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 just days before the elections. The British anti-immigration party Reform UK has withdrawn its support for three candidates reported as authors of racist remarks, announced on Saturday, June 29, the political party of Nigel Farage. However, the three candidates will still appear as being under the banner of Reform UK on the ballot papers, because the candidacies are already closed before the vote 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 disavowed by Nigel Farage. Confronted Friday evening on the BBC with the remarks with which they are accused, he declared that he did not want “have nothing to do with them”. He defended himself by asserting in particular that there is “people who say bad things in all parties”. This week, he announced that he had removed activists who made racist or homophobic remarks from his campaign in Clacton, in the south-east of England. 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.