AVERIL Sumners, in trying to persuade us in last week's Review that UKIP is the only party to support the working person, shows yet again she is a master of spin but curiously economical on facts.

As a retired historian she has learnt well that a lie told often enough becomes accepted as the truth.

I was state educated, brought up in a very poor working class household and left school at 16.

In my 30s I was a carpenter and studied in my spare time to gain an Open University degree which was easily affordable thanks to the vision of Labour prime minister Harold Wilson and Jennie Lee.

Then later, although I had a young family to support, I was able to afford go to college and gain a teaching degree again thanks to a Labour government that had ensured everyone had an entitlement during their lifetime to go to university paid for by the state and with a grant for living expenses.

This is the tradition of the Labour Party, to help working people better themselves for their own good and the ultimate good of the country, a tradition it continues to this day. So perhaps you can see why I find it galling to be told what the working class wants by an ex-Tory district council candidate.

If we take an analytical look at Averil Sumners' claim that it is UKIP who are the champions of the working people of this country, we can see just how frighteningly effective the spin doctors of UKIP and UKIP-supporting big business and media have been.

Recent polls have shown that two thirds of voters believe Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, was state educated when in fact he was educated at the exclusive private Dulwich College, that over half of voters think Ed Milliband, Labour's leader, was privately educated, when in fact he went to a state school, that 81 per cent of UKIP voters believe 'big business takes advantage of ordinary people', yet UKIP is led by an ex-City broker, both their ex-Tory MPs were privately educated, one having worked in the City, and its sponsors are all ex-Tory millionaires.

The same polls found that the majority of UKIP voters want a fairer distribution of income; want re-nationalisation of essential industries such as rail and energy; and agree overwhelmingly that 'there is one law for the rich and one for the poor'.

As I have noted before, it is hard to pin down their policies from one day to the next, but there are three things that UKIP have consistently lobbied for: slashing taxes for the rich, privatising all public services, (which presumably includes the NHS) and trashing the basic employment rights that working people everywhere fought so hard for over the last century.

I share the pain and disillusionment that working people like myself feel, the feeling of having been let down by recent governments: but moving to UKIP is jumping from the frying pan into a very large and dangerous fire.

– John French, Brockweir.