Nigel Farage on a walkabout in Chelmsford. Photograph: Will Colebourne\/PAView image in fullscreenNigel Farage on a walkabout in Chelmsford. Photograph: Will Colebourne\/PAFarage accused of \u2018protecting\u2019 Reform candidate over racist slurs against David LammyExclusive: ITV investigation shows leader stood by mayoral candidate who said Labour MP should \u2018go home to the Caribbean\u2019Nigel Farage was told by a senior Reform official that he was \u201cprotecting\u201d a high-profile mayoral candidate accused of making racists comments about David Lammy, an undercover investigation has revealed.The latest footage from an undercover investigation by ITV also shows Sarah Pochin, one of two female MPs for Reform, complaining that other party officials \u201care so fucking chauvinistic\u201d and that \u201cthey just exclude you if you are a woman\u201d.Other footage shows Farage himself discussing the case of Chris Parry, a retired rear admiral picked to contest Hampshire and the Solent mayoral election for the party.The party stood by Parry for months after it emerged that he had said the former foreign secretary should \u201cgo home to the Caribbean\u201d last year, and suggested that at least eight other politicians from minority ethnic backgrounds do not have a primary loyalty towards the UK.However, while Reform eventually suspended him in March after the Guardian revealed other remarks by Parry, clips from an ITV documentary show Farage pushing back against senior advisers who said the candidate had to be sacked. They included Ed Sumner, Reform\u2019s head of communications, who had told another press officer in an earlier disucussion that Parry was \u201cclearly a racist\u201d.View image in fullscreenSarah Pochin complains in a clip that Reform party officials \u2018are so fucking chauvinistic\u2019.<\/p>\n
Photograph: Alamy Live News\u201cHe needs to go, I\u2019m getting rid of him,\u201d Sumner was filmed saying when the controversy broke last December. However, Parry was still the candidate three weeks later, while Farage told a press conference that the candidate could stay if he apologised.In a conversation between Farage and Sumner, which was recorded by the undercover reporter, the Reform leader said that Parry \u201cmust apologise to Lammy\u201d and was told that a text had been written for the candidate.\u201cHe must do it and move on \u2026 Tell him that from me,\u201d Farage said, to which Sumner said: \u201cYou\u2019re protecting him.\u201dTo laughter, Farage replied: \u201cIt\u2019s showing a bit of \u2026 bit of sorrow. Look, \u2018I\u2019m sorry\u2019 is probably a good thing to hear. Just take the fucking deal.<\/p>\n
Trouble is he\u2019s a rear admiral. That\u2019s the problem.\u201dParry was suspended on 26 March after the Guardian reported that he had described members of a Jewish neighbourhood watch group as \u201ccosplayers\u201d and likened them to \u201cIslamists on horseback\u201d.Bridget Phillipson, the Labour party chair, said these \u201clatest shocking and deeply disturbing revelations go right to the top of Reform\u201d, adding: \u201cNigel Farage needs to wake up and realise the buck stops with him. He also must urgently explain why he allegedly stood by a blatant racist instead of kicking him out of his party.\u201dThe revelations are the latest in a number of recent controversies for Reform. The full ITV documentary, Undercover: A Year in Reform, airs on Sunday.A number of councillors have already stood down after segments from the investigation aired on Wednesday showed them making graphic threats of extreme violence and expressing racist and misogynistic views.Reform UK councillors and candidates filmed making racist and misogynist commentsRead moreThe undercover reporter for ITV also met Pochin, Reform\u2019s MP for Runcorn and Helsby, at a time when she was the party\u2019s only female member of parliament.When Pochin was told that a new female press officer was starting work, she was recorded as saying: \u201cOh thank fuck for that.<\/p>\n
God! We so need women press officers \u2026 They are so fucking chauvinistic.\u201cI go out on all the shows and go: \u2018Oh no, it\u2019s lovely, oh they\u2019re all so welcoming.\u2019 Shit \u2026 they just exclude you if you\u2019re a woman. It\u2019s really tough being a girl with all of this alpha male shit going on.\u201dPochin did not provide a statement when approached by ITV. Reform UK used a statement issued on Thursday to accuse ITV and the company behind the documentary, Hardcash Productions, of using \u201cextreme methods of deception\u201d.It said: \u201cThey have infiltrated our workplace including commissioning an undercover journalist to provide altered identification documents, a false address, and false credentials so that they could be given access to Reform\u2019s headquarters, computer systems, and spy on its employees.\u201cThat same journalist did not limit themselves to recording candid conversations in the workplace.<\/p>\n
That journalist also sought to find out sensitive security information, travel arrangements, and financial information outside of the scope of this investigation.\u201dReform went on to claim that ITV had failed to address this in correspondence, despite this conduct being drawn to their attention. \u201cThis is at a time when Nigel Farage and other members of Reform are being targeted by individuals who wished them harm and caused a security issue which was documented during the course of the undercover investigation,\u201d it added.\u201cThere is no room for racism in Reform UK. We always respect due process of investigations and whilst these are ongoing it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases.\u201dWhen approached for comment, Parry referred the Guardian to a statement given to ITV. In it he said: \u201cI would urge people to go back to the original contexts and tweets to see what was said and why. They related to reparations and failures by the police and government.<\/p>\n
They will see I always exercise my right to criticise anyone in power or the public eye whom I judge to be acting against the interests of the British people.\u201dExplore more on these topicsNigel FarageReform UKDocumentary filmsFar rightnewsShareReuse this content<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigel Farage on a walkabout in Chelmsford. Photograph: Will Colebourne\/PAView image in fullscreenNigel Farage on a walkabout in Chelmsford. Photograph: Will Colebourne\/PAFarage accused of \u2018protecting\u2019 Reform candidate over racist slurs against David LammyExclusive: ITV investigation\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}