From Farage agreeing migrants have "colonised" the UK, to Matt Goodwin's calls for "biological reality" checks for women and girls, Reform has hit new lows
From Nigel Farage agreeing with the owner of Man United that migrants have “colonised” the UK, to Reform by-election candidate Matt Goodwin saying that young girls and women should be given a “biological reality” check about their fertility, Reform is drifting further and further to the right, as it attempts to erode the rights of migrants, women, and any minority it can pick on. Despite this, there was also proof that protests work this week, as Jewish activists derailed the launch of Reform’s Jewish Alliance.
Nigel Farage agrees migrants are “colonising” the UK
Once again, the Reform UK leader is on the wrong side of the argument. When billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, owner of INEOS and part-owner of Manchester United, claimed that immigrants had “colonised” the UK, it was no surprise that Nigel Farage agreed. On X yesterday, he wrote: “Ratcliffe is right”, and even penned an op-ed for The Telegraph, saying he “immediately recognised what Ratcliffe was talking about.” In a Sky News interview, Farage defended Ratcliffe’s use of “colonised”, saying was “probably” correct word to use in terms of its dictionary definition.
Unsurprisingly, in the Sky News interview where Ratcliffe originally made his comments about migrants “colonising” the UK, he admitted he had recently met with Reform.
Farage makes incorrect claim about how many people “don’t speak any English”
In connection with Ratcliffe’s comments, Farage made an incorrect claim that “one million people living in this country don’t speak any English”. In another interview with Nick Robinson, he said “four million people living in this country barely speak passable English”. BBC Verify fact-checked Farage’s assertion and found it was incorrect.
According to the 2021 census, 161,000 people in England and Wales “could not speak English at all” – about 0.3% of the population, while 880,000 people (1.5% of the population) “could not speak English well”. That means only 161,000 people could not speak English at all, not one million. Farage’s four million figure is also wrong. In the last census, four million people did not speak English as their main language but spoke it either “well” or “very well”. That’s not the same as “barely speak[ing] passable English”.
Matt Goodwin said young girls should be taught about their biological clock
Reform’s Gorton and Denton by-election candidate has said UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds were not always British. He has also suggested making women who don’t have children pay more tax as a punishment, a proposal which sounds like something straight out of the Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s novel which is set in a society where women are forced to bear children to address a fertility crisis. Now, it has emerged that he also believes that young girls and women should be given a “biological reality” check, as women “are having children much too late in life”.
Reform threatened to defund a University
Reform UK politicians threatened to strip Bangor University of its £30 million a year in public funding after its Debating and Political Society refused to allow Reform MPs to hold a Q&A with students. Reform MP Sarah Pochin and Gen Z Reform campaigner Jack Anderton requested to speak at the university’s debating society.
When students said no, because the society has “zero tolerance for any form of racism, transphobia or homophobia displayed by the members of Reform UK”, Farage’s party said they would defund the University. Reform’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, responded to the society’s decision, saying: “I am sure they [the University] won’t mind losing every penny of that state funding under a Reform government. After all, they wouldn’t want a racist’s money would they?”.
Reform’s threat mirrors what Donald Trump is doing in the US. Trump has cut, frozen, or threatened to withhold billions of dollars in funding from U.S. universities to “stamp out” “woke” and “radical left” ideologies on American campuses.
Farage got heckled while launching Reform’s ‘Jewish Alliance’
Farage launched Reform UK’s Jewish Alliance group on Tuesday afternoon, but his speech was quickly disrupted by Jewish activists. One man shouted: “The Torah says to love the stranger for we were once strangers in Egypt.”
Another said: “My ancestors fled pogroms, you incite them on refugees.”
A woman shouted: “My grandmother fled Germany, you would deport her!”.
The launch of Reform’s Jewish group comes after allegations resurfaced that Farage racially abused former classmates at Dulwich College and told Jewish pupils that “Hitler was right”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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