When my two daughters have to see and hear Reform people who campaign for Nigel Farage calling me an effing [P-word], it hurts and it makes me angry, and I think he has some questions to answer.
And I don’t repeat those words lightly. I do so deliberately, because this is too important not to call out clearly for what it is.
Asked if it was frustrating for Sunak to know that some former Tory supporters were backing a party whose activists behave like this, Sunak said:
When you see Reform candidates and campaigners seemingly using racist and misogynistic language and opinions, seemingly without challenge, I think it tells you something about the culture within the Reform party.
Andrew Tate isn’t an important voice for men. He is a vile misogynist, and our politics and country is better than that.
And as prime minister, but more importantly as a father of two young girls, it’s my duty to call out this corrosive and divisive behaviour.
This post was amended on 28 June 2024 to make clear it was Rishi Sunak speaking about Reform candidates using racist and misogynistic language.
Filters BETA
accused of talking “absolute twaddle” by a woman who did not think he was doing or saying enough to protect single-sex spaces. (See 9.56am.)
Starmer said he was committed to protecting women’s spaces. But the caller was not happy with this, because she wanted an assurance that spaces would be safeguarded for biological women and she suggested that she wanted trans women excluded from women’s toilets, changing rooms and refuges. Starmer would not give that assurance, and he spoke about the need for trans people to be treated with respect.
When Starmer is asked about this issue, he tends to talk about protecting women’s spaces, rather than single-sex spaces or spaces for biologicial women, because he does not want to exclude trans women. This is in line with what the Equality Act says (although the Tories want to change it to allow trans women to be excluded from these spaces.)
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was also asked about this today, and he adopted a similar position to Starmer’s. He said:
I believe in the Equality Act, which gives single-sex spaces and rights for women as a way of balancing rights. I think that is exactly right.
And what the Equality Act does in providing single-sex spaces where trans women are excluded, is it enables people providing services to make those decisions, and that’s quite right.
I strongly support the Equality Act and its provision for single-sex spaces.
But Davey was less evasive than Starmer on the topic of trans women using ladies’ toilets. Asked what toilet a trans woman with a penis should use, Davey replied:
It would all depend on what they want to use.
I’m not sure if we’re going to have people standing outside toilets and deciding what identity they have, I think that would be quite an odd society.
a report saying that what he does in the first few days and weeks will determine whether or not he can succeed. The IfG says:
Major barriers include lack of grid capacity (with generators paid £1.38bn in 2022 to reduce the supply of cheap renewable energy when supply was high), stretched supply chains, shortages of workers with the necessary skills, insufficient public engagement, and a need to make the planning system work much faster if energy targets are going to be hit. Average waits to get consent for nationally significant infrastructure increased from 2.6 to 4.2 years between 2012 and 2023.
But historical successes – such as the 4,000 miles of transmission lines built in 12 years from the 1950s, the switch over of 13.5m buildings and 40 million appliances from coal or oil to natural gas between 1967-77, or the 40 gas power stations built in 10 years during the 1990s ‘dash for gas’ – show that the UK can deliver large scale projects …
If elected on 5 July Labour will have under six years to meet its goal of delivering clean power by 2030. The next two or three years will be critical to whether this is achievable. The UK has shown previously that it is able to deliver ambitious projects quickly under the right circumstances. It will need to do so again.
Reform UK activists recorded secretly by Channel 4 News. on a campaign visit to Little Paxton, Cambridgeshire, he said:
I heard the comments on the television, and they were clearly racist, homophobic and abhorrent, and I hope the party deals with these and any other people who speak like this.
Labour, of course. Here is an excerpt.
The party’s poll lead has induced a rush to place Sir Keir in historical perspective before he actually makes history. That may be because people are yearning for the “change” of Labour’s campaign rhetoric. It is what the country needs. The greater the inequality, insecurity and sense of injustice, the more vulnerable democracies are to capture by rightwing demagogues. Imagine the dread of waking up to Rishi Sunak winning. Labour’s vision is calming rather than exciting. Sir Keir may not be inspiring, but he does inspire confidence. He offers compassion, where a lack of it has become a matter of principle for the Tories.
Lurking in Labour’s manifesto is a plan to give ordinary people opportunity, security and dignity. Bliss in this dawn to be alive? Maybe not quite, but viewed amid the debris of the last decade, Labour’s putative parliamentary majority seems an almost unimaginably hopeful starting point. To create a more equitable society, power must be in the hands of politicians prepared to shape the country that we want to see. That is why the Guardian would vote, with hope and enthusiasm, for Labour to lead Britain to a better future.
And you can read the article in full here.
Reform UK to establish if any of the activists who were recorded were committing an offence.
A spokesperson for the force said:
We are aware of comments made during a Channel 4 News programme and we are urgently assessing them to establish if there are any criminal offences.
Keir Starmer government could have “possibly the most working class cabinet of all time”.
Speaking about class to reporters, Ashworth said:
I’m definitely working class. My dad was a croupier – given that betting is very topical in this campaign, I know a little bit about it.
My dad was a croupier in the Playboy club in Manchester, which is where he met my mum, who was a bunny girl, so I know all about gambling and I know all about class.
I’m from a working-class background and I’m very proud that if we get a Labour government next week, you’ll have – actually, you should check this out, somebody should – it could possibly be the most working-class cabinet of all time, actually.
Keir Starmer would be the most working class Labour PM since James Callaghan. Ashworth also named Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson as some of his working class colleagues, as well as Rachel and Ellie Reeves, whose parents were teachers. He went on:
So, I think it’s certainly the most working class and ‘state comprehensive’ shadow cabinet and potential cabinet of all time – I think, I suspect.
Ashworth was responded to a question prompted by David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, telling the New Statesman the Tories were not the right class to be running Britain. Lammy said:
There was a sort of demob happiness about them, a sort of casual frippery, a certain kind of public-school smallness.
They are not the class of people that Britain needs to run it now, and that’s what my own life story tells me.
an emergency centre where locals who have yet to receive their ballot can have one reissued, or can even cast their vote ahead of 4 July, PA says. Earlier today John Swinney, the first minister, said it was “deeply unacceptable” for people about to leave on holiday not to have their postal votes already. (See 10.20am.)Reform UK was attracting support from extremists, Farage said
Ironically, I think because we destroyed the BNP, they haven’t got the BNP to go to any more. I think that’s the problem, just as hard-left extremists go to the Labour party
Asked about his own views, and the fact that a teacher described him as fascist when he was a pupil at Dulwich College,
To go back 45 years, when a few of us were winding up school teachers, is irrelevant.
Farage also suggested someone in his family was gay. Asked about homophobia, and what he would feel about having a relative who was gay, he replied:
Without going too deeply into it, and without giving personal things away, I understand completely what you are talking about. As with every family, we see this, as we see many other things. I’m incredibly tolerant. To be honest, I don’t care what people are. I judge them as human beings, whether they are good people or not.
Asked again if he would not have a problem having a gay family member, he replied: “I’ve just answered that – without getting into detail.”
1.38pm.)
Referring to Andrew Parker, the activist who featured most prominently, Farage said:
When I saw the footage last night, I thought no one speaks like that. You know, ‘We’re going to turn mosques into Wetherspoon’s’. It all seemed a bit over the top.
So someone told us he was an actor. You rang him this morning, the Daily Telegraph rang him this morning. He denied point blank he was an actor. It turns out he is an actor. We found his website. He’s a well-spoken actor who does something called “rough speaking”.
I was at the office when he arrived last Saturday. He was doing rough-speaking. It was an act right from the very start.
I was working and he came in and come up to me and said hello, and then he went out canvassing where the undercovering filming took place.
And he was rough speaking. He was not being himself from day one. I have to tell you, this whole thing is a complete and total setup. Of that I have no doubt whatsoever.
Farage would not say who he thought was responsible for the setup, and he said he did not know whether or not Parker had been paid. But he said “something is wrong here”.
Channel 4 News has denied the claim the report was a setup (see 12.58pm), and Parker himself has said that he was volunteering to help Reform UK because he believed its message (see 12.38pm).
Asked about three other activists filmed in the report, including George Jones, a longtime party activist who organises events for Farage and who was recorded alling the Pride flag “degenerate” and LGBT people “nonces”, Farage said:
They had watched England play football, they were in the pub, drunk, it was crass, vulgar … It was unforgivably nasty, no question about that.
Asked if he wanted people like that in the party, Farage said: “No, I don’t, of course I don’t.” He claimed the three had been removed from the party.
12.38pm) – his claim that the Channel 4 News exposé of racism amongst his campaign team in Clacton was a setup.
Referring to Andrew Parker, the activist who featured most prominently in the report, and who used a racist slur to describe Rishi Sunak, Farage said: “It was an act right from the very start.”
Describing Parker as “rough speaking” and “not being himself”, Farage added:
I have to tell you, this whole thing was a complete and total setup, I have no doubt about that.
Asked whether he thought Parker had been paid, he said:
I don’t know whether he was paid or not … I’m saying it’s possible, I don’t know. Something is wrong here.
Channel 4 News has already rejected this claim strongly. See 12.58pm.
Reform UK activists in Clacton and filmed by an undercover Channel 4 News reporter, Sunak said:
When my two daughters have to see and hear Reform people who campaign for Nigel Farage calling me an effing [P-word], it hurts and it makes me angry, and I think he has some questions to answer.
And I don’t repeat those words lightly. I do so deliberately, because this is too important not to call out clearly for what it is.
Asked if it was frustrating for Sunak to know that some former Tory supporters were backing a party whose activists behave like this, Sunak said:
When you see Reform candidates and campaigners seemingly using racist and misogynistic language and opinions, seemingly without challenge, I think it tells you something about the culture within the Reform party.
Andrew Tate isn’t an important voice for men. He is a vile misogynist, and our politics and country is better than that.
And as prime minister, but more importantly as a father of two young girls, it’s my duty to call out this corrosive and divisive behaviour.
This post was amended on 28 June 2024 to make clear it was Rishi Sunak speaking about Reform candidates using racist and misogynistic language.
Nigel Farage that its report exposing Reform UK activists making racist and homophobic comments in Clacton, where Farage is standing for election, was some sort of setup.
Farage has been implying this in posts on X this morning. (See 12.38pm.)
In response, a spokesperson for Channel 4 News said:
We strongly stand by our rigorous and duly impartial journalism which speaks for itself. We met [Andrew] Parker [the activist who has also worked as an actor] for the first time at Reform UK party headquarters, where he was a Reform party canvasser.
We did not pay the Reform UK canvasser or anyone else in this report. Mr Parker was not known to Channel 4 News and was filmed covertly via the undercover operation.
Two senior shadow ministers with campaign responsibilities somewhat dodged the question when asked whether Labour was deliberately not engaging as much as it might with Reform as a party, and whether this should be re-thought.
Speaking after a campaign event in Croydon, Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, said Labour was “working hard to win the trust of every voter”, including those leaning towards Reform.
Ellie Reeves, Labour’s deputy campaign coordinator, said the party would “continue to speak to as many people as possible and win their trust, because they’re not taking anything for granted”.
Pressed on why Labour were not challenging Reform more, Ashworth added:
At the end of the day, people are going to wake up on 5 July with either Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak in No 10. And that’s the choice at this election.
new deal for working people.
by an undercover Channel 4 News reporter making racist comments, including about Rishi Sunak, has apologisied, PA Media reports.
Parker told PA he had made the comments in “the heat of the moment” because he was being “goaded on”. He said:
Of course I regret what I said. Christ, I’m not a racist. I’ve had Muslim girlfriends. It was typical chaps-down-the-pub talk.
Asked whether he would like to apologise, he said: “Of course I’m sorry. They were off-the-cuff things that everyone says.”
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has highlighted the fact that Parker has worked as an actor, implying this suggests the exposé was a set up.
Andrew Parker was the man that made the astonishing racist comments that have given us so much negative coverage.
We now learn that he is an actor by profession.
His own website says he is ‘well spoken’ but from the moment he arrived in Clacton he was doing what he calls ‘rough speaking’.
This whole episode does not add up.
Parker told PA that he was an actor but that he was volunteering to help Reform UK because he believed in its message.
Farage is now regularly floating conspirary theories which he cites as evidence that people are treating his party unfairly (Ofcom was behind one, he suggested recently, and his vetting company an other) and it seems very unlikely that Parker was part of a Channel 4 plot.
Parker was not the only Reform UK Clacton activist recorded making extremist comments. And there are now many examples of Reform UK candidates with a record of extremism and racism who are normally disowned by the party when their comments are highlighted by the media. Farage says he and his party are opposed to racism. But racists don’t seem to be opposed to Reform UK, and the party attracts them like a magnet.
Source: theguardian.com
