Nigel Farage was asked what “about you and your party attracts racists and extremists” in a brutal Question Time grilling.
The Reform UK leader was given a rough ride by the studio audience after campaigners for his party were recorded making racist comments, including using a racial slur against Rishi Sunak, who is of Indian descent.
The undercover footage recorded by Channel 4 News showed Reform UK activist Andrew Parker saying the party should “kick Muslims out of mosques and turn them into Wetherspoons ”. He also said that army recruits should use asylum seekers crossing the Channel as “target practice”.
Mr Farage initially said the comments were “vulgar, drunken and wrong” and that they had been kicked out of the party. But he then claimed that the recording of Mr Parker, who called Mr Sunak a “f****** P***” and said small boat migrants should be used as “target practice”, was a “complete and total set-up.” Channel 4 has rejected the claim and said it strongly stands by its “rigorous and duly impartial journalism”.
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In a Question Time special, an audience member said to Mr Farage: “I’d like to know what it is about you and your party that attracts racists and extremists, whether you say you want them or not?” The politician retorted: “I’ve done more to drive the far right out of British politics than anyone else alive. I took on the BNP, just over a decade ago I said to their voters, ‘If this is a protest vote and you don’t support their racist agenda, don’t vote for them, vote for me’. We destroyed them.”
He condemned the “tirade of invective abuse” directed at the PM, and said the whole thing was “unbelievable”. He then repeated his claims that the activist was an actor trying to stitch up his party, which has been denied by the broadcaster.
Mr Farage suggested he’d had difficulty vetting candidates as Reform UK is a “start-up” after facing more questions about the would-be MPs who he’s been forced to ditch for making offensive remarks.
But the audience laughed and applauded after one man told Mr Farage: “Some of my friends have start-up companies, but none of them employ a whole slew of massive racists like you.”