election in Scotland as a staging post building on winning a seat in the European Parliament, but really getting ready for the Scottish parliamentary elections.
“The thought that Ukip are going to win seats in Westminster in Scotland this year is a little remote.”
He added that “as a building block to winning seats in the Scottish parliament, that is a completely realistic objective”.
The Ukip leader said it was a “myth” that Scottish people have a different view on Europe and immigration to those south of the border as he claimed that Scottish seats could be fertile territory for the party in the future.
He added: “That’s in the distance, you know … at the moment we have done phenomenally well in Wales, which surprised everybody who tried to paint Ukip out to be a English party, we’ve got a presence in Stormont and in local government in Northern Ireland, we have one MEP in Scotland.
“I mean that across the board is, if you think about it, pretty remarkable progress.”
The programme also spoke to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, an ally of SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett.
“We bring a wider aspect of politics, the whole debate around austerity and the alternatives to that,” Ms Wood said.
Commenting on the leaders’ debate, she added: “Previously the leaders’ debates were likely to be the four shades of Westminster grey and the differences between those four parties, it would have been I think quite a boring programme.”