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Nigel Farage has defended remarks made by a Reform MP who said seeing adverts full of black and Asian people “drives her mad”, arguing the intention behind her comments was not racist.
The Reform UK leader said if he felt Sarah Pochin’s words were “deliberately and genuinely racist”, he would have “taken action” against her.
Pochin, the MP for Runcorn and Helsby, said on Saturday: “It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”, during an appearance on TalkTV as she responded to a viewer who complained about the demographics of advertising. She said the viewer was “absolutely right” and added: “It doesn’t reflect our society” and “your average white person, average white family is … not represented any more”.
Her comments have drawn strong criticism from Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, as well as Liberal Democrat MPs and Conservative MPs who have all deemed her remarks racist.
The prime minister said Farage had “questions to answer” over the remarks, which he also described as an example of “shocking racism”, while Streeting warned of a return to “1970s, 1980s-style racism”.
However, Farage said he understood “the basic point” of what she was saying but “the way she put it, the way she worded it was wrong”.
The Reform leader told reporters: “The words that Sarah Pochin used in response to a caller on Talk Radio on Saturday morning were without doubt ugly and, taken on their own, could be read to be very, very unpleasant indeed.
“I am unhappy with what she has done. I can’t underestimate that and she fully knows how I feel.
“However, it was in the broader context of DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] madness in the advertising industry, something which anybody with half a brain can recognise has been going on since about 2021. So I understand the basic point.
“But the way she put it, the way she worded it, was ugly. And if I thought that the intention behind it was racist, I would have taken a lot more action than I have to date. And that is because, I don’t.”
Farage defended Pochin during a press conference that he used to call on parliament to “step up” and launch its own swift investigation into the grooming gangs scandal.
He said he planned to meet the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, on Monday evening to propose parliament used its “extraordinary powers” to investigate the scandal.
“I am saying, here is the most enormous opportunity for parliament, and indeed for this government, to restore some public trust in the institution and those that currently inhabit it on an issue that has been gnawing away at our public consciences for well over a decade,” Farage said.
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Describing the scandal, Farage said it had been “going on for many, many decades” and “for too long, there is a huge racial and ethnic dimension to it”.
“A very large part of these crimes can be attributed to racism in its absolutely worst possible form, and yet this has been met by the collective establishment and by that I mean social services, police, councillors, members of parliament, governments, by abject cowardice and wilful, deliberate neglect,” he told journalists.
He plans to write to the chair of the home affairs select committee, Karen Bradley, to propose a subcommittee is set up quickly to investigate the scandal.
When asked what he made of comments that the victims of this scandal were being used as a political football, Farage told the Guardian: “This is intensely political but I’m offering parliament a way of de-party-politicising it. Yes, I accept there will be more Labour MPs on [a committee] but you’ve got the House of Lords and a commission who could try to depoliticise it.”
Farage also did not rule out scrapping aspects of the Equality Act 2010 that protect people from racial discrimination, saying the act “did not protect girls who were victims of grooming gangs”.
Ellie-Ann Reynolds, a grooming gangs survivor, said she chose to speak alongside Farage because she would “go to anybody that will listen and anybody that’s going to make a change”.
