Keir Starmer’s new No 10 enforcer has compared Nigel Farage to the influencer Andrew Tate, saying he is a “snake oil salesman” who is taking working-class boys down a dark path.
Darren Jones, the No 10 chief secretary to the prime minister, said Labour was going to take a more “muscular approach to attacking Reform” and it would be “more proactive than just responding to the crazy things they’re saying”.
The senior cabinet minister said he was infuriated by Reform’s message to young boys of “hate, division and othering”.
“I’m pretty middle-class now but I was a white working-class boy and we are going to be putting in measures … to give those types of kids the best chance in life,” he said at a Labour Together fringe event, in conversation with Sky’s Beth Rigby.
“What are Reform offering? They have no offer to them apart than hate, division, othering and wanting to tear the system down. We don’t want people growing up led by Reform thinking they should be hating Britain.
“Nigel Farage hates the BBC, he hates the NHS, he hates the government, he wants to tear everything down. That is not a positive vision for the future that young people can feel excited and aspirational about.”
When pressed on Farage’s big following with young people, especially young men, Jones said: “So does Andrew Tate but that doesn’t mean it’s OK. I’d put them in similar categories, quite frankly. They are snake oil salesmen that are misleading people and taking them down a dark path for them and for our country. We have to bring the light into that debate …. that’s the battle we will step up into.”
Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist influencer, has been accused of sexual violence in a civil case in London by four women. Tate’s barristers have told an earlier court hearing there was “total denial of wrongdoing”.
It emerged on Monday that he will face no criminal charges over allegations made by the four women, who are suing him in a civil case at the high court in London.
Many politicians and teachers have spoken out against Tate’s influence on young boys in the UK, after he said women belonged in the home and were a man’s property. “There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist,” Tate said in one video.
In the past, Farage has said he does not agree with Tate, but he has praised him for being an “important voice” for the “emasculated” and giving boys “perhaps a bit of confidence at school” .
The Reform UK leader spoke in favour of Tate for defending “male culture” in a Strike It Big podcast that aired in February last year, while acknowledging that the influencer had gone “over the top” and elsewhere that he had said some “pretty horrible” things.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, used the similar language of calling Farage the “snake oil salesman of British politics” in his speech to the conference floor in Liverpool – suggesting it is an orchestrated political criticism of the Reform UK leader.
“We must win another fight too, one against the poison of post-truth politics,” he said. “At Reform’s conference, a discredited doctor claimed that the Covid vaccine gave our royal family cancer. This man wasn’t just some fringe figure – he’s Reform’s health adviser.
“And these anti-vax lies have consequences: they’ve led to the return of diseases we thought we defeated – measles, whooping cough, children dying from preventable illness in this the 21st century.
“When Farage was asked whether he’d side with medical scientists, he said, ‘I wouldn’t side with anybody’ – anti-science, anti-reason, anti-health … Nigel Farage is a snake-oil salesman of British politics, and it’s time to stop buying what he’s selling.”
Starmer has been increasing his criticism of Farage in recent days, calling Reform’s policy of axing the right of migrants to apply for indefinite leave to remain “racist”.
Farage has hit back, saying Starmer is not fit to be prime minister and claiming that by calling Reform’s policy racist he is insulting voters with concerns about immigration.
