NEW YORK -- Nigel Farage has called Britain a "Judeo-Christian country" that must "stand up" for its values if it is to counter the growing threat of the Islamic State and radical jihadism (see video above).
Fresh from his selection as the candidate for Thanet South in Kent, the Ukip leader turned up in New York on Tuesday, appearing on Fox News to be interviewed by Russell Brand’s nemesis Sean Hannity, the host quipping that Farage might be a "future prime minister".
On the current state of politics in the UK, Farage dismissed both Labour and the Tories, calling them "social democrats" that you couldn’t get a "cigarette paper" between, while suggesting that David Cameron’s terror crackdown delivered in a speech to parliament on Monday was simply the Prime Minister "following" Ukip’s lead.
Farage added that any plan to make British Jihadis stateless by seizing their passports would inevitably fall foul of the European Convention on Human Rights.
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Following on from an interview last week in which Hannity and Anjem Choudary shouted at each other for eleven minutes on the subject of whose God was best, Farage was asked to comment on the British radical preacher's assertion that "Sharia would be coming to a place near you very soon" (see video below).
"They [the radical Islamists] mean it," said Farage. "They’re not playing around… and a lot of this is our fault. We have been too weak. My country is a Judeo-Christian country… so we’ve got to start standing up for our values".
The duo then lauded the Australian prime minister’s firmness over the issue of integration, before Hannity said he would be following Farage’s career "very closely".
Earlier this week, Choudary sparked a furore in the US after an appearance on CNN in which the extremist was confronted by the host Brian Stelter over an incident that occurred during the pre-interview microphone check.
When Choudary was asked to count down from 10 to 1 to make sure the audio was working, the preacher said "9/11, 7/7, 3/11" - the dates of Islamic terror attacks against the West. "You know, if you had a sense of humour, maybe you would’ve laughed," Choudary said (see video below).
As Farage dominates both TV screens in Britain and US, polls in Clacton have predicted landslide win for Ukip's Douglas Carswell.
The Tory MP defected from the Conservatives last week, triggering a by-election, the poll of voters in the Clacton seat predicting a massive 44 point lead for Ukip.
The Survation study for the Mail on Sunday put Ukip on 64%, with Mr Carswell's former party on 20%, Labour on 13% and the Lib Dems on 2%.
More than half of those polled favoured quitting the European Union, with 54% supporting a British exit and 26% opposed to cutting ties to Brussels.
In a sign of Mr Carswell's popularity in the seat, more than a third (34%) of those indicating they would vote Ukip said it was because they liked their former Conservative MP, while 57% said it was because they liked Ukip and 9% said it would be a protest vote.
Among Tory voters, almost half (49%) said Mr Carswell was a hero despite his defection, with just 17% saying he was a traitor.