London Evening Standard

London

A “British builder” in a Ukip poster accusing EU workers of taking UK jobs is an Irish actor who migrated to this country, it emerged yesterday.

In the latest row to hit Nigel Farage’s campaign for the European and local elections, the man was named as Dave O’Rourke from Dublin.

It follows the suspension of a Ukip election broadcast star for making “racist” comments on social media.

And Ukip has had to defend its European manifesto after it featured a woman called Lizzy Vaid pledging to vote for the party — without mentioning she is an assistant to Farage and Ukip’s events manager.

The poster shows a “builder” with the headline “EU Policy At Work”, followed by the caption: “British workers are hit hard by unlimited cheap labour.”

Asked about the man’s identity, a Ukip spokesman said he believed it was an actor called Dave O’Rourke, originally from Dublin but resident in Britain for at least 10 years.

Tory vice-chairman Bob Neill accused Ukip of being “hypocritical” for not using “ordinary people” in their £1.5mn poster campaign.

Neill, the Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, said: “I think it is pretty hypocritical of Ukip. They always like to say: ‘We are not part of the political establishment.’ They like to claim they are the party of ordinary people.

“They are using a trick most other parties stopped using long ago, because they get found out doing it. As far as I am aware, we always use genuine people in our adverts.”

But the Ukip spokesman called the Tories “wilful idiots” and pointed out that when William Hague led the party, actors were used in a poster on the number of nurses and teachers in Britain. “This is utterly standard practice in political advertising,” he added.

Ukip member Andre Lampitt, who starred in Wednesday’s election broadcast, was suspended from the party after “repellent” posts were found on his Twitter account Thursday night.

In the broadcast, Zimbabwe-born Lampitt, who runs a decorating business in Morden, posed in a builder’s hard-hat to complain “lads from eastern Europe” were undercutting him.

But in tweets unearthed afterwards, he claimed Ed Miliband was “not British” and on Africans, said: “Let them kill themselves off.”

Yesterday his family said he was dealing with “personal issues”. A family member said: “He is actually a very nice person but is very angry at the moment.”

Lampitt did not respond to requests for a comment. Yesterday Farage said he was “sorry” Ukip’s vetting procedures had not discovered Lampitt’s previous comments, and an internal investigation had been launched. He called the tweets “repellent” and agreed they were “probably” racist.