One of Nigel Farage’s key aides has suggested the Reform UK leader was involved in “playground arguments or banter” when he allegedly made racist and antisemitic comments while at school.
Danny Kruger, who has been preparing Reform’s possible programme for government since defecting from the Conservatives, also said he was relieved that Farage was facing so much scrutiny about his behaviour as a teenager because it meant he was not being attacked for his present-day politics.
Twenty-eight of Farage’s contemporaries at Dulwich college have told the Guardian they experienced or witnessed racist or antisemitic behaviour when he was a teenager.
They include Peter Ettedgui, 61, who is Jewish, and who said Farage repeatedly told him “Hitler was right” or said “gas them” at him when they were at school. On Friday, Yinka Bankole said a then 17-year-old Farage told him: “That’s the way back to Africa” when he was much younger and new to the school.
Farage and his spokespeople have said that those making the allegations have misremembered as a result of the amount of time that has passed, or that some have targeted him for political reasons. He has consistently denied making any malicious comments.
Asked why Farage had not apologised, as he was urged to do on Sunday by the outgoing head of the government’s equalities watchdog, Kishwer Falkner, Kruger told Times Radio that Farage contested the allegations. “So he can’t acknowledge what he doesn’t believe to be true,” he said.
After being challenged about the fact that 28 people had supported the allegations, Kruger said: “I’m rather relieved, frankly, because I think they should be attacking us for what we’re actually saying now, for the man Nigel Farage is.”
The East Wiltshire MP said Farage had “acknowledged that he probably said things that were inappropriate back in the day, in a time when the whole culture, by the way, was completely different to today”.
Pressed on whether the comments attributed to Farage would have been acceptable even then, Kruger said: “It’s not clear exactly what was said and I don’t think there’s any real value in any of us trying to litigate playground arguments or banter or whatever it was.”
Earlier on Sunday, Falkner, a crossbench peer who has just completed five years as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that even if Farage rejected the allegation that he had been deliberately racist, he could nonetheless apologise to people who said they had been deeply hurt by his actions.
At a press conference on Thursday, Farage reacted angrily to broadcasters asking him about the claims, saying the BBC and ITV were being hypocritical because of shows they broadcast in the 1970s and 1980s that contained racism and homophobia.
Asked by Sky News about Farage’s comments, Falkner said she felt “quite confused and disturbed”.
She said: “You have a situation where, when you read these allegations in terms of what is attributed to him, it looks utterly ghastly on paper. And then you try and contextualise it, and you think, this is perhaps 50 years ago – you know, young people say all sorts of things at school.”
There was, however, she said, an element that she did not understand: “The one thing that sadly confuses me about him, and I hear his contextualisation of it all: why can’t he just offer an unreserved apology for any distress?
“I just don’t get it. It seems to me that that would be the most genuine thing to say, if he is genuinely not a racist.”
Asked at previous press conferences if he would apologise, Farage said he was happy to do so if he had caused any offence. He insisted that while he might have said offensive things it was “never with malice”.
Speaking later on Sunday to Sky, Helen Whately, the Conservative work and pensions spokesperson, said Farage should be open about what happened.
She said: “I think first and foremost that Nigel Farage should be straight with the public on this question. There are some very serious accusations about things that he has said and done about the question of racism. And he needs to give people a straight answer.”
