Support truly
independent journalism
Nigel Farage was heckled and accused of being a racist at a victory press conference after his party won five seats in the general election.
Amid chaotic scenes, a total of seven people had to be escorted out of the central London venue.
The fracas came as the Reform UK leader claimed his party had triggered a “political earthquake”.
After helping to make dozens of Tory MPs redundant, he warned Sir Keir Starmer his party’s focus was now on going “after Labour votes”.
Although they took less than a handful of seats, Reform secured millions of votes across the country.
In many seats the Reform vote was higher than the Labour or the Liberal Democrat majority.
In the end, the upstart party helped Labour to win more than 400 seats.
The press conference was designed as a victory lap, to publicise Reform’s claim it would now be the official opposition to Labour “in the country”.
But it had barely got underway when members of the audience started heckling Mr Farage.
They accused Mr Farage of being a racist, no friend to working people and wanting to dismantle the NHS. As one man started shouting at him, Mr Farage, famously a large drinker, asked him: “Are you downwind a couple already? You’ve had a bigger lunch than I have.”
He also questioned if the group were actors – a nod to a Reform canvasser filmed using a racial slur to describe former prime minister Rishi Sunak.
Mr Farage has accused Channel 4 News of using an actor as a “plant” in its undercover investigation into his campaign.
At the event, Mr Farage gave a “100 per cent promise” to rid Reform of “bad apples”, after the party had to suspend multiple candidates during the election.
He said: “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 per cent promise on that.”
He added: “Old Labour was very, very patriotic. It believed in the country. It believed in its people. New Labour far less so.”
Mr Farage also denied he was going to Westminster to “behave terribly”. But he said he would challenge conventions after being elected as an MP for the first time on his eighth attempt.
He said: “We’re not going in to behave terribly or anything like that, but certainly going in to challenge conventions and certainly going in believing that the broad church that is the Conservative Party that currently has no religion, simply won’t be able to provide any sort of challenge at all.
“And we may be fewer in number but we’re absolutely united in what we believe in and what we stand for.”
