A Reform UK activist in the constituency where Nigel Farage is standing has been secretly filmed making extremely racist comments about Rishi Sunak, as well as using Islamophobic and other offensive language.
Farage said he was “dismayed” by the views expressed by Andrew Parker, a Reform canvasser, who was filmed as part of an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News.
The channel also secretly filmed George Jones, a longtime party activist who organises events for Farage, making homophobic comments, calling the Pride flag “degenerate” and LGBT people “nonces”.
The emergence of the footage, filming of which concluded last week, comes on the same day that Reform dropped an election candidate in another seat, after the Guardian informed the party that Raymond Saint had been on a list of members of the British National party.
The most serious comments uncovered by Channel 4 News involved Parker, who was covertly filmed making them while canvassing and travelling by car around Clacton, where Farage is the favourite to unseat the incumbent Conservative.
During one journey, Parker described Sunak as “fucking [P-word]”. He said: “I’ve always been a Tory voter, but what annoys me is that fucking [P-word] we’ve got in. What good is he? You tell me, you know. He’s just wet. Fucking useless.”
Telling the reporter, who was posing as an activist, to “emphasise ‘illegal’” if discussing migration with minority ethnic voters, Parker called Islam “a cult”, saying: “We’re fucking kicking all the Muslims out of the mosques and turning them into Wetherspoon’s.”
In one doorstep conversation with a voter, Parker suggests shooting asylum seekers who try to come to England on small boats. “You’ve got Deal, haven’t you,” he says, referring to the town in Kent. “The place near Dover. Army recruitment. Get the young recruits there, yeah, with guns on the fucking beach, target practice. Fucking just shoot them.”
In another covertly filmed exchange, at a pub in Clacton, Jones reacts with scorn when he sees a police car going past displaying a Pride flag. He says: “You see that fucking degenerate flag on the front bonnet? What are the old bill doing promoting that crap? They should be out catching nonces not promoting the fuckers.”
Later, explaining what he says would be policies for a future Reform government, Jones says: “Our police officers will be paramilitaries, they won’t be police,” and that the party should “bring back the noose”.
In a statement to Channel 4 News, Parker said Farage and Reform were not aware of his views, and he was sorry if they “have reflected badly on them and brought them into disrepute”.
“I would like to make it clear that neither Nigel Farage personally or the Reform party are aware of my personal views on immigration,” he said. “Any comments made by me during those recordings are my own personal views on any subject I commented on. At no time before I was sent out to canvass did I discuss my personal views with any representative of the Reform party or Nigel Farage.”
Farage said: “I am dismayed by the reported comments of a handful of people associated with my local campaign, particularly those who are volunteers. They will no longer be with the campaign.
“The appalling sentiments expressed by some in these exchanges bear no relation to my own views, those of the vast majority of our supporters or Reform UK policy. Some of the language used was reprehensible.”
While the party swiftly distanced itself from the rhetoric, it is the latest in a series of controversies in which Reform candidates or other party figures have been shown to have said offensive things or held extreme views.
This month, the Reform UK candidate Grant StClair-Armstrong resigned after it was discovered he had previously encouraged people to vote for the BNP.
The party has not yet appeared to have taken any action against its candidate in Southend East and Rochford who was reported as having said arriving asylum seekers should be “slaughtered”.
Leslie Lilley made the comments in a Facebook post in 2020, the Times reported, also referring to “more scum entering the UK”.
