Labour’s defeated candidate in the constituency where Nigel Farage won his parliamentary seat has said he feared for the safety of those around him during what he characterised as a deeply ugly campaign.
Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, 27, who was installed to contest the seat weeks before Farage changed his mind and decided to stand, accused the Reform UK leader of waging a campaign “straight out of the Trump playbook”.
He said he faced vitriol from Reform supporters, including being asked repeatedly where he was “really from”.
During the election campaign, Labour was accused of not putting up a fight in the Essex seat after the Guardian revealed that Owusu-Nepaul had been instructed to leave the constituency and told he was distracting from Keir Starmer’s campaign.
He was seconded to the West Midlands, while the local campaign in Clacton said it was banned from printing leaflets and blocked from using campaigning software.
In his first interview since finishing third last week in the election, Owusu-Nepaul insisted he had fought hard, and said he understood the need for the national campaign to take priority. But he warned that Reform should be a cause for concern “because of the type of politics they represent”.
“It was my first time standing in a parliamentary election and I would be lying if I said that at times I didn’t feel concern for the safety of those around me on the campaign,” he said.
“I am not saying this was a direct consequence of Farage but from his supporters there was vitriol and from the very beginning a sense of intimidation. I had people tear my leaflets up. We had people come out and spit at us. I had my name constantly interrogated about where I was ‘really from’.
“On social media I got a torrent of abuse all day, every day. It has only given me further resolve to keep going because it made me realise that there are many people online, trolls or whoever they are, who want to silence me and silence others who share a similar belief system.”
He added: “It felt like I had become a proxy for some of the things they hated. My profile had kind of got bigger and with that there was endless abuse. It was from people who were quite explicit about their intentions and who they were going to support, and that was Reform.
“The campaign was never about me. It was about ensuring that principles and values were communicated to voters. But I did learn a lot about the role of ethnic minorities in public life.”
Before the vote, Channel 4 News secretly filmed Reform activists in Clacton making racist comments about Rishi Sunak and using Islamophobic and homophobic language.
On Friday, after Reform got more than 4m votes nationally and five MPs, Farage pledged to “professionalise” the party and said he would weed out “bad apples”, a reference to the dozens of candidates dropped by the party after being accused of offensive remarks.
Owusu-Nepaul said he believed the political atmosphere had permeated through to the local community. He said: “I spoke to a lady who was telling me her eight-year-old son was beginning to experience racial abuse in the playground. She said that [I] have to vote for you because Nigel Farage’s party has been whipping up emotions. She was desperately sad and angry.
“That really brought things home to me, the extent to which divisions were being stoked, and they were even manifesting in the school playground.”
He echoed Neil Kinnock – who has warned Labour not to ignore the nationalist threat posed by Farage – and said he believed the best way for the left and progressive politicians to defeat the surge in support for the populist right was to address people’s material concerns.
“In Clacton I saw the type of endemic poverty which is a problem all over the country and goes back generations. It’s also been juxtaposed with a lot of over-promising and under-delivery. It’s become ingrained while the scapegoating of others has become a way of avoiding doing anything,” Owusu-Nepaul said.
He predicted that Farage would be a “one-term MP” because he would use the platform to serve his own ideological interests while local people in Clacton would lose out.
“He will be exposed for the type of politician that he is, which is someone who is all voice and no action,” he said.
