"Your hissing snake oil Putinist fifth column politics will be rejected."
A Labour MP in Glasgow has slapped down Nigel Farage, saying the city will reject his “hissing snake oil” politics.
Farage posted a video on X last week where he criticised the fact that nearly one in three schoolchildren “only” speak English as their second language.
The Reform leader described it as the “cultural smashing of Glasgow” and said that “it’s turning it into a completely different city in every way”.
Farage continued: “My question is, who voted for this? Who told anybody in Scotland that this was actually happening? Who stood up and fought back?”.
Labour MP for Glasgow South Zubir Ahmed called out Farage’s remarks in a post on X yesterday.
Ahmed wrote: “I was one of those kids. I’ve gone on to serve my country as a transplant surgeon, MP and minister.”
“Glasgow has plenty of challenges, but your hissing snake oil Putinist fifth column politics will be rejected.”
Another Scottish Labour MP, Torcuil Crichton, said: “Like, who wouldn’t want their kids to have two languages?”.
The 2024 Scottish Pupil Census shows that the majority of Glasgow schoolchildren, 50,184, marked English as their first language.
Of the 20,717 pupils who did not have English as a first language, about 11,300 of them have strong or fluent English. Just 3,299 said they were “new to English” while 6,100 said they were at an “early acquisition” stage.
After Farage first made the comments last week, Keir Starmer said he was a “toxic divisive disgrace”. He also told the BBC that Farage was “only interested in the politics of grievance” and “pulling communities and societies apart”.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “How dare [Farage] use Glasgow’s kids to spread his poison.”
First minister John Swinney said: “I think Nigel Farage’s comments are quite simply racist. There’s no other way to describe them.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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