Sir Keir Starmer has said he doesn’t believe Nigel Farage is a racist, despite using the word to condemn one of Reform UK’s flagship immigration policies.
At Labour’s annual party conference in Liverpool, the Prime Minister has trained his focus firmly on the right-wing party as his likely main adversary in the next election.
His main target has been the plan, announced by Reform leader Farage last Monday, to deport hundreds of thousands of people currently living legally in the UK with indefinite leave to remain.
In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Sir Keir said that idea was both ‘racist’ and ‘immoral’.
He continued the attack in his keynote conference speech yesterday, vowing to ‘fight […] with everything we have’ against those who want to deport ‘people who have lived here for generations’.
Other members of the PM’s cabinet have also picked up the fight, with David Lammy making the eye-catching claim that Farage had ‘flirted with the Hitler Youth’ when he was young.
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The Justice Secretary later rowed back on that remark, which was described by Reform as ‘beneath contempt’.
In an interview with Sky News today, Sir Keir made a distinction between the Reform leader and his policies when asked if he thought Farage was a racist.
He said: ‘No, nor do I think Reform voters are racist.
‘They’re concerned about things like our borders, they’re frustrated about the pace of change, so I’m not for a moment suggesting they are racist.’
The PM later described Farage as a ‘formidable politician’ but suggested he had ushered in a ‘dangerous moment for the country’.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Farage said he had believed Sir Keir was a ‘reasonable human being’ until his remarks this weekend.
He added: ‘Now I’m shocked at his behaviour.
‘I hope that when he wakes up this morning, he feels ashamed of what he has done to British politics over the past few days.’
A YouGov poll released this morning found that almost half of Brits – 47% – believe Reform UK is ‘generally racist’, with 36% saying the party is not racist.
More than four in ten also said they believed the party’s policies and voters specifically are also generally racist.
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