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Nigel Farage has called allegations of racist and antisemitic bullying during his time at Dulwich college “completely made up fantasy”, saying his accusers are “people with very obvious political motivation”.
More than 30 people have spoken to the Guardian as part of an investigation based on multiple accounts of racism, including Peter Ettedgui, 61, an Emmy- and Bafta-winning director, who recalled Farage growling repeatedly “Hitler was right” or “Gas them” at him when they were at school.
Farage has previously denied “directly” targeting anyone with racist or antisemitic abuse or having the “intent” to hurt anyone, and has not publicly recognised the events described.
But when asked at a Reform press conference in central London on Wednesday why he had not apologised to his accusers, he said: “I don’t apologise for things that are complete, made up fantasies.”
Amid loud booing among Reform party members directed at the ITV journalist who asked the question, Farage added: “Some of what is out there is just absolute nonsense made by people with very obvious, if you look, political motivation.” He said others could focus on “stuff that happened in the 1970s” but that Reform was looking ahead to the May local elections.
Farage has been told to apologise in a letter signed by 26 of his school contemporaries. Last month, an ex-Dulwich teacher spoke out about the racism claims, saying: “Of course he abused pupils.”
Farage was speaking at an event in London Bridge, which was used to announce Reform UK’s Laila Cunningham, a Muslim and former CPS prosecutor, as the party’s candidate for London mayor when the capital goes to the polls in 2028.
During the press conference, Farage said remarks by another Reform mayoral candidate, Chris Parry – who suggested London-born David Lammy should “go home” to the Caribbean – were “over the top”, when questioned about the issue for the first time.
The Reform leader was asked whether Parry was a good representative of the party in light of his views. In a historical tweet, which came to light at the end of last year, Parry, Reform’s candidate for the Hampshire and the Solent mayoralty, suggested the deputy prime minister’s “loyalty lies” in the Caribbean.
Farage said Parry had also criticised “many white politicians, called them unpatriotic and suggested they went to live in other countries”, but said that “some of his comments are a bit rich”.
“I get that. He is intensely patriotic. He’s risen to the rank of rear admiral, he’s given enormous service to this country,” he said. “But I do think his comments on Lammy were over the top, and he should apologise for them.”
Cunningham, asked if she thought London was too diverse, said the problem in the capital was “not about diversity”, adding that her parents had come from Egypt in the 1960s and had had to integrate.
“But what you find in certain parts of London is that immigration is too much, and when it’s too many, they dominate,” she said. “And you do have certain parts of London where people who have been in that area, grew up there, do not feel it’s their part any more. It doesn’t feel like London, and that is a problem.”
