Reform leader Nigel Farage has postponed a major announcement that was due to take place in Essex this morning after an ITV investigation aired last night showing party councillors and election candidates making graphic threats of extreme violence and expressing racist and misogynistic views.
Three councillors have already stood down from the party, which said it was conducting an investigation over the first revelations from the ITV undercover investigation.
More are expected from the undercover filming of senior Reform politicians and officials working at its UK headquarters.
Farage has made repeated pledges over the last two years to rid Reform of “extremists” and “bigots” and introduce vetting. The party says it carries out vetting checks on everyone who wants to stand for election.
However, the first clips from ITV’s year-long undercover investigation showed Alan Feeney, a Reform councillor and deputy mayor of Solihull, calling Asian homeowners “parasites,” and stating that “no more than 1% of [the] British population can be non-white”.
Feeney won seats on Birmingham city council and Solihull Metropolitan borough council and was then appointed deputy mayor of Solihull. He has announced that he has left Reform “for personal reasons”.
Other candidates were recorded making comments of extreme violence and sharing deeply misogynistic and racist views, including a Bromley councillor calling for King Charles to be killed and another councillor who made disturbing sexual and misogynistic comments about female colleagues.
Feeney was filmed with other candidates who went on to become councillors, Jamie Campbell and Chris Whelan, talking about where a local mosque might be built. After they make extreme racist comments in the discussion, Feeney says: “Oh god, we’re all going to end up in the papers”.
Chris Whelan announced he had resigned from Reform on 12 October “on personal and health grounds”. Campbell is still in post.
Dame Julia Unwin, chairwoman of the Charity Commission, is expected to deliver the following remarks at the AGM today in central London, condemning the harassment and abuse of RNLI rescuers.
“I want to use this opportunity to condemn in the strongest terms the thuggery and intimidation that volunteers of the RNLI have faced over recent weeks – and indeed over months and even years.
“Charities must only do things that meet their purpose and objects.
“For the RNLI that means rescuing people in peril in the sea.
“It is not their right to do so.
“It is their absolute duty.
“The charitable sector must have the courage to tolerate vigorous debate, individual charities must accept that people might disapprove of their work, for reasons of values, politics, faith or identity.
“We should in fact welcome differences of view as evidence that we are living in a society in which everyone has freedom of conscience.
“But we must never grow accustomed to criminal or para-criminal abuse.”
Good morning and welcome to our UK politics live blog, I’m Frances Mao stepping in for Andrew Sparrow today.
The UK economy’s 0.1% growth figure this morning is better than expected – markets had prepared for a slight contraction for August but once again, AI spending has boosted the economy.
That headline figure doesn’t mask the deeper issues though of rising inflation and government debt; fevered speculation continues on how Healey will address this in his first budget in two weeks time. Kemi Badenoch joined the City’s critical chorus yesterday in denouncing the idea of slapping higher taxes on the banks.
Meanwhile, the charities regulator today is expected to lambast the “thuggery and intimidation” faced by Royal National Lifeboat Institution volunteeers in recent weeks, following anti-migrant demonstrations.
The charity, which saves lives at sea, had to temporarily pause its work at Portsmouth after facing a barrage of abuse from far-right groups and agitators calling the lifesavers “traitors” after instances when they helped rescue asylum seekers on small boats.
In addition to those threats, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has previously called the RNLI a “migrant taxi service”.
Yesterday, the Guardian reported Farage’s call for NGOs and their volunteers who help asylum seekers to face criminal prosecution. Talking to a rightwing US podcaster he claimed such groups had “actually aided and abetted criminality in absolutely every way”.
When asked if he believed “in criminal penalties for those who facilitated this invasion of the English Isles”, he replied:
Totally, totally. The role of the NGOs, the role of those that are sponsored by taxpayers’ money, because they’re nice, they’re good, they’re kind. They have actually aided and abetted criminality in absolutely every way.
These are people [who are] are deluded – deluded, hard-left socialist Marxists, who don’t believe in countries, don’t believe in borders, don’t believe in identities, are intent on destroying everything that exists.
The Charity Commission head is expected to warn against a “normalisation of violence” against workers.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
