By Eniola Amadu
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has challenged broadcasters for interrogating him on his alleged antisemitism and teenage racism.
Farage during a press conference in London, stated that he would refuse the BBC and noted that ITV had a case to deal with.
Nigel Farage’s angry reaction during the press conference follows recent claims from five additional former schoolmates, who told the Guardian they had seen him engage in deeply offensive racist or antisemitic behaviour.
These ex-Dulwich College pupils said they felt compelled to come forward now due to how Farage and other figures in his party responded to the Guardian’s investigation.
Meanwhile, Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice described those who have made claims against Farage as liars.
These included an Emmy-and Bafta-winning director, Peter Ettedgui who remembered Farage confronting him saying “Hitler was right” or “Gas them” when they were at school.
A banker named Nick Hearn backed up the claim asserting that he had the Reform UK leader abusing Ettedgui, urging Farage to “come clean”.
“[Farage] was consistent and he was persistent. Peter and I used to have lunch together in the sort of cloisters, a thoroughfare between the main buildings” Hearn said.
“There were people going backwards and forwards all the time, and I witnessed on multiple occasions sort of little snide comments and personal, vindictive, racist comments”.
Hearn added that: “He had a reputation in school for being a racist. I think he should come clean about his inappropriate behaviour as a young man and apologise.
“People will make up their own opinion, of course, but I just think that it wasn’t idle kids’ banter. It was targeted and highly racist.”
Tice had earlier been challenged by the BBC’s Emma Barnett, who pressed him about Farage’s alleged “relationship with Hitler”.
Farage later announced he would no longer engage with the BBC, calling them “despicable” and “beyond belief”.
He tagged Barnett as one of the BBC’s “lower-grade presenters”, criticising her style of questioning and accusing the corporation of hypocrisy for having aired programmes in the 1970s and 1980s that would now be considered racist.
Referencing television shows including “Are You Being Served?” and “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum”, Farage criticised the BBC of “double standards and hypocrisy” saying, “I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything you did throughout the 1970s and 80s.”
He further read a letter which he said he had received from an ex-colleague at Dulwich college, which stated that while Farage had been “offensive” he did not recall him as racist.
Farage read: “I was a Jewish pupil at Dulwich college at the same time and I remember him very well. While there was plenty of macho tongue-in-cheek schoolboy banter, it was humour, and yes, sometimes it was offensive … but never with malice. I never heard him racially abuse anyone.
“If he had, he would have been reported and punished. He wasn’t. The news stories are without evidence, except for belatedly, politically dubious recollections from nearly half a century ago. Back in the 1970s the culture was very different … especially at Dulwich. Lots of boys said things they’d regret today or just laugh at. Whilst Nigel stood out, he was neither aggressive nor a racist.”
The UK prime minister Keir Starmer in his reaction said Farage was a “a toxic, divisive disgrace” following the Reform leader statement in a campaign video that Glasgow was experiencing a “cultural smashing” as nearly one in three pupils in the city spoke English as a second language.
The prime minister, appearing alongside the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, said: “All he wants to do is tear communities apart. In Glasgow, the diversity, the compassion, is celebrated. It’s part of, not just Glasgow, but Scotland. I am proud that that is part of what Scotland is.”
