Starmer condemns Farage for failing to take action over Sarah Pochin’s ‘racism’
Keir Starmer has also said that the Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin was being “racist” when she said “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg yesterday, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, repeatedly refused to describe Pochin’s comments as racist – although he did do so in an interview later in the day.
Asked if Pochin was being racist in what she said, Starmer told broadcasters:
Yes, she was.
It’s shocking racism and it’s the sort of thing that will tear our country apart, and it tells you everything about Reform.
Nigel Farage has got some questions to answer, because either he doesn’t consider it racist, which in my view is shocking in itself, or he does think it’s racist and he’s shown absolutely no leadership.
I’m the prime minister of the whole of our country, our reasonable, tolerant, diverse country, and I want to serve the whole country.
He can’t even call out racism.
Asked whether she should have the whip removed, he said:
[Farage] needs to take action, it’s not a question of just the whip, this is shocking racism, it has to be dealt with and it should be rooted out of his party.
And the question for Nigel Farage is, why has he shown absolutely no leadership on this?
Key events
Q: You said Nathan Gill, the Reform UK leader in Wales who admitted taking bribes to deliver pro-Russia speeches in the European parliament, was a bad apple. So what is your response to the Observer report saying other Reform UK MEPs were making exactly the same arguments.
Farage said:
I’ve heard of no evidence of any wrongdoing against any other former MP of Ukip or the Brexit party. I’ve heard of no other evidence of any wrongdoing.
Farage said he had known Gill for a long time and was shocked by what he did.
[Gill] used to preach every Sunday morning in … church. I thought he was so incorruptible he wouldn’t even drink coffee. So I’m pretty shocked.
He said this showed how you never really know people.
Q: [From the Daily Express] Do you think Sadiq Khan should have to resign over grooming gangs in London?
Farage says he thinks London could be the last big grooming gangs scandal in the UK.
Farage suggests he would have suspended whip from Pochin if he thought she was intentionally racist
Asked again about Sarah Pochin, Farage says her comments were “ugly, clumsy”.
Taken literally, “you can put the worst of all interpretations on it”, he said.
But, again, he said he did not think she was being intentionally racist.
If I felt the intention was deliberately and genuinely racist, I would have taken a different course of action.
Farage says Pochin’s comment was ‘ugly’, and he’s not happy about it, but he does not think her intention was racist
Q: Do you agree with Keir Starmer that what Sarah Pochin said was racist?
Farage says Pochin’s words were “without doubt ugly”. He goes on:
And, taken on their own, could be read to be very, very unpleasant indeed.
I am unhappy with what she has done. I can’t underestimate that and she fully knows how I feel.
However, it was in the broader context of the DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] madness in the advertising industry.
Farage says “anybody with half a brain” knows that has been happening.
He goes on:
So I understand the basic point …
The way she put it, the way she worded it, it was ugly.
If I thought that the intention behind it was racist, I would have taken a lot more action.
Q: Isn’t this rowing back on what you originally wanted, a national inquiry?
Farage says he originally wanted a national inquiry. But nothing is happening.
So this would be the quickest way to get results.
Farage says grooming gangs inquiry should be carried out quickly by parliamentary committee or commission
Farage says some survivors want Jess Phillips sacked.
He accepts that five other survivors have said they will only stay on the oversight panel if Phillips stays.
But those five are victims of another kind of child sexual abuse, he says.
He says the inquiry should just focus on grooming gangs.
He claims Labour just want the process to go on for ever.
He is proposing a different solution he says.
He thinks parliament should have the chance to show it is a just, fair institution.
In 2009, Fred Goodwin was ordered to appear before the banking commission – a committee set up by parliament.
Select committees can summon anyone, he says.
Parliament can sanction people if they do not appear. And it can require people to give evidence on oath. If people lie on oath, they can be prosecuted for perjury.
He says parliament should launch its own inquiry. He says he is meeting the Speaker this evening, and he will put this point to her. And he will write to Karen Bradley, the home affairs committee chair, urging her to set up a sub-committee to carry out an inquiry.
Peers should be involved too, he says, through a commission format.
He says this could happen quickly. The inquiry could be carried out in a couple of months.
And it would mean the inquiry taking place in parliament.
Ellie-Ann Reynolds is speaking now.
She says, when Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, said claims that the Home Office was considering extending the inquiry were false, she was accusing people like her of being liars. She says victims were used to be dismissed as liars.
She says the inquiry is corrupt.
Farage says grooming gangs scandal driven by racism, and establishment has responded with ‘cowardice and neglect’
Nigel Farage is speaking now.
He says the sexual abuse of minors is not new. It has been going on for many, many years. And it normally involves perpetrators close to the victims.
But he says the grooming gangs scandal is different; it involves strangers. And it has been going on for many years. And there was a racial element to it, he says.
The difference in what we call the grooming gang scandal is that it is the mass, industrial-scale sexual assault and rape by anonymous, unknown persons.
And it’s been going on across this country on a scale that is simply unimaginable. It has been going on for many, many decades, has been going on for too long, and there is a huge racial and ethnic dimension to it.
A very large part of these crimes can be attributed to racism, and it’s absolutely worst possible form.
And yet this has been met by the collective establishment – and by that I mean social services, police, councillors, members of parliament, governments – by abject cowardice and willful and deliberate neglect.
Farage says he first became aware of this when he visited Rotherham in 2013. At first he could not believe the scale off what he was being told.
He says that Kemi Badenoch, whatever she says now, did not raise this as an issue when she was a minister.
And he claims that Labour do not care.
He says he is going to offer a solution. But first he invites Ellie-Ann Reynolds, a survivor, to speak.
Farage holds press conference
Nigel Farage is about to hold a press conference. There is a live feed here.
He wants to talk about the grooming gangs inquiry, and he will be joined by Ellie-Ann Reynolds, one of the grooming gang survivors who have resigned from the inquiry’s oversight panel because of how the Home Office has handled it.
But Farage always tends to take a lot of questions at his press conferences, and so other topics are bound to come up – including Sarah Pochin. (See 1.56pm.)
Starmer condemns Farage for failing to take action over Sarah Pochin’s ‘racism’
Keir Starmer has also said that the Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin was being “racist” when she said “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg yesterday, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, repeatedly refused to describe Pochin’s comments as racist – although he did do so in an interview later in the day.
Asked if Pochin was being racist in what she said, Starmer told broadcasters:
Yes, she was.
It’s shocking racism and it’s the sort of thing that will tear our country apart, and it tells you everything about Reform.
Nigel Farage has got some questions to answer, because either he doesn’t consider it racist, which in my view is shocking in itself, or he does think it’s racist and he’s shown absolutely no leadership.
I’m the prime minister of the whole of our country, our reasonable, tolerant, diverse country, and I want to serve the whole country.
He can’t even call out racism.
Asked whether she should have the whip removed, he said:
[Farage] needs to take action, it’s not a question of just the whip, this is shocking racism, it has to be dealt with and it should be rooted out of his party.
And the question for Nigel Farage is, why has he shown absolutely no leadership on this?
Starmer says he’s ‘frustrated and angry’ by asylum hotel ‘mess’ left by Tories
Keir Starmer has said that he feels “frustrated and angry” at the problems left by the Conservative government in terms of asylum seekers staying in hotels.
Asked about the problems hightlighted by today’s home affairs committee report (see 11.30am), he told Sky News in Turkey:
We inherited a huge mess in relation to pretty well all departments in government, and that includes the Home Office.
If you take the issue of asylum hotels for example, we had years under the previous government where they didn’t process claims, so tens of thousands of people didn’t have their claims processed. They were then housed in hotels – that was the policy of the last government.
We’re processing the claims much more quickly. And where people have got no right to be in our country, we’re removing them at a higher rate than the best part of a decade.
So we’re taking the action, but I can’t tell you how frustrated and angry I am that we’ve been left with a mess as big as this by the last government.
Two Reform UK councillors in Kent expelled from party after suspension
Two suspended Reform UK councillors have now been expelled from the party via email, PA Media reports. PA says:
Kent county councillors Bill Barrett and Robert Ford have been kicked out by email from Reform HQ which said they had “undermined” the interests of the party and brought it into “disrepute”.
Their removal comes after a leaked video of a Reform meeting saw council leader Linden Kemkaran telling members to “fucking suck it up” when they disagreed on big decisions.
With a budget of more than £2.5bn, Kemkaran also called the council a “shop window” for what Reform could do if it ran the country.
Barrett, representing Ashford, had been critical of the council hierarchy and was one of four councillors suspended following the leaked video.
Ford, for Maidstone Rural West, was suspended after allegations of misconduct from an “unofficial complaint” from several female members of Kent county council (KCC) staff.
A Reform spokesperson said: “Councillors Barrett and Ford have been expelled as their conduct undermined the interests of the party and brought Reform UK into disrepute.”
There have also been allegations of bullying from both members, which Reform has denied.
It said: “The party takes claims of bullying seriously.
“If there was any credible evidence of this we would not have hesitated to take action.”
Opposition KCC leader, Liberal Democrat Antony Hook, said that Reform were offering “chaos” and “secrecy” to the public in Kent.
He said: “Reform’s chaos at KCC continues, we know that Ford has been suspended after reported complaints by female staff, which is very serious.
At the No 10 lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson also said there were “no plans” to follow the Green party’s advice (see 10.15am) and break up the Home Office. “What we’re focused on is building on the improvements we’ve already made by rewiring the department so it secures our borders, makes our streets safer and to protect our national security,” the spokesperson said.
No 10 says accidental release of Epping sex offender another sign of ‘justice system crisis inherited by this government’
Downing Street has described the accidental release of the Epping sex offender, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, as evidence that the last government left the prison system in crisis.
At the No 10 lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:
Prison release errors are never acceptable, and this is another symptom of the justice system crisis inherited by this government, having suffered cuts to staffing, the failure to build prison places and chronic underinvestment, meaning more errors like this happened.
Mistakes are always more likely to happen when you’re in prison crisis that demands early releases.
But that’s why we’re fixing the system, building 14,000 more prison places and overhauling sentences so we never again have a system that demands emergency releases.
The spokesperson said there were 800 mistaken prison releases under the last government. That was “symptomatic of a justice system creaking at the seams”, he said.
He said David Lammy, the justice secretary, would be setting out in his Commons statement later today what methods are being put in place to deal with this.
When it was put to him that there 262 prisoners were released in error in the year to March 2025, a 128% increase on 115 in the previous 12 months, the spokesperson said those figures were evidence of “the scale of the justice system crisis that this government has been confronted with”.
The spokesperson also said Kebatu, who is Ethiopian, would be deported “imminently”.
Labour challenges Farage to withdraw whip from Sarah Pochin over ‘racist’ comment about black and Asian people in TV ads
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is holding a press conference at 2pm. In an open letter to him released this morning, Anna Turley, the Labour chair, has challenged him to remove the whip from the Reform MP Sarah Pochin after she said “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.
In her letter, Turley said:
At the time of writing you have made no public comment about Sarah Pochin’s remarks, which is uncharacteristically reticent of you. I am writing to you to urgently clarity Reform’s official position:
-Do you endorse Sarah Pochin’s comments? And can you confirm if her views on race are welcome in Reform UK?
-Will you withdraw the Reform UK whip from Sarah Pochin?
Sarah Pochin’s comments were a disgrace. And your silence is deafening.
Saying that seeing black and Asian people in TV adverts “drives me mad” is racist. You have the power to withdraw the Reform UK whip from Sarah Pochin. You should do it today.
In his First Edition briefing today, Archie Bland cites Pochin’s comment as just one of many examples of how racist language that once would have been restricted to extremists like the BNP is becoming increasingly normalised.
Labour MPs have been invited to “drop-in sessions” with Keir Starmer’s parliamentary private secretaries to raise any concerns they have, Kevin Schofield from Huffpost UK reports.
Keir Starmer’s 3 parliamentary aides, Abena Oppong-Asare, Catherine Fookes, and Jon Pearce, are to hold twice weekly “drop-in sessions” in the PM’s Commons office for MPs to raise any concerns they may have. News was relayed to Labour MPs in a message this morning.
Starmer needs to improve relations with Labour MPs. Following the collapse in Labour support in the Caerphilly byelection last week, there is increasing chatter about the prospect of a leadership challenge at some point. Even though it is technically much harder for MPs to remove a Labour leader than a Tory leader, Kitty Donaldson and Eleanor Langford in the i say that some Labour MPs are “discussing whether to trigger a leadership challenge against Sir Keir Starmer in a matter of weeks, citing growing concern over the party’s direction and its handling of the economy”. They say:
A senior Labour source told The i Paper there was “a cohort in the Parliamentary Labour party (PLP) who think moving against Keir [Starmer] after the budget is feasible rather than waiting until after May” to stem the losses to the party’s election machine in the local elections.
