DEEP DIVE: How Does Reform Show Its Racism? Let Me Count the Ways

From “target practice” on refugees to burqa bans in Parliament, the tally tells the story better than Farage ever could.

Nigel Farage is, unsurprisingly to anyone, all in a huff.

A terrible one in fact. I haven’t seen him this huffy since Beth Rigby asked him about his house, sorry, I mean, his girlfriend’s house in Clacton, which was met with a “How dare you?!” that was reminiscent of a Victorian Aristocrat accused of being a bore.

His new huffiness, however, is a rather different strain - he is terribly, terribly upset that Keir Starmer in his Keynote speech at the Labour Conference had the temerity, the audacity (and some might say the balls) to call Reform policies racist.

Shocking. I know.

The melodramatic performance of wounded dignity was, as expected when it comes to Farage, positively Oscar-worthy - a video posted on Reform where he bloviated loudly about how very unfair it all was. Zia Yusuf, Reform’s ex-chairman and now policy chief took it even further, claiming that Starmer in his speech was “inciting violence” against Farage by using the “R-word¹”, because apparently accurately describing overtly discriminatory policies that mainly affect minority groups is now tantamount to putting out a hit. The victimhood was so thick you could spread it on toast.

The problem with Farage’s indignation is a big one though: it demands that we all collectively pretend that Reform does not, in fact, have a well-documented, extensively catalogued and repeatedly exposed problem with racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia running through the party like rot through timber².

Which it absolutely does.

The Receipts

Between April 2024 and September 2025, Reform UK has been directly associated with twenty incidents of racist, xenophobic or Islamophobic behaviour by its members, councillors, candidates and activists.

Now I have to be emphatic about this - these weren’t rumours or allegations, whispered in shadowy Westminster corridors. They were documented, on the record and often caught on camera or preserved in the wonder that is social media screenshots that will haunt these people longer than a bad tattoo of a sexy bear on the inside of their left thigh³.

This is not a “few bad apples” situation, it’s a whole damned cider press ponging of rot with Farage standing next to it insisting very loudly that it smells like Roses.

In the interest of context, I will below walk through each and every incident, because that context matters when people are claiming they’re being unfairly maligned.

Method note: Incidents compiled from contemporaneous news reports, public posts, and watchdog investigations between April 2024 and September 2025.

1. On 26 June 2024, Andrew Parker, an activist for Reform UK was caught on Channel 4’s undercover investigation using racial slurs about then PM Rishi Sunak and describing Islam as “the most disgusting cult out,” and casually suggesting that the army should be using refugees crossing the Channel for “target practice”. This, according to Farage, was “ordinary folk” speaking, as if your average person down at the pub regularly advocates for using asylum seekers as live ammo practice. Parker was eventually disowned by Reform, but only after Farage made one of his favourite claims - that it was a “political setup.” Parker’s colleague, George Jones, a party volunteer, was also caught making offensive comments in the same investigation and was quietly shuffled out of the campaign with no formal censure or accountability.

2. On 29 August 2025, James Regan, a Reform Councillor in Epping Forest, described an asylum hotel as a “paedophile babysitting centre” and called Islam “an evil criminal cartel of evil pedo’s.” He was eventually suspended, but only after what was significant public pressure. The initial response from Reform? Silence that spoke absolute volumes.

3. On 24 August 2025, Darren Grimes - ex-GB News Presenter, Reform’s deputy leader of Durham County Council and newly minted elected member of Reform’s national board - posted a video that his brother had sent him on a boat in Scarborough alongside a family made up of, shockingly, brown people, including children. His caption: “I had to ask him if he was on a dinghy to Dover, but then I realised there are women and children on board.” North East Mayor Kim McGuinness accused him, rightly so, of “inciting racism and hate,” to which Grimes responded that he was merely “making an observation about demographic change” and that “love of country is not hate.⁴”

4. On 23 June 2025, Andrew Barry, a Reform UK councillor for Merthyr Tydfil, was recorded in a voicemail in which he described Pakistanis as “tribal” and claiming “they don’t just dislike us, they dislike Sikhs.” He talked about the “tens of thousands of them in cities” in tones that would make even Enoch Powell say “woah down a little there, boyo.” Welsh political leaders called the remarks “absolutely racist” while Reform, somewhat predictably, defended him by claiming that his comments had been “taken out of context.⁵” Barry, as of 1 October 2025 remains a Reform councillor.

5. On 29 May 2025, Mark Broadhurst, Reform UK councillor in Doncaster, was expelled from Reform for posting a meme suggesting that Adolf Hitler would have been “a legend” if only he’d chosen to exterminate Muslims instead of Jews - a sitting councillor posting Nazi apologia with an Islamophobic twist. Even though he was expelled by Reform, the fact that he felt comfortable posting this in the first place should be a good indicator of party culture.

6. On 26 August 2025 it was reported that Robert Bloom, Reform UK councillor for North Northamptonshire had allegedly used racial slurs against a black family while threatening to involve far-right extremists while telling them that they wouldn’t receive fair treatment from the council due to their race. A by-election will now be held on 9 October for the Lloyds and Corby village ward.

7. On 16 April 2025 it was reported that Ron Firman, a then candidate and Parish councillor Hunsbury Ward had posted multiple racist tweets, including that refugees should be ejected from aircraft mid-flight, made derogatory remarks about Grenfell tower victims and for good measure threw in a few KKK references. The parish council issued a reminder about conduct, Reform UK refused to comment. He remains a Reform member and parish councillor.

8. On 29 June 2024, three candidates were dropped simultaneously:

   1. Edward Oakenfull, the Reform candidate for Derbyshire Dales had posted comments on social media about the supposed IQ levels of sub-Saharan Africans.

   2. Robert Lomas, standing for Barnsley North stated that black people should “get off [their] lazy arses” and stop “acting like savages”.

   3. Lesley Lilley, the candidate for Southend East and Rochford took to describing people arriving on small boats as “scum” and added the delightful little sentiment that “I hope your family get robbed, beaten or attacked.” All three candidates were dropped by Reform, but it took media exposure to make them realise that these people were liabilities rather than assets.

9. On 10 May 2025 it was reported that Paul Harrison, a Reform UK councillor from Leicestershire County Council retweeted and voted “yes” to a Twitter poll asking the question whether the UK should conduct mass deportations with an accompanying AI generated picture of Muslim men holding Pakistani flags. As of 1 October 2025 he remains a Reform UK councillor for North West Leicestershire.

10. On 8 April 2025, the Sunday Times ran a story that featured a bumper crop of extremism that strongly suggested that Reform UK’s vetting was less “professional screening” and more “anyone with a pulse and a grudge.”

    1. Pete Addis, the candidate form South Shropshire made the comment a comment that “Bum sex, this is where brown babies come from!”

    2. Amodio Amato, standing for Stevenage, described London as “an Islamic State” and said there would be “a Muslim army run by Sadiq Khan.”

    3. Jonathan Kay tweeted that muslims could “never coexist with others” and should face deportation, while also claiming that Africans had IQs “among the lowest in the world.”

    4. Mick Greenhough was found to have posted that the government should “remove Muslims from our territory” and calling Ashkenazi Jews a “problem” who “caused the world massive misery.⁶”

    5. Ian Harris, candidate for Lewes had liked⁷ a tweet by Nick Griffin, former leader of the BNP, that had described the UK as a “bankrupt, crime ridden, LGBTQ-obsessed, multicultural shithole” and another tweet by Tommy Robinson (aka. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) that called for “mass deportations.” Reform at this stage promised more vetting. We are still waiting.

11. On 26 April 2024, Richard Brown, the Reform candidate for Harrogate and Knaresborough, was exposed for having shared Tommy Robinson content, promoted “Ban the Burqa” groups, circulated “Sharia Controlled Zones” memes and dabbled in Anti-Vaccine conspiracy theories. He was, truly, the full bingo-card of far-right talking points, all neatly packaged into one candidate profile. He was eventually dropped by Reform UK.

12. On 15 May 2025, Wayne Titley who had just two weeks before won the Eccleshall and Gnosall division for Reform UK, stepped down after a Facebook post from his account called on the navy to intercept small boats attempting to reach the UK and use a “volley of gunfire aimed at sinking them.”

13. On 27 August 2025, Paul Bean, a councillor for Durham County Council, and more worryingly, a civil servant who, as his job, processes asylum claims, was suspended by Reform for allegedly posting anti-asylum content including that “97% of asylum seekers are lying about persecution… Source: me. Guess what job I do.”

A big one worth adding, even though he was not connected to Reform at the time, is of course none-other than 30p Lee Anderson. In February 2024, while still a Conservative MP, he claimed that “Islamists had control” of Sadiq Khan and accused him of “giving the capital away to extremists.”

The comments were so egregious that even the Conservative Party, not a group of people known for their low threshold for discrimination, suspended him when he refused to apologise. He sat as an Independent MP for a short period, before catching the eye of Reform who looked at a man who had just been suspended for blatantly Islamophobic comments and said to themselves “Yes, that’s exactly who we want as our very first person to represent our party in the House of Commons.”

Twenty incidents in eighteen months. A mix of elected councillors (including a deputy council leader and Reform board member, parliamentary candidates and one MP they actively recruited weeks after he was suspended on camera. Activists caught on camera.

There is a pattern here that is so clear that you’d have to be wilfully blind not to see it - or wilfully dishonest not to admit it.

Patterns of Discrimination: Islamophobia as Policy

If you’ve been keeping score while reading this - and you should be, because it’s clear that Reform is refusing to do so - you may have noticed something somewhat telling about the nature of these incidents.

When you start examining the incidents and their themes, even with minimal rigour, one thing becomes very apparent: Islamophobia isn’t just tolerated within Reform UK, it makes up the dominant strain of what appears to be an endemic issue of prejudice.

Where it becomes even more insidious though is that it isn’t just limited to grassroot bigotry, but becoming baked into Reform’s policy platform.

Screenshot from Runcorn and Widnes World - Accessed on 2 October 2025

Sarah Pochin, Reform UK’s MP who joined the ranks as MP for Runcorn and Helsby after winning the by-election in May 2025 used her first question to Keir Starmer to advocate for a Burqa ban. Despite initially resigning in response to this, Zia Yusuf has since warmed to the idea by calling the Burqa a “huge impediment to assimilation.” This policy would specifically target Muslim women and seems designed to use the language of integration to justify what is, for the most part, religious discrimination.

The Reform-controlled Durham County Council made the decision to cancel all diversity training, with critics rightfully stating that it “reintroduces racism, sexism and discrimination.” The party’s manifesto explicitly commits them to eliminating all diversity, equality and inclusion roles across government, purposefully removing institutional protections against workplace discrimination.

Their recently proposed immigration policies that aims for the removal of settlement status for specifically non-EU migrants who are already in the UK legally - a position so extreme that even Keir Starmer, not exactly known for radical “leftism”, described it as “racist” and warned that it would “tear our country apart.”

Nigel Farage Wants to Tear Up Indefinite Leave to Remain - and Deport Legal Migrants in Britain

Reform wants you to believe that any racism is accidental, that it’s isolated, the result of rapid growth and inadequate vetting, but when your official policies would institutionalise discrimination against specific religious or ethnic minorities, you can’t, in any way, credibly claim the problem is just a few bad actors gone rogue.

Not, of course, that they haven’t tried.

The Defences They Wheel Out (And Why They’re Nonsense)

Because, by God, they have tried.

Reform has developed a well practiced repertoire of defences of their racism problem, each one more threadbear than the last - and I think it’s absolutely working through them, one by one, because they absolutely deserve to be dismantled and examined a bit more closely.

“Ordinary Folk Speaking”

We saw this specific excuse rolled out in the case of Andrew Parker above when Reform was challenged. They tried to sell us the idea that the racism being spread by people connected to them as “ordinary people” speaking in non-political language and claimed that candidates and supporters are just “speaking like ordinary folks” and are not part of the “mainstream political Oxbridge speak.”

This defence is, to put it mildly, weapons-grade nonsense.

The documented incidents go well beyond what could be considered “political incorrectness” and veer perilously closely to incitement of violence.

In the cases of Parker, suggesting that migrants be used for “target practice” and James Regan calling Islam “an evil criminal cartel of evil pedo’s” isn’t a lack of polish, they’re explicit examples of hate speech.

Mark Broadhurst posting Nazi apologia memes isn’t in any way unfiltered authenticity - it’s Nazi apologia (the clue is in the name).

“Ordinary folk” don’t usually and casually advocate for genocide or for refugees to be shot in the Channel, and if your “ordinary folks” are doing so, you might want to examine just the kind of “ordinary” you’re cultivating.

“Rapid Growth” Excuse

Another consistent excuse that has been used is rapid expansion has impeded their vetting attempts, with the argument being that they can’t possibly screen the massive influx of new members and candidates. Farage has claimed that Reform is a “fast-growing movement” and that they face challenges “working with many activists they may not have met before.”

Except that this defence doesn’t just fail because it betrays massive disorganisation on behalf of Reform - it also actively contradicts their own actions.

In July 2025, Reform deliberately started relaxing their vetting standards, telling their prospective candidates who had previously failed vetting to “reapply under new ‘common sense’ standards” that were “more proportionate than before” and gave more weight to “individual freedom of expression.”

Just read that again - they didn’t struggle to vet candidates because of rapid growth, they consciously lowered the bar and invited back extremists who had already been rejected once. That’s a deliberate choice to welcome back racists into the fold.

They have, in effect, admitted that it’s less a case of “we’re growing too fast to maintain standards” and more “we’ve decided that standards are terribly inconvenient.”

“Professional Vetting System” Claims

In contradiction to the “rapid growth” excuse, Farage has also previously claimed that Reform had implemented “a vetting system that was as good if not better than the other parties”, and boasted that “proper professional vetting” was in place.

Except that the evidence, including previous comments by Farage, suggest otherwise.

He admitted that Reform did “zero” due diligence had been performed on James McMurdock when he was suspended following questions COVID loans, stating explicitly that “there was no due diligence on him at all. Zero.”

This is despite the statements made by Farage in June 2024 that they had paid vetting.com £144k for candidate screening services but had received “absolutely nothing” in return.

Their stance on vetting makes my head spin - it veers from “we professionally vet all our candidates” to “well, we didn’t vet anyone at all” and then again to “well, we’re taking a much more common sense approach to vetting now, so everyone who had previously been kicked out, have another go.”

And when those clear vetting failures became public, Farage fell back on his favourite excuse of them all.

“We’re being stitched up”

Screenshot from AP News - Accessed on 2 October 2025

“Being stitched up” is an excuse that has been used by Farage, for among others:

• The above mentioned Channel 4 Racism Investigation.

• The Coutts decision to “debank” him.

• UKIP Resignation Confusion.

In the particular context of a large number of candidates with openly racist views getting through vetting… yup. Stitched up.

The excuse here goes that Reform had been “stitched up” by their vetting company, with the specific allegation being that it was an “establishment stitch-up”, because the company’s chair had previous Tory connections.

This particular excuse, as with so many others, collapses under its own weight with even the most mild of scrutiny. Reform knew about the vetting owner’s Conservative background, but hired them anyway.

The company explained that they didn’t have time to complete checks due to the snap election timing - a perfectly reasonable logistical explanations.

All these points being thrown together again contradicts any claims by Reform being victims of sabotage.

“Individual Bad Actors”

Reform UK has in the past chosen to frame racist incidents as involving individual members whose views don’t represent the organisation, with officials claiming to disown problematic behaviour as soon as it’s exposed - except of course when that doesn’t happen.

When Councillor Andrew Barry made his xenophobic comments about Pakistanis, the party, instead of immediately disowning these comments, defended him and claimed his remarks were “taken out of context”, while Reform UK’s own official Facebook Groups, administered by party officials, contain extensive racist content that remains largely unchallenged.

When your “individual bad actors” include elected councillors, parliamentary candidates, activists and official social media administrators, you have moved on from having an “individual” problem straight into having an institutional one.

Reform UK is Racist

When we start considering both the incidents involving racism from people who are pretty directly connected to Reform and then weight it up against their responses and actions to these, I feel you can’t help but coming to the conclusion that, yes, Reform UK is, in fact racist.

And I am saying that directly - in complete contravention with a sudden norm that’s found itself into our discourse that calling something racist has suddenly become worse than the act of racism itself. Terming something “racist” has now come with a side of squeamishness that I find, to be very frank, gross.

How “Racist” Became the Dirtiest Word in Britain

Reform has over the past few years been one of the players who have weaponised this squeamishness rather brilliantly. When Keir Starmer called their policies racist (which they are), all hell broke loose.

This has parallels to when Robert Jenrick recently wrote in an op ed for the Daily Mail that he didn’t want his children sharing a neighbourhood with “immigrant men with backwards views who broke into Britain illegally.” When Dr Krish Kandiah pointed out on BBC’s Thought for the Day that this language was xenophobic, the BBC apologised. Not, of course to migrants who might be smeared by Jenrick’s rhetoric - but to Jenrick himself. For someone daring to accurately describe his words.

This is the environment Reform UK now operates in, and happily exploits - they can traffic in blatant racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, but the moment someone dares to name it accurately, they’re suddenly the victim, shifting the focus from substance to etiquette and from prejudice to politeness.

Laurence Fox took this particular strategy to its logical extreme when he decided to sue two critics for calling him racist after he had called them paedophiles. To no one’s surprise whatsoever, the High Court ruled in favour of his critics, finding that while Fox’s accusations towards the claimants were “seriously harmful, defamatory and baseless”, his counter claim that “racist” was somehow more libellous was thrown in the bin where it deserved to live.

The fact that Fox’s case happened at all though tells you everything about how successfully the word “racist” has been weaponised and slurrified to a worrying extent.

About That Huff

We return ourselves now to Farage’s theatrical outrage at being called a racist - all that performance of wounded dignity, the claims of unfair treatment and media persecution, the suggestion that accurately describing Reform’s policies and membership is now, somehow, beyond the pale.

What Farage would dearly like you to forget is his own history of racist and xenophobic statements. Naming Enoch Powell as his political hero. Claiming parts of Britain “look like a foreign land” due to migration. Suggesting Muslims lack British values and all “loathe us.”

He’s very keen on you forgetting all the documented incidents that I point out in this piece - the councillors, candidates, members and activists caught on camera or in writing expressing their unveiled hatred of minorities. The Facebook groups full of racist conspiracy theories administered by party officials. The policies that he is pushing himself that would further institutionalise discrimination.

He would love for you to believe that the real scandal is that Keir Starmer used the word “racist” to describe racist policy - that the true victim, as ever, is Nigel Farage, with his TV show, his column inches, his handful of MPs, his growing membership, his many donors - not the minority communities targeted by his party’s rhetoric, membership and policies.

The farce of it all is that this strategy now so often works. We’ve become so squeamish about naming racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia that we’d rather engage in endless meta-debates about whether it’s appropriate to use the word than confront the monster it describes.

But here’s the truth that Farage’s huff is designed to obscure - when nearly half the British public perceives your party and it’s policies as racist, when 20 incidents in 18 months document systematic discrimination, when your policies would institutionalise prejudice against minorities - you don’t have a perception problem.

You have an accuracy problem.

The evidence of rampant racism isn’t being manipulated, and there is no large scale “stitch up”. The data isn’t being twisted and the quotes aren’t being taken out of context.

When Reform is being described as racist, that is accurate, and Farage’s huff is the sound of someone who wishes that reality will bend itself around his needs. Reality, as it turns out though, doesn’t much care about Nigel Farage’s wounded dignity or his performative victimhood - and neither should you.

The racism is real. The xenophobia is documented. The Islamophobia is systematic, and no amount of huffing and puffing will blow that house of evidence down.

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1. Racism. Call it Racism. That’s what it is.

2. Before the inevitable “but what about the other parties, they also have their own problems” brigade makes their entrance: Yes. Absolutely. Every political party attracts at least some unsavoury characters - the difference in this case is scale. Twenty incidents in about twenty months, the seniority of the people involved, the leadership’s initial intolerance and most damingly just how closely the supposed “cranks” mirror what is official party policy, because when your fringe and your party’s platform start harmonising with each other, you don’t have an infiltration problem, you have a culture problem.

3. I will not be taking any questions at this time.

4. Because, of course, nothing says patriotism quite like racially profiling children on a bank holiday boat trip.

5. The context for what it’s worth was a sustained xenophobic rant, in which case, the context in this case is definitely making things far worse, not better.

6. Efficiency is truly when you’re able to combine antisemitism and Islamophobia in one sentence.

7. Remember the days of Twitter where you could actually identify racists by the disgusting posts that they tapped like on before that was completely taken away for some unknown reason?