Nigel Farage Sparks Fresh Race Row By Making Another Bizarre Claim About Labour Leader

Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party speaks at an event in London, Tuesday, May 27, 2025.Nigel Farage has sparked a fresh race row after wrongly claiming Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar once said he wants the South Asian community to “take over the world”.The Reform UK leader has already faced criticism over a “racist” election video which accused Sarwar of wanting to “prioritise” Pakistanis over other people.The online ad, published ahead of a crunch Scottish Parliamentr by-election this week, was made up from footage of several speeches Sarwar had made about the need to improve political representation for South Asian communities.However, at no point in any of them did he say he wanted to “prioritise the Pakistani community”.Sarwar subsequently called Farage a “pathetic poisonous little man” while his spokesperson said it was a “blatantly racist advert”.At a Reform UK press conference in Aberdeen today, the BBC’s James Cook asked Farage to respond to the criticism.The reporter asked: “Will you reassure them [your critics] that you’re not racist by apologising to Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar for claiming that he would prioritise the Pakistani community when you must know that he literally said no such thing?”Farage replied: “We’ve not heard these sort of chants or tweets in England now for a very very long time.”He claimed it was Scottish first minister John Swinney who started using the word “racism” in a “deliberate and provocative way”.He also noted that Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf was born in Scotland to parents from the Indian subcontinent.“We believe everyone should be treated equally, we object very strongly to the segmentation of people into different types, ” Farage said. “To be frank, I think Mr Sarwar has a record of obsessing on this issue.”The Reform leader claimed: “I think the speech he gave was sectarian in its very nature. You know, ‘we are the South Asian community, we are going to take over the world’.”“He didn’t say any such thing!” Cook reminded him. “Well, he did actually, very very clearly,” Farage insisted.“He did not say the South Asian community were going to take over the world, nor did he use the word prioritise,” Cook pushed back. “I hear what you’re saying but why can’t you accept what he literally said and not mischaracterise what he said?”Farage replied: “We believe what he said was a form of sectarian politics and we don’t like it one little bit.”Pressed again for his response to the criticisms from Sarwar and Swinney over the campaign ad, Farage said: “The more they insult me, the more I know we must be doing something right.“I think they’re in a blind state of panic, they’re chucking out all sorts of insults.“For today, I will not return the compliment. We will let the public make their minds up. I’m not going to get involved in a war of words.”Related...Nigel Farage Accused Of 'Fantasy Economics' Over Plan To Cut Public Spending By £400 Billion'This Is Panic': Defence Secretary Forced To Deny Keir Starmer Is Rattled By Nigel FarageNigel Farage On Course For Commons Majority According To Latest Polls

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