NATIONAL ICON TO HELP UKIP LAUNCH ITS EUROPEAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN

One of the nation's most well known and respected political icons will be helping the UK Independence Party launch its Eastern Counties and national campaign for the 2009 European Election. On Monday 20th April, at a special press conference being held at the Assembly House The Eastern region will Launch their campaign,

Outgoing UKIP MEP and former Party Leader, Jeffrey Titford, will be introducing his potential successors including lead candidate David Campbell Bannerman, who is also the Party's current Deputy Leader, alongside Norfolk poultry and arable farmer Stuart Agnew and City finance director Andrew Smith, who are the second and third candidates. The Party will also be launching its high-spending region wide poster campaign featuring the well-known icon who will be highlighting the immense daily cost of EU membership and exhorting the public to vote for the UK Independence Party.

David Campbell Bannerman commenting on the launch said: "This is going to be an eye catching and hard-hitting campaign. UKIP is the only Party offering the British people a genuine choice at this election. All three of the old parties are wedded to continued European Union membership, despite its immense cost to our economy, the appalling damage it is doing to our country's ability to govern itself, to control its own borders and immigration, as well as the grave loss of democracy.”

"The European Election represents the British public's only opportunity to say a big NO to the European Constitution or the Lisbon Treaty, as it is now known. We were promised a referendum and then denied it, on the spurious excuse of calling it something different. Voting UKIP on 4th June is the only way to say NO and make it clear that we want our country back as well as the £40 million per day it currently costs us. We simply can't afford it any longer. Regenerating our economy and getting people back to work are much more important than continuing to subsidise the corrupt and anti-democratic EU."

UKIP gained 12 MEPs at the 2004 European Election, taking third place nationally with 2.7 million votes, relegating the Liberal Democrats to 4th place and, with even stronger results in the Eastern Counties, where they took second place with over 296,000 votes, ahead of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. This shocked the political establishment and demonstrated that the British people were deeply sceptical of the 'European Project'.

That scepticism has considerably hardened since then, with recent polls indicating that the majority of respondents support British withdrawal from the EU. UKIP is the only major party offering that option and its target of 20 seats in the European Parliament is a realistic prospect that would give it an extremely powerful mandate for pursuing British independence from the EU and repairing the damage 35 years of membership have done to the country.