🔗 Share this article

The UK's top law officer, Richard Hermer, has demanded the Reform UK leader to apologise to school contemporaries who claim he targeted with racist abuse them during their school days.

Hermer remarked that Farage had "clearly deeply hurt" many people, judging by their descriptions of his alleged conduct. He noted that the politician's "shifting" denials had been less than credible.

“In his answers to legitimate questions, not once has Farage actually condemned antisemitism,” Hermer informed a news outlet.

New Allegations Surface

A series of inquiries last month detailed the statements of over a dozen one-time schoolmates of Farage from a private college.

One, a former pupil, recalled that a teenage Farage "would approach me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘gas them’, at times making a long hiss to imitate the sound of the Nazi gas chambers”.

Another minority ethnic pupil stated that when he was roughly nine years old, he was similarly targeted by a 17-year-old Farage.

“He came over to a pupil with two equally tall mates and spoke to anyone looking ‘different’,” the person said. “That included me on three occasions; asking me where I was from, and pointing away, saying: ‘Go back that way,’ to wherever you answered you were from.”

After the story broke, more people have emerged; around two dozen people have now stated they were either victims of or saw highly inappropriate conduct by Farage.

The behaviour they outlined span the period when Farage was aged a teenager.

Denials and Shifting Positions

The Reform leader has rejected that anything he did was "explicitly" racist or antisemitic, and has suggested the accusers were not telling the truth.

Commentators have highlighted that Farage has not managed to condemn antisemitism and other forms of racism more broadly in his statements.

They also point to his inability to sanction a colleague in his party, Sarah Pochin, after she complained about the number of ethnic minorities she saw in television commercials. She later said sorry for the statements.

“Nigel Farage’s evolving narrative about his behaviour to his schoolmates [is] not credible, to say the least,” Hermer said.

He added: “Claiming that two dozen individuals have all misremembered the same things about his offensive behaviour simply is not believable."

Call for Leadership

“If he wishes to be seen as a serious contender for prime minister, he has to acknowledge the concerns of the Jewish people, and apologise to the numerous individuals he has clearly deeply hurt by his behaviour,” Hermer concluded.

“Racism in all its forms is completely opposed to the values of this country and we must not permit it to ever become accepted in public life.”

In a separate interview, the Chancellor said Farage should “say something” if he wanted to appear as a genuine leader.

“It says a lot how very little he has to say, and the guarded phrasing that both you and I would identify as being crafted in a particular way to say something, but also not to say something,” she said.

Formal Denials and Subsequent Comments

In formal correspondence before the release of the investigation, Farage’s legal team asserted that “the suggestion that Mr Farage ever engaged in, supported, or led racist or antisemitic behaviour is categorically denied”.

Farage later seemingly shifted his position in an interview, saying: “Have I said things 50 years ago that you could view as being banter, you could interpret in a contemporary context today in some way? Yes.”

He added that he had “never directly sought to go and upset anybody”. Farage afterwards put out a further comment: “I can tell you categorically that I did not say the things that have been published when I was 13, decades in the past.”