The UK’s largest teaching union has called Reform UK “far-right and racist” and its leader has dismissed Nigel Farage as “a poundshop Donald Trump,” as the union pledged funds to oppose the party’s candidates in elections.
Delegates to the National Education Union’s annual conference backed a motion stating that “far-right and racist organisations, including Reform, seek to build on the despair, poverty and alienation in our society by scapegoating refugees, asylum seekers, Muslims, Jews and others who do not fit their beliefs”.
The motion also committed the NEU to use its political fund for campaigns against Reform election candidates and to support the union’s branches in local activity.
Speakers in favour of the motion argued that some Reform UK candidates and activists “have been former members of fascist organisations or espoused their views” as justification.
Kathryn Norouzi, an NEU delegate from Nottingham, said: “That’s why we must call this party out for what it is, a racist party, and we must campaign against them. [Their policies] are designed to incite fear and division.
“As a union we must have the courage and clarity to oppose them. And we must be willing to use our political fund, the very fund created specifically to persuade people not to vote for political parties and their candidates who promote racist, fascist or similar views, to do just that.”
But Simon Clarkson, from Leicester, warned the conference that Farage would be “delighted” by the motion as it would “give him more weapons to use against us”.
Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, told journalists: “I’m sure Reform claim that they are not a racist organisation. However, they seem to be attracting an awful lot of former BNP activists, which would make me question that.
“But fundamentally I have great concerns about what a Reform government would do to education.”
Asked about the NEU motion at a campaign event in Durham, Farage described Kebede as “a self-declared Marxist … someone who is absolutely determined that our children should be poisoned at school, their minds should be poisoned about everything to do with this country”.
Farage said Kebede was “encouraging … indoctrination of teenagers in our schools by telling kids that Reform is a racist party”. He added: “If we win the 2029 general election, we will go to war with the National Education Union and the other leftwing teaching unions.”
Kebede said Farage’s comments were “lifted directly from the Donald Trump playbook”.
“Both Elon Musk and Donald Trump have been directly attacking the AFT and the NEA, the American teachers’ unions,” he said. “And this is what Nigel Farage is: he’s a poundshop Donald Trump.”
Asked if he thought Farage was racist, Kebede said: “I think Nigel Farage is a rightwing populist.”
Farage, speaking at his biggest set-piece event yet during the local election campaign, openly targeted Labour in a speech heavy on Trump-like rhetoric but light on policy detail.
“Reform are parking their tanks on the lawns of the red wall,” Farage told the party’s supporters in Newton Aycliffe. “Today is the first day I’ve said that, but I absolutely mean it, and we’re here, and we’re here to stay. If you are considering voting Conservative in these areas, you are wasting your vote.”
In another echo of Trump, Farage littered his speech with culture war references, including a condemnation of recruitment policies that he said disadvantaged white people.
“We see recruitment policies in police forces, recruitment policies in the NHS, designed to put ethnic minorities to the top of the list against white people with more history in this country,” Farage said, calling the situation “a disgrace”.
He added: “We do not believe in DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and that madness in any way at all, but it’s all part of the north London human rights lawyers being completely out of touch with ordinary folk.”
Ignoring polls suggesting Trump was increasingly unpopular with UK voters, Farage made explicit references to the US president’s agenda, promising a “British equivalent of Doge” – Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency – in any councils won by Reform on 1 May.
In the speech and in a lengthy Q&A with reporters, Farage was vague about any specific policies, including how he would finance a repeal of the national insurance increase as well as changes to farm inheritance tax and the means-testing of winter fuel payments, all while raising the income tax threshold from £12,500 a year to £20,000.
Farage simply indicated that “the reindustrialisation of Britain” would “within a couple of years produce tens of thousands of well paid, in fact in many cases highly paid, jobs” that would boost growth. Extra money would also come from abolishing regulators and quangos “who do so much to stifle business”, he said.
Having backed the nationalisation of British Steel, Farage said a Reform government would aim to forge “a good partnership with the unions” – with the exception of teaching unions.
At the NEU’s annual conference in Harrogate it also voted to hold a formal ballot authorising strike action if the government failed to increase its 2.8% pay offer to teachers in England next year, and failed to fully compensate school budgets.
Asked if he was interested in coordinated public industrial strike action, Kebede said: “We have conversations with other unions all the time, not just in education but also health, where there were great concerns around 2.8% pay awards being made.”
After the motion was carried, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said: “With school staff, parents and young people working so hard to turn the tide on school attendance, any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible.
“Following a 5.5% pay award in hugely challenging fiscal context, I would urge the NEU to put children first.”
