Jenrick
claims Farage has done more to stand against racism than ‘almost anybody’
Reform MP
defends leader after ITV footage shows official warning Farage he is
‘protecting’ candidate over racist David Lammy comments
Fri 16
Oct 2026 09.40 BST
Robert
Jenrick has sought to defend Reform UK against fresh allegations that it hosts
extremists by claiming that Nigel Farage has “probably done more than almost
anybody to stand against racism and the far right”.
The
remarks came after Farage was berated by a Reform official for “protecting” a
mayoral candidate who was accused of making racist remarks about the former
Labour deputy prime minister David Lammy.
The
exchange emerged in an undercover
investigation by ITV Exposure, which has also shown councillors and
election candidates for Reform making threats of extreme violence and
expressing racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic views.
In the
latest footage released by ITV, a senior Reform official is seen warning Farage
that he was “protecting” a high-profile mayoral candidate accused of making
racist comments about Lammy.
Sarah
Pochin, one of two female MPs for Reform, is also seen complaining that other
party officials “are so fucking chauvinistic” and that “they just exclude you
if you are a woman”.
Sarah
Pochin is seen in the ITV investigation saying Reform officials are
chauvinistic and exclude women. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Jenrick,
the party’s Treasury spokesperson and MP for Newark, told BBC Radio 4’s Today
programme on Friday: “[Farage] is the most heavily scrutinised figure in
British politics, and he’s someone who’s probably done more than almost anybody
else to stand against racism and the far right, and to protect our politics
from that over the course of my lifetime.
“And this
documentary failed to besmirch his character, which presumably was the ultimate
objective.”
Farage
has made repeated promises over the last two years to rid Reform of
“extremists” and “bigots” and introduce vetting. The party says it carries out
vetting checks on everyone who wants to stand for election.
However,
the first clips from ITV’s year-long undercover investigation showed
Alan Feeney, a Reform councillor and deputy mayor of Solihull, calling
Asian homeowners “parasites”, and stating that “no more than 1% of [the]
British population can be non-white”.
Further
footage released on Thursday shows Farage discussing the case
of Chris Parry, a retired rear admiral picked to contest the Hampshire and
the Solent mayoral election for the party.
The party
stood by Parry for months after it emerged he had said the former foreign
secretary should “go home to the Caribbean” last year, and suggested that at
least eight other politicians from minority ethnic backgrounds did not have a
primary loyalty to the UK.
Reform
eventually suspended
him in March after the Guardian revealed other remarks by Parry, but clips
from the ITV documentary show Farage pushing back against senior advisers who
said the candidate had to be sacked. They included Ed Sumner, Reform’s head of
communications, who had told another press officer in an earlier discussion
that Parry was “clearly a racist”.
In a
conversation between Farage and Sumner, which was recorded by the undercover
reporter, the Reform leader said Parry “must apologise to Lammy” and was told
that a text had been written for the candidate.
“He must
do it and move on … Tell him that from me,” Farage said, to which Sumner said:
“You’re protecting him.”
To
laughter, Farage replied: “It’s showing a bit of … bit of sorrow. Look, ‘I’m
sorry’ is probably a good thing to hear. Just take the fucking deal. Trouble is
he’s a rear admiral. That’s the problem.”
Jenrick
defended Reform’s vetting policy. “In my experience, all political parties have
bad apples. I mean, you can see that’s plain to see from the conduct of other
political parties. In fact, Councillor Feeney, the one that you presented
before I came online, was for a short time a Reform councillor, but for a much
greater time a Conservative councillor.”
He added:
“We actually have very strong vetting, and we invest a huge amount in it, and
it’s improving all the time. I don’t know what the vetting is like in every
other political party. I can say in the Conservative party, because it was my
former party, there is absolutely no vetting whatsoever by the central party
for local councillors.”
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