Many people in Thurrock are quite taken with Nigel Farage.

However when we look at what he has done as an MEP, it’s not that great.

He declined on a vote in the European Parliament to help zero hours workers.

He abstained on help for small farmers. He supports hunting and even joins the aristocracy when out hunting in their red jackets, hardly what an ordinary person in the UK would do.

He also abstained on help for minimum wage workers.

He turned down EU funding for food banks.

He opposed higher taxes on hugely profitable corporations, and also supports tax cuts for the very richest in the UK.

Worst of all he would like to see the UK adopt an American style private insurance health system like that of the US, instead of the NHS.

Once private insurers get involved on a national basis the cost of every treatment and procedure will skyrocket – the USA spend more per head on their very badly run healthcare system than we do, possibly because of the fact that costs in a private system rocket.

Over there it can cost thousands of dollars for a short ambulance journey. We really don’t want that over here.

Ordinary people will die prematurely from lack of necessary medical help if this happens. There are very few alive now who lived in the time before the NHS to point out just how bad it was.

Nigel Farage claims to speak for the man in the street, but he comes from a wealthy family who paid for him to go to public school.

He’s an ex Tory and a part of the Establishment (the BBC who are also strongly part of the Establishment like having him on Question Time whereas they neglect other political parties such as the SNP).

He blames the minorities at the bottom for the problems caused by people at the top. And people swallow that lie because they see immigrants around them, but don’t see tax dodging billionaires on the high street so are less aware of their existence.

He won’t be releasing his manifesto until after the EU elections so everyone who votes for him doesn’t know exactly what they are voting for – a bit like the entire Brexit debacle.

The problem with the Leave outcome was that there was no real plan on how to leave.

The Withdrawal Agreement is only the first of many agreements to be got through Parliament and this whole thing may take years.

He claims to be putting principles like trust and honesty and integrity at the heart of our democracy but I don’t see those qualities in a man who hardly ever attends the EU Parliament and when he does it is simply to be rude to foreign MEPS – if this was a regular job he would have been sacked ages ago – and of course he is well paid with a gold plated pension, for doing hardly anything and most of all not sticking up for the common man.

He has, hypocritically, obtained German passports for himself and his family so they will not be affected by Brexit.

He has said he will leave the UK if Brexit doesn’t turn out well.

Just because he doesn’t sound very posh it doesn’t make him a “man of the people”. A Democracy only works well if voters are fully informed.

Miss e thomas

Windsor Avenue, Grays