11 hours ago
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Nigel Farage should offer an unreserved apology to people who allege he targeted them with racist or antisemitic behaviour while at school, the outgoing head of the government’s equalities watchdog has said.
Kishwer Falkner, a crossbench peer who has just completed five years as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that even if the Reform UK leader rejected the allegation that he had been deliberately racist, he could nonetheless apologise to people who said they had been deeply hurt by his actions.
A total of 28 contemporaries of Farage at Dulwich college have told the Guardian they experienced or witnessed such behaviour when he was a teenager.
These include Peter Ettedgui, 61, who is Jewish, and said Farage repeatedly told him “Hitler was right” or said “gas them” at him when they were at school. On Friday, Yinka Bankole said a then 17-year-old Farage told him: “That’s the way back to Africa” when he was much younger and new to the school.
Farage and his spokespeople have said that those making the allegations have misremembered due to the amount of time since events, or that some have targeted him for political reasons. He has consistently denied making any malicious comments.
At a press conference on Thursday, Farage reacted angrily to broadcasters asking him about the claims, saying the BBC and ITV were being hypocritical because of shows they broadcast in the 1970s and 1980s that contained racism and homophobia.
Asked by Sky News about Farage’s comments, Falkner said she felt “quite confused and disturbed”.
She said: “You have a situation where, when you read these allegations in terms of what is attributed to him, it looks utterly ghastly on paper. And then you try and contextualise it, and you think, this is perhaps 50 years ago – you know, young people say all sorts of things at school.”
There was, however, she said, an element that she did not understand: “The one thing that sadly confuses me about him, and I hear his contextualisation of it all: why can’t he just offer an unreserved apology for any distress?
“I just don’t get it. It seems to me that that would be the most genuine thing to say, if he is genuinely not a racist.”
Asked at previous press conferences if he would apologise, Farage said he was happy to do so if he had caused any offence. He insisted that while he might have said offensive things it was “never with malice”.
Speaking later on Sunday to Sky, Helen Whately, the Conservative work and pensions spokesperson, said Farage should be open about what happened.
She said: “I think first and foremost that Nigel Farage should be straight with the public on this question. There are some very serious accusations about things that he has said and done about the question of racism. And he needs to give people a straight answer.”
