Adam Bienkov, who also writes for Bylines Times, keeps a Substack blog. His latest effort is about Nigel Farage. Labour politicians recently have been tiptoeing around the question of whether or not Farage is racist. Bienkov has no reservations and hits the nail firmly on the head: Farage is a racist (£). Now this may come as a shock to you, but Labour seem unable or unwilling to say the same thing. Personally, I don’t know why it’s so difficult, but apparently it is. For me, it's blindingly obvious, but interviewers cannot get Starmer, Cooper or any other senior Labour politician to say what most people in my circle are absolutely convinced about. I assume they’re worried about losing voters who might otherwise be persuaded to vote Labour.
They can’t be concerned about being sued. The Sun newspaper published an editorial in May 2014, condemning Farage's remarks about not wanting to have Romanians as neighbours as "racism, pure and simple". Cooper and Lammy both condemned his comments at the time, but can't do it now.
Who remembers when The Sun branded Nigel Farage a racist? pic.twitter.com/jqGYL6bOMl
— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) August 14, 2025
Michael Crick’s book: One Party After Another: The Disruptive Life of Nigel Farage, recounts multiple allegations of racist and neo-fascist incidents involving Farage during his school years at fee-paying Dulwich College. The book contains impeccably researched claims from former teachers and classmates who portrayed a young Farage as openly expressing racist views and engaging in antisemitic behaviour. Farage never sued Crick or The Sun.
If he isn’t racist, he seems to have spent most of his life surrounding himself with people who have distinctly racist views. He even posed in front of the infamous ‘breaking point’ poster depicting Syrian refugees near the Croatia-Slovenia border, which people claimed was similar to imagery used in Nazi propaganda.
He denies it all, of course. But as Mandy Rice Davies might say, “He would, wouldn’t he?”
Matthew Syed, a Times journalist and former Labour candidate who has now joined the Tories, told the recent party conference that he didn’t believe Farage was racist, but he did think he was a socialist! I don’t know where Mr Syed has been these past thirty years, but it’s clearly not in this country. As for joining Badenoch’s Tories, he must have a death wish. Syed is of Pakistani heritage BTW.
Even if Farage publicly admitted being racist, I’m not sure it would turn his supporters off. For many, his racism, real or alleged, is the whole point of Reform UK. To see what I mean, it's only necessary to see the reaction to an article in The Telegraph by David Blair, the paper's chief foreign affairs commentator: Nigel Farage has a Russia problem (No £).
Blair writes about Farage’s extensive Russian links. Like the accusations of racism, such connotations would ruin the prospects of any normal political figure, but not Farage.
The article is factual, uses quotes from Farage and sets out his history of making statements helpful to Putin. Russia's first incursion into Ukraine in 2014, when Crimea was annexed, was, according to Farage, a result of the EU's "unnecessary provocation of Vladimir Putin.” He said: “This EU empire, ever seeking to expand, stated its territorial claim on the Ukraine some years ago.”
Even in 2022 when the full-scale invasion began, he regurgitated the Kremlin narrative that the whole tragedy was a “consequence of EU and Nato expansion”. The weird thing about the recent Nathan Gill case, is why it was necessary to bribe Gill to say something the party leader was quite happy to do for nothing - apparently.
It's like Russia needing to pay Lammy or Cooper to restate Labour party policy.
Anyway, after reading the piece, take a look at the comments at the bottom. They are almost universally critical of Blair and The Telegraph:
I don't know if these are real people or not. They could be bots, meaning someone is secretly working to ensure Farage is PM after the next election. Either way, it isn't good news.
I am convinced in Farage, the right have got someone in the Trump mould. No matter what they're accused of, their supporters will either deny it and blame the messenger for a smear, make light of it or claim the other side does the same, but worse. Once somebody achieves this status, it is almost impossible to destroy their reputation.
Labour and the other parties in parliament have a real battle on their hands.
