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Reform UK’s deputy leader has described a celebrated film director and a large and growing group of corroborating witnesses as liars over their allegations of Nigel Farage’s teenage antisemitism and racism.
With the bigotry row continuing to dog Reform, whose lead in the national polls has slipped in recent weeks, Richard Tice turned on those who claimed to have been abused and those who say they saw it.
In an outspoken intervention, Tice described the testimony of about two dozen people who have spoken to the Guardian about Farage’s racism at Dulwich College as “made-up twaddle”.
Among those who have made allegations are Peter Ettedgui, a Bafta- and Emmy-winning director, who is Jewish, and who has said that a teenage Farage would sidle up to him and say “Hitler was right” and “gas them”, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas chambers.
The Guardian has spoken to eight school contemporaries who have corroborated Ettedgui’s account. They count among about two dozen witnesses who recounted Farage’s racist and antisemitic remarks while between the ages of 13 and 18.
In the wake of the Guardian’s investigation, Farage has admitted he may have said things in “banter” at school that could be viewed differently today but denied saying anything racist or antisemitic “directly” at an individual.
Asked by Emma Barnett on the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme whether he thought that saying “Hitler was right” to a Jewish person was direct racial abuse, Tice said: “Yes I do … I can’t believe anybody would have said that”, calling it “made-up twaddle from people who don’t want Nigel to be prime minister of the country”.
Asked directly whether he believed Ettedgui was lying, Tice said: “Yes.”
“I think this is made-up twaddle by a whole bunch of people,” he added. “These people have a political axe to grind and do you know what, every week, the voters are going out in byelections and they are voting for Reform, because they’re not buying into this leftwing anti-Nigel narrative.”
Tice said the BBC had been “told last week” about Farage’s explanation and questioned why the interviewer was “raising it again when we’re talking about county council elections”.
He added that it was “funny” how Farage’s classmates “didn’t remember this three years ago, six years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago”.
When it was pointed out that Ettedgui had shared some of his recollection of Farage’s remarks to Michael Crick in 2013, he doubled down and claimed it was “made-up nonsense by someone who has got a politically biased motive”.
He insisted that “no one has stood up against antisemitism more than Nigel and I” and cited their opposition to pro-Palestinian protests in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
More people have come forward since the Guardian published its initial story.
YouGov had Reform leading the polls on 29% in mid-September but they have slipped in a survey published on 1 December to 25%.
In legal letters before publication of the Guardian’s investigation two weeks ago, Farage’s lawyers claimed that “the suggestion that Mr Farage ever engaged in, condoned, or led racist or antisemitic behaviour is categorically denied”.
Last week Farage seemingly shifted his position in an interview with the BBC, saying: “It’s 49 years ago. It’s 49 years ago. I had just entered my teens. Can I remember everything that happened at school? No, I can’t. Have I ever been part of an extremist organisation or engaged in direct, unpleasant, personal abuse, genuine abuse, on that basis? No.”
He said he had “never directly, really tried to go and hurt anybody”.
Farage subsequently issued a new statement saying: “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.”
Ettedgui wrote in the Guardian that Farage’s denials were an example of “more dishonesty”. “As the victim of his verbal abuse, I can assure you that I do recall it all vividly,” he said. “The cruelty of Farage’s words transcended typical schoolkid banter even back then in the 1970s.”
Responding to Tice’s comments, the Labour party chair, Anna Turley, said that “instead of repeatedly changing their story”, Farage and Tice should “urgently apologise”.
“It took serious courage for the victims of Nigel Farage’s alleged racism to come forward and tell their story. It’s utterly deplorable that Richard Tice has dismissed this and suggested they are lying, despite Farage himself refusing to offer a categorical denial and saying he couldn’t remember everything that happened at school.”
