Confusion in UKIP (the UK tea party) over deporting immigrants if the UK leaves the EU.

New UKIP MP Mark Reckless has said he feels "a bit sore" about the way he "came out of" controversy over his party's policy on EU migrants. He was criticised after implying that migrants might have to leave after a "transitional period" if the UK left the EU - which Nigel Farage denied.

Mr Reckless made the controversial comments during a televised hustings on Tuesday evening.

Asked what would happen to people from other EU states already in the country in the event of a UK exit from the EU, he suggested they would be looked at "sympathetically" but could only be allowed to remain in the UK for "a fixed period".

Asked later on BBC Radio Kent if he was suggesting they should be deported, he said: "No I was not suggesting that." He said his words had been "twisted" by Conservative critics.


Nigel Farage says Mark Reckless's victory in Rochester and Strood means UKIP can be a "major force" at the election.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-30157507

As a party like UKIP gains popularity and at least a small amount of political power with its frequently incoherent and contradictory policies towards immigrants (all rooted in a fundamental anti-immigrant posture), it is small wonder the many in the rest of Europe start to wish it would just go ahead and leave so the rest of them can go about solving problems collectively.