SIR – Re Councillor Cole’s claims (Letters, March 30) that we, the UKIP are getting ahead of ourselves in prophesying that we will oust the Liberal Democrats as the UK’s third party.

Should Coun Cole consult recent opinion polls on the electorate’s preferred party, he will find UKIP just a fraction behind his Lib Dems and more popular than his party with younger voters. Personally, I struggle to understand how the Lib Dems have not been forced to change their name as they are neither Liberal nor Democratic – they support the extradition of British subjects to foreign countries without any evidence, they support the introduction of a foreign legal system which states we are guilty until proven innocent and rejects Habeas Corpus, they are committed to transferring powers from the UK to undemocratic unelected institutions in Brussels. They should be renamed illiberal anti-democrats!

The councilor continues that his party is broader and more coherent than UKIP. That is difficult to justify as 75 per cent of the Lib Dem manifesto is copied and pasted from EU policies, whereas UKIP’s manifesto is the broadest of all parties because we can make laws in every area. People on the street are increasingly asking me, “what is the point of the Lib Dems?”

Jason Smith, chairman, UKIP Bradford, Woodlands Avenue, Queensbury