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The UK’s top law officer, one of the most senior Jewish government ministers, has urged Nigel Farage to apologise to school contemporaries who claim the Reform UK leader racially abused them while at school.
The attorney general, Richard Hermer, said Farage had “clearly deeply hurt” many people with their descriptions of his behaviour, and that his “constantly changing” denials had been unconvincing.
Speaking to the Guardian, Hermer said: “Throughout his defensive responses to legitimate questions put to him, not once has Farage actually condemned antisemitism.”
A Guardian investigation last month reported the testimony of more than a dozen former classmates of Farage at Dulwich College, in south London.
They included Peter Ettedgui, who said a 13-year-old Farage “would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘gas them’, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers”.
Another minority ethnic pupil claimed that when he was about nine years old he was similarly targeted by a 17-year-old Farage.
“He walked up to a pupil flanked by two similarly tall mates and spoke to anyone looking ‘different’,” the pupil said. “That included me on three occasions; asking me where I was from, and pointing away, saying: ‘That’s the way back,’ to wherever you replied you were from.”
More people have come forward since the Guardian published its initial story; about 20 individuals have now alleged that they were either victims of or witnesses to deeply offensive past behaviour by Farage.
The incidents they described cover the period when Farage was aged 13 to 18.
The Reform leader has denied anything he did was ‘directly’ racist or antisemitic, and claimed all the former classmates were not telling the truth. Hermer’s intervention comes after Keir Starmer accused the Reform UK leader of being “spineless”, arguing that he had “questions to answer” about alleged comments and chants as a teenager that included songs about the Holocaust, and accusations of bullying towards minority ethnic schoolboys.
Critics have noted Farage has failed to condemn antisemitism and other forms of racism more broadly in his denials.
They also point to his failure to discipline his fellow Reform MP Sarah Pochin after she complained about the number of black and brown people she saw in adverts.
She later apologised for the comments.
After the reports on the Reform UK leader’s school days, Hermer told the Guardian that he considered … “Nigel Farage’s constantly changing story about his behaviour to his Jewish classmates [to be] unconvincing, to say the least”.
He added: “Arguing that 20 people have somehow all misremembered the same things about his nasty behaviour simply isn’t credible. Throughout his defensive responses to legitimate questions put to him, not once has Farage actually condemned antisemitism.
“If he wants to be seen as a legitimate candidate for prime minister, he urgently needs to address the concerns of the Jewish community, and apologise to the many people he has clearly deeply hurt by his behaviour.
“Racism in all its forms is anathema to the values of this country and we cannot allow it to ever become legitimised in public life.”
In the days after the antisemitic attack in Manchester in October, Lord Hermer had spoken about the fears of the British Jewish community at his own local synagogue, saying that all they wanted was to live and worship freely, without fear.
In a separate interview with the Guardian, Rachel Reeves said Farage should “speak out and say something” if he wanted to look like a real leader.
“It speaks volumes how little he has to say, and the very careful language that both you and I would recognise as being drafted in a particular way to say something, but also not to say something,” the chancellor said.
“He just sits there during PMQs, where people put these things to him, and he hides. He says that he’s a real leader of the opposition. Well, a real leader would speak out and say something. He should explain what he really thinks.”
In legal letters before publication of the Guardian’s investigation, Farage’s lawyers claimed that “the suggestion that Mr Farage ever engaged in, condoned, or led racist or antisemitic behaviour is categorically denied”.
Farage later seemingly shifted his position in an interview with the BBC: “Have I said things 50 years ago that you could interpret as being banter in a playground, you could interpret in a modern light today in some sort of way? Yes.”
He added that he had “never directly, really tried to go and hurt anybody”. Farage subsequently issued a new statement: “I can tell you categorically that I did not say the things that have been published in the Guardian aged 13, nearly 50 years ago.”
