British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday reacted to racist comments made towards him, saying they left him “saddened and angry”.
Speaking to reporters during the general election campaign, Sunak said his two daughters, Krishna and Anushka, had to see and hear Reform UK activists, who campaigned for party leader Nigel Farage, “call me a Paki”.
“It makes me sad and angry,” the 44-year-old British Indian politician said, adding that Faraz will have to answer a lot of questions.
Sunak said: “I do not repeat these words lightly. I do so deliberately because it is so important that it cannot be stated plainly.
“When you see Reform candidates and campaigners using racist and misogynistic language and views, I think it tells you something about the culture within the Reform party.” He was speaking after an incident in which a campaigner for the right-wing Reform UK was filmed using a slur considered racist towards people of South Asian descent, prompting the party’s leader and general election candidate Nigel Farage to condemn the act as “appalling”.
Reform UK is fielding hundreds of candidates with strong anti-immigration stances in the July 4 election in a bid to pose a major challenge to the incumbent Conservative Party, which is trailing far in the polls. However, due to the election being called earlier than expected, the party has not been able to fully vet all of its campaigners and one of them – Andrew Parker – was filmed by an undercover Channel 4 reporter.
Farage said in a statement, “The appalling sentiments expressed by some in these exchanges bear no relationship to my own views, those of our supporters or the majority of people at Reform UK.”
The same activist was also heard suggesting that army recruits with guns should be deployed to “shoot down” illegal immigrants landing on U.K. beaches. Speaking at a campaign event on Thursday, Farage said there were “one or two people who let us down and we let them go” but added that “in the vast majority of cases they are just ordinary people speaking”.
The 60-year-old divisive politician is making his eighth attempt to get elected to parliament after seven failed attempts. This time, polls show he has a comfortable lead in the race to represent the seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea.
While Reform is likely to get only a handful of seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, Farage says his goal is to gain a foothold and lead a “genuine” opposition to the Labour Party government – which is widely expected to replace the Sunak-led Tories after the general election. Meanwhile, the British Indian leader has warned voters that a vote for Reform UK is actually a vote in favour of the tax-raising Labour Party. He has also hit back at Farage over his controversial statements claiming the West had provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack Ukraine.
“What he said was wrong, it was completely wrong. It’s playing into Putin’s hands,” Sunak told The Telegraph.
“This is the same guy (Putin) who used nerve agents on British streets, he’s doing deals with North Korea. That’s what we’re talking about here. This kind of appeasement is very harmful not just to our security but to the security of our allies who depend on us and it only emboldens Putin,” he said.
Senior Conservative Party leaders are concerned that disgruntled party supporters joining Reform UK could cost them seats and give Labour a “super-majority” in the election.
Sunak attempted to reach out to these disgruntled voters in the final week before the election, saying “A Labour government is not something you buy and then if you don’t like it you can take it back to the shop and return it.”
“If they change the system to stay in power it will have profound effects on you and your family, possibly for decades. So you should think very carefully about your choices in this election because there will be consequences,” he said.
The incident comes as his party grapples with a betting scandal engulfing the Tories, and his chief of staff is assisting the Gambling Commission’s ongoing investigation into possible fraud behind betting by some candidates on the date of the July election based on insider information.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)