Evening summary
Labour Leader Keir Starmer has said that Nigel Farage’s failure to deal with racists in Reform UK shows his weakness as leader. An activist for the party was filmed making racist comments about prime minister Rishi Sunak by a Channel 4 News undercover reporter.
Nigel Farage has claimed that an activist in question, Andrew Parker, is an actor and that the clip was a fabrication. The Reform UK leader told ITV’s Loose Women and BBC Question Time that the incident was orchestrated to discredit his party.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak said he felt hurt and anger, particularly on behalf of his two daughters, when he heard a Reform UK activist using a racial slur about him. Sunak deliberately repeated the slur in a broadcast interview, ‘because this is too important not to call out clearly for what it is’.
Essex police has said it is assessing the comments made in the Channel 4 News exposé to establish if any of the activists who were recorded were committing an offence.
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has warned his party not to be complacent about the impact Nigel Farage’s party can have on the electorate. He told the Guardian that targeting Reform UK ‘must start now’.
YouGov polling earlier this month found that 53% of ethnic minority voters intend to vote Labour. However, Conservative support is significantly higher among Indian voters while support for the Greens is significantly higher among Britons of Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent.
The Green Party want the wealthiest to contribute ‘modestly more’ to rebuild Britain’s public services. Co-leader Adrian Ramsay told BBC Question Time that ‘we need to achieve big changes in our society’.
Nigel Farage has claimed that he has ‘done more to drive the far-right out of British politics than anybody else alive’. He told BBC Question Time that he has never allowed a member of an extremist organisation to join a party he had led.
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The tax burden for working people is at its highest level since 1948, Nigel Farage has said.
Responding to a question on BBC Question Time about whether he is wealthier as a result of not having to pay certain taxes since Brexit, Farage said: “You’re all poorer because the tax burden, for working people, is now the highest since 1948. And this is the trickery; I mentioned earlier about staff nurses.
“Forty pence tax was the top rate of tax in this country, right through the mid-eighties right through to the end of Tony Blair’s time. And one-and-a-half million people paid that top rate of tax. Because of sleight of hand, and freezing allowances, by the end of 2027 it’ll be eight million people paying that level of tax.”
Both Labour and the Conservatives want to keep the tax bands frozen, Farage claims.
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