Nigel Farage has hit back at Keir Starmer’s jibe that Clacton is a “pantomime” by demanding he takes action against Labour’s candidate there for an anti-white comment.
During his manifesto launch, Sir Keir addressed the fact that he was not revealing any “rabbits out of the hat” with no new policies revealed.
He said: "If you want politics as pantomime, I hear Clacton is nice this time of year.”
The Reform UK leader’s team has unearthed a now deleted social media post from 2019 by Labour’s Clacton candidate Javon Owusu-Nepaul agreeing with a US student’s post about racism.
The original post read: “Going into 2020 I’m going to continue to be vocal about how to tackle racism and the fact I drink white man tears on a regular basis.”
Mr Nepaul replied to the post saying: “My favourite drink”.
According to official statistics, the Clacton constituency in Essex has one of the highest white populations in the UK, with 93 percent registered as white British.
This compares to a UK national average of 82 percent white and 89 percent in the county of Essex.
Mr Farage said: “If Starmer thinks that the race in Clacton is a pantomime, perhaps he should look no further than his own candidate.”
He added: “I’m shocked that this man is an official candidate for a Labour Party that says it has changed”
In the last election Labour came second with 6,736 but a long way behind Tory MP Giles Watling who had a majority of 24,702.
But this time Mr Farage believes he can take the seat from the Tories although the election will see nine candidates standing in the constituency.
Labour have declined to comment.
However, the row has come after Reform were forced to deal with their own problematic candidate who suggested Britain should have struck a deal with Hitler.
Ian Gribbin, standing for Reform in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the “sponging gender” and should be “deprived of health care” in comments reportedly made on the UnHerd website. Mr Farage, Reform’s leader, blamed Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a snap election for 4 July for not being able to properly vet candidates.
He claimed that Gibson was guilty of “pub speak”.
