Nigel Farage’s party withdraws support for three candidates over racist remarks

Nigel Farage has said he wants “nothing to do with them”, but the party’s name will still appear on the ballot papers because the announcement comes after nominations have already closed. The election takes place on Thursday.

A decision a few days before the elections. The British anti-immigration party Reform UK has withdrawn its support from three candidates reported to have made racist remarks, Nigel Farage’s political party announced on Saturday June 29. However, all three candidates will still appear as being under the Reform UK banner on the ballot paper, as nominations have already closed ahead of the poll on Thursday July 4.

According to the BBC, Edward Oakenfull, a candidate in central England, posted comments about the IQ of people from sub-Saharan Africa last year on social media. He claimed that these comments had been taken out of context.

Robert Lomas had, according to the Timesdeclared that black people should “get up their lazy asses” and stop behaving “like savages”. The party had invoked “partial quotes out of context”. Leslie Lilley, for her part, was criticised for having described migrants who cross the Channel illegally on social media as“garbage”.

All three have been publicly disowned by Nigel Farage. Confronted on Friday evening on the BBC about the remarks they are accused of making, he declared that he did not want “nothing to do with them”He defended himself by stating in particular that there exists “people who say bad things in all parties”. This week, he announced that he had removed from his campaign in Clacton, in the southeast of England, activists who had made racist or homophobic remarks. One called Rishi Sunak a “fucking Paki.”

According to the anti-racism association Hope Not Hate (“Hope not hate”), in view of the legislative elections, Reform UK had already had to give up 166 candidates since the start of the year, many of them having made racist or offensive remarks. Nigel Farage, who declared his candidacy at the beginning of June, admitted that his training had not had time to “carry out a full check” of its candidates.