It's not the first time Banks has made racist comments online
Former Reform party candidate Arron Banks has been called out after questioning whether a young black community organiser could be Welsh.
As reported by Nation Cymru, the Plaid Cymru campaign video shows the organiser, Bashir, urging people to vote for Plaid Cymru to stop Reform.
Banks shared the video with the caption, “Welsh lad?”.
Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s leader in Westminster, responded to Banks, saying: “Reform donor and 2025 candidate for the West of England mayoral election thinks black people can’t be Welsh.
“Racism is rife within Reform. We must stop them from being the largest party in the Senedd.”
Banks did not donate to Reform, but bankrolled the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave EU, and also donated to Nigel Farage’s old party UKIP.
A political source who contacted Nation Cymru said: “What Banks has stated is a hate crime. Plaid should really be reporting it to the police.”
It’s not the first time that Banks has been accused of making racist comments online.
Last year, during the West of England mayoral campaign, Banks stood by a tweet he posted in 2017, in which he called Bristol “little Somalia”.
Asked about the tweet by BristolLive, he said: “It’s not to say all Somalians are bad people, but in the same way that Romanians are at the forefront of criminal activities in most cities, certainly Somalians in Bristol are at the forefront of crime in Bristol.”
Banks also claimed that Home Office statistics showed that the Somalian community was 10 times more likely to commit serious crime than other communities.
However, the Home Office confirmed that crime conviction statistics did not record the nationality of those convicted.
In another post from January 2025, Banks referred to Tory MPs James Cleverly and Ben Obese-Jecty as “diversity hires”.
He wrote: “I am wondering why every British Army diversity hire ends up as a Tory MP. “Not so” Cleverly MP & now this bloke.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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