Hard-right British lawmaker Nigel Farage faced growing scrutiny Thursday over allegations he made racist and antisemitic comments while a youngster at an elite English school.
The leader of the anti-immigrant Reform UK party, currently tipped by polls to become Britain’s next prime minister, has offered different defences to the claims since they resurfaced last week.
He noted Wednesday that a former pupil who said Farage had verbally abused him had “different political views to me”, but added that he was “genuinely sorry” if the man felt “hurt”.
Film director Peter Ettedgui, who is Jewish, told The Guardian newspaper that Farage engaged in offensive behaviour while a pupil at Dulwich College, a private school in south London, in the 1970s.
He said the future politician would “sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right,’ or ‘gas them’, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers”.
– Playground ‘banter’ –
Brexit champion Farage, 61, told reporters Wednesday that he “never, ever, ever would have said or done anything like that directly to a human being”.
He was less categorical during an interview with broadcasters on Monday when he was repeatedly asked whether he could rule out having engaged in racial abuse.
“I would never, ever do it in a hurtful or insulting way,” he replied, later adding that if he had, it was “not with intent”.
The Eurosceptic also said he might have been responsible for some “banter in a playground” that could be interpreted in “the modern light of day in some sort of way”.
Reform then released a statement Tuesday in which Farage said: “I can tell you categorically that I did not say the things that have been published in the Guardian aged 13, nearly 50 years ago.”
Ettedgui, a Bafta and Emmy-award winning director, has told the BBC that Farage was being “fundamentally dishonest” by suggesting school contemporaries were not telling the truth.
The Guardian said its report, first published last week, was based on allegations from more than a dozen former pupils.
– Russia –
One classmate claimed that Farage sang a racist song and performed the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute. Another alleged that as a prefect, the future politician put a child in detention because of his skin colour.
Some of the claims have been reported previously, including more than a decade ago by veteran political reporter Michael Crick.
Reform won its first MPs at last year’s general election and has since soared to double-digit leads in opinion polls over Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party.
Former MEP Farage was elected to the UK parliament at his eighth attempt. His elevation to political frontrunner means more scrutiny.
“He’s always been a figure who’s free to roam the margins,” Robert Ford, politics professor at Manchester University, told AFP. “This is a different ball game, as I think they’re discovering.”
Ford said he thought the teenage racism allegations were likely “reinforcing” the country’s polarising views of Farage rather than prompting people to change their minds.
The recent sentencing to more than 10 years in prison of Reform’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, could be more damaging, he added.
Gill admitted having been paid around £40,000 ($53,000) to make pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament.
“People who like Farage tend to be strong nationalists,” said Ford.
“They tend to be very much on the Ukraine side, and they tend to be very anti-Putin.”
Starmer has said the racism allegations against Farage showed Reform’s “true colours”. He also accused the party of being “riddled with pro-Putin propaganda”.
