Keir Starmer blasts Reform’s ‘racist rhetoric’ as MP doubles down on advertisements rant
Runcorn and Helsby MP Sarah Pochin drew widespread condemnation last year when she said it made her ‘mad’ to see adverts full of Black and Asian people
Keir Starmer has taken aim at Reform for offering a ‘smokescreen of hate and division’
Keir Starmer has accused Reform of spewing “racist rhetoric” after an MP doubled down on her complaints about the number of Black and Asian people in adverts.
The Prime Minister tore into Runcorn and Helsby MP Sarah Pochin, who drew widespread condemnation last year when she agreed with a viewer ranting about the demographics of advertising. Appearing on TalkTV in October, she said they were “absolutely right”, adding: “It drives me mad when I see adverts full of Black people, full of Asian people”.
Ms Pochin later apologised for causing offence and said her point had been “phrased poorly”. But in an interview this week, she said her remarks were clumsy but “absolutely right”.
Mr Starmer told the Mirror: “Yet again our country’s discourse is being poisoned and polluted by the racist rhetoric coming from Reform – pitting communities against one another and sowing division to suit their own ends. They should be apologising, not doubling down.”
READ MORE: Explosive row between Reform and Labour erupts at by-election hustings as insults hurledREAD MORE: Laughs as Nigel Farage mocked by savage four-word PMQs dig
He also took aim at Matthew Goodwin, Reform’s candidate in an upcoming by-election, who has been criticised for his hard-line views on national identity and Islam.
The PM said: “You only have to look at the toxicity flowing from their candidate for Gorton and Denton to know what they are about – dangerous ideas that pull at the fabric of who we are in Britain. They don’t have solutions to the challenges we face as a country. All they can offer is a smokescreen of hate and division.
“That is the type of politics Britain left in the 1980s. I reject it completely and utterly. My Labour government will always choose the other path – the one that celebrates our reasonable, tolerant and diverse country. That is the country I love and that is the country I am fighting for.”
Ms Pochin was widely condemned for her comments in October. Asked if she accepted that some people perceived her comments as racist, she told the Daily T podcast: “Those who choose to perceive it that way will do so, those who have nothing else to throw at me because I would like to think I represent the politics of common sense and represent the average person in this country.
“Those comments were misinterpreted entirely, I accept it was clumsy speech but what I said is absolutely right.
“I said, the British advertising industry has 52% or 56% – I can’t quite remember what the figure is – of ethnic minority actors represented in the adverts, and yet the population is 4%, that is not a reflection of our population.” She pointed to a Channel 4 survey, which states that 51% of adverts featured Black people in 2024.
Nigel Farage said in October that her comments were “ugly” but refused to discipline her.
“I am unhappy with what she has done,” the Reform leader said. “I understand the basic point, but the way she put it, the way she worded it, was wrong and was ugly, and if I thought that the intention behind it was racist, I would have taken a lot more action than I have to date.”
