Racism allegations could derail right-wing populist Nigel Farage’s bid to become Britain’s next PM

London
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Andrew Field recalls how his school in south London used to hand out a little blue book listing all the students enrolled that year. He says one boy used to go through the book to count how many children had the common English surname Smith, and how many had the Indian surname Patel.

“When there were more Patels than Smiths… he made a public ceremony of burning that school roll in protest,” Field told CNN.

That former student — remembered by Field as a “pompous, isolated loner” who enjoyed “strutting about” in school uniform — grew up to become arguably the most influential politician in Britain this century: right-wing populist Nigel Farage. After leaving a career trading commodities in London’s financial district, Farage became a long-serving Member of the European Parliament before campaigning successfully for Britain’s exit from the European Union. But today’s 61-year-old Farage, now leader of the anti-immigrant Reform UK party, has set his sights on something bigger: If an election were held tomorrow, most polls suggest that he would stand a good chance of becoming the country’s next prime minister.

Field is among some 20 of Farage’s contemporaries at the elite Dulwich College who have recently and publicly accused him of deeply offensive, racist and antisemitic behavior throughout his teenage years in the 1970s and 1980s. Farage has denied the allegations, first reported on the record and at this scale by the Guardian newspaper last month.

But as more former students make fresh accusations, the scandal is threatening to stick to the typically Teflon-coated Farage. Analysts say the allegations pose the biggest challenge yet to Reform’s bid to convince Britain that it is not just a protest-vote party, but one responsible enough to govern a multi-ethnic nation of around 70 million people.

Field, a doctor with Britain’s National Health Service, is not convinced. Farage’s “burning the scroll” ritual is one of several alleged racist instances he recalls. He said he often saw Farage giving Nazi salutes and goose-stepping, adding, “those were really common sights.” A nine-year-old boy – the only Black child in his year – was “recurrently picked on” by the much older Farage, Field claimed, “who would go to him and say, ‘Africa is that way. Why don’t you f**k off there?’”

One incident sticks in Field’s mind. When he was made a prefect – a senior student trusted to enforce school rules and act as a role model to others – he said that Farage, already a prefect, took it on himself to show Field how to make use of his new powers.

“He guided me to lower school, where the younger children played, and he put an Indian child in detention completely at random. There was no reason whatsoever for him doing that,” Field said. “I was deeply shocked by that.”

Unlike Field, who was two years younger than Farage, Peter Ettedgui, now an award-winning film director, was in the same class as him from the ages of 13 to 14. He said they sat in alphabetical order, meaning the future politician was never far away.

“As soon as he found out I was Jewish – that was it,” Ettedgui told CNN. “He would say, ‘Hitler was right,’ in a sneering, contemptuous way. In other words, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’” Farage would also say “gas them,” Ettedgui said, sometimes adding a long hiss to emulate the sound of a gas chamber.

Farage has previously denied the allegations from Field, Ettedgui, and others first reported in the Guardian. In a statement to CNN, Farage said: “I can categorically say that the stories being told about me from 50 years ago are not true.” Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, told the BBC on Thursday that the allegations are “made-up twaddle” and accused Ettedgui of lying, without providing evidence.

Claims of this kind were first made about Farage more than a decade ago. In 2013, the journalist Michael Crick reportedly uncovered a letter from an English teacher at Dulwich College, where annual fees today can reach around $85,000, opposing a decision in 1981 to make the 17-year-old Farage a prefect, on the grounds of his “publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views.”

At the time, Farage admitted saying “some ridiculous things… not necessarily racist things – it depends how you define it.” In response to the latest allegations, the usually forthright and forceful Farage was at first uncharacteristically evasive, offering a cocktail of heavily caveated denials.

“Have I ever tried to take it out on any individual on the basis of where they’re from? No,” Farage said last month in a broadcast interview in response to the new claims. Asked what his comments meant, he told ITV he had never abused anyone “with intent,” nor “directly really tried to go and hurt anybody.” He said the claims related to a period “49 years ago,” when he had “just entered” his teens. In the later statement, Farage categorically denied the allegations against him.

If some thought Farage was being evasive, many of his contemporaries say he is simply lying. Field said Farage’s racism was at its “most florid” when he was aged 17 and 18 and had been made a prefect – not just when he was in his early teens. “It’s when he had a little bit of power, and he was picking on much younger children,” Field said.

Ettedgui also said Farage’s claim never to have targeted anyone “directly” is untrue. “The abuse was directed and deeply personal. And it was venomous, which why I always remembered it,” he said. “Whenever I hear the guy speak today, my blood turns cold.”

It is unclear whether these allegations will dent Farage’s hopes to enter Downing Street after the next election, which is not due until 2029. Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank in London that researches integration, immigration and race, noted that Farage has routinely been able to win around 15% of the vote – some 4 million people – in general and European elections, first when he led the UK Independence Party (UKIP), and then for the Brexit Party, which became Reform UK in 2021.

While his hardcore supporters might not be put off by claims that Farage was allegedly a teenage bully who used racist slurs at school, turning Reform from a “15% party” to a “30% party” – one that could potentially win a general election – means attracting a different, moderate kind of voter, Katwala said.

That task could be even more difficult against a concerted campaign of tactical voting, he said, if an “Anyone But Reform” coalition mobilizes to try to keep Farage from power. Although UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party won a landslide election last year with just over a third of the vote, that victory was made possible by the “indifference” of most voters to a Labour victory, Katwala noted.

“There’s more danger for them than they’d realized,” he said of Reform. “If it’s not unthinkable that Farage can win, if a third of the public think trying him as prime minister is a dice worth rolling, I think the majority of people need to be indifferent to letting people roll the dice in that way.”

Reform is not there yet, he added. Although Farage has tried to “detoxify” Reform’s reputation, the latest polling from YouGov in September found that a plurality of white British voters sees Reform as a racist party with racist policies, by about 46% to 36% seeing the party as generally not racist. Meanwhile, just 13% of ethnic minority voters have a favorable opinion of Farage, while eight in 10 see him negatively, according to YouGov.

Farage, however, could benefit from the political distance he has maintained from what lies further to his right. He has refused to ally with Tommy Robinson, an extreme anti-Islam activist championed by X owner Elon Musk. While much of the online right in Britain is debating whether Black and Asian people are “really” British, and whether foreign-born politicians should be allowed in parliament, Farage has long welcomed people from ethnic minorities into his party and proudly spotlighted them. “In a way, he’s on the mainstream side of those arguments,” Katwala said.

But Farage’s former schoolmates say the public should be just as concerned by his denials as by the allegations themselves. “On the one hand, it’s actually almost funny that he’s trying to deny something that has been so widely corroborated,” said Ettedgui. “But on the other hand, it’s deeply upsetting because this man could be the prime minister of the UK.”

Some former Dulwich College pupils have told British media outlets that they do not recognize the allegations of racism levelled against Farage. Some of Farage’s allies have accused his former classmates of a “political” attempt to smear him. But the accusers say they were approached independently of each other, with Ettedgui saying he finally came forward because he wanted voters to do their “due diligence” before they vote in the next general election, due by 2029.

“We’re all saying exactly the same thing,” Ettedgui said of the accusers. “Certainly, for me, it boils down to something intensely personal: I don’t want my school bully to become my prime minister.”