Nigel Farage heckled and called ‘racist’ in first speech as Reform UK MP
Nigel Farage’s first press conference as an MP descended into chaos before it had even started after it was taken over by multiple hecklers.
The Reform UK leader, who was elected in Clacton, was accused of being ‘racist’ by a protester just as his speech began in central London.
Mr Farage was met with jeers as he walked in and then started repeatedly saying ‘boring’ to try and drown out those who kept interrupting.
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His supporters booed the hecklers, who were removed from the venue in Westminster – but not without Mr Farage having a few cross words with them.
‘Are you downwind a couple already?’ he said to one protestor who started shouting at him and implied he was drunk.
‘You’ve had a bigger lunch than I have. Cor, he’s absolutely steaming isn’t he? That’s all right, there’s still plenty of beer left in the pub, mate.’
The heckling continued and as a fourth protestor interrupted, Mr Farage said: ‘You’ll do yourself a nasty mate. you’ll have a stroke if you carry on like this.’
He then joked: ‘This is good preparation for the House of Commons I suppose, isn’t it? It’s going to be very lively in there.’
As a woman shouted, Mr Farage replied: ‘Oh do buck up really, please love, I’m so sorry.’
He shouted ‘bye darling’ as she was removed and questioned: ‘Any more for any more?’
After a pause, a man shouted: ‘Actually, yes!’
Mr Farage added: ‘We haven’t organised this very well, have we?’
When his speech did finally go ahead, he told the conference: ‘Above all what we’re going to do from today is we’re going to professionalise the party, we’re going to democratise the party and those few bad apples that have crept in will be gone, will be long gone, and we will never have any of their type back in our organisation.
‘You have a 100% promise on that.’
Mr Farage said Reform UK’s focus will be on going ‘after Labour votes’ and said: ‘Old Labour was very, very patriotic. It believed in the country. It believed in its people. New Labour, far less so.
‘And the journey that Lee Anderson has been on is a journey that at least a couple of million people have been on, and it’ll be many, many more by the time we’re finished, because no doubt, our priority now is to go after Labour votes. That is what we’re going to be doing.’
But the drama didn’t end there. When Channel 4 asked Mr Farage a question, he laughed and said ‘stitch-up merchants’.
He has launched a series of attacks against the broadcaster after it reported that a canvasser for his party had used racist language.
Channel 4 then asked him about the leadership and direction of the party, to which he responded that he would stay at the helm but indicated that by the 2029 election ‘somebody younger and better-looking’ will have come along.
He added: ‘I think this was going to be the first step of a very, very big journey that this was a five… year plan.
‘I believe with structure, funding, professionalism, we can be in a very, very serious position to contest the 2029 general election.
‘I suspect by then somebody younger and better-looking will come along and when they do I will recognise it. I will go on leading (the party)… until such a time when somebody else comes along.’
Reform UK won four seats in total in the 2024 General Election.
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