Nigel Farage "off his head" over anti-semitism and the BBC

0:00Richard Tice:This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:03Nigel Farage:Do you think saying to a Jewish person, Hitler was right, is direct racial abuse?

0:09Richard Tice:Yes, I do. And I'm quite sure that I can't believe anybody would have said that. And this is including your leader. Yes, this is all made up twaddled by people who don't want Nigel to be prime minister of the country. Funny how they didn't remember this three years ago, six years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. He told Michael Crick some years ago of this. He's a BAFTA and ME winning director and producer whose grandparents came here from Nazi Germany.

0:34Nigel Farage:He has never forgotten it. Because let me tell you, if you are racially abused, which you won't have been, Richard Tice, I suspect, you don't tend to forget it. It gets etched in your memory.

0:45Richard Tice:So do you think saying to a Jewish person, gas chambers with a hiss is banter? Let's go to the other part of his statement from last week. This is made up nonsense by someone who has got a politically biased motive. That is Richard Tice speaking on the BBC this morning about what Nigel Farage did or didn't say as a schoolboy. And he dismisses the whole thing, even though there are multiple accusations, as twaddle.

1:13Nigel Farage:Labour has called that deplorable, but reform has just been granted a£9 million donation. nation. Is Farage untouchable? Will accusations of anti-Semitism hurt him? Or is reform the place where no one gets cancelled? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:39Richard Tice:The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And this story, it doesn't seem to be going away, although it's not being covered perhaps as prominently in some places as it should be, which is something we might get onto. We've covered it on the News Agents for the last few weeks, this question of whether or not Nigel Farage was anti-Semitic to his Jewish classmates at Dulwich College in the 1970s. So just a recap, the Guardian published a story a couple of weeks ago, which said up to 20 people coming forward, former schoolmates, accusing Farage of using racist, anti-Semitic language at school, slurs, Nazi salutes, singing Gassam All, making pro-Hitler remarks, telling minority students to go home.

2:24Richard Tice:There is also a reference to a 1981 teacher's letter warning that the then young Farage had publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views. And you might remember if you listened to our episode with Michael Crick, these aren't new allegations, contrary to what we just heard from Richard Tice there. This was reporting that was done 12, 13 years ago by Michael Crick, then at Channel 4. they have re-emerged, more people have come forward, and reform over the last few weeks have gone from minimising it to saying it didn't really happen, to today we see Tice explicitly saying that it's all made up and it's twaddle.

2:59Nigel Farage:It is a very peculiar place to land up in for the deputy leader of reform because Nigel Farage has been trying to find his answer to why these allegations have surfaced. Surfaced, as you say, over a decade ago the first time. And when he was cornered by Michael Crick and asked about them, he said, was I an idiot as a schoolboy? Yes, I was. Am I racist now? No, I'm not. You can make of that what you want. When The Guardian resurfaced and interviewed more people who corroborated Michael's account, then it became harder to ignore. And of course, Nigel Farage was at this stage more prominent. He was the leader of a party.

3:47Nigel Farage:He fully expects to become prime minister at the next election. And so his response this time round was, I think, a little bit more guarded. It was more of a politician's answer than it was a sort of what I call a UKIP leader's answer, which is, oh, get on with it. It's all fine. Don't believe it. All the rest of it.

4:07Richard Tice:He said he'd been a bolshie teenager. He said he'd been a bolshie teenager.

4:10Nigel Farage:Yeah, exactly. I think Tice has just shifted the dial quite significantly by putting the blame back on those making the claims. So we have now got grown men who were schoolboys at the time recalling the anti-Semitic abuse of Nigel Farage at Dulwich College. And Richard Tice is able to say they've made it up. It's twaddle. It's left wing twaddle. I mean does he not believe people who are bringing forward allegations of anti-semitism all round or is it just these ones because they affect Nigel Farage?

4:50Richard Tice:So there should be an easy template to deal with all of this which is I was a kid I was stupid I said obnoxious things and I'd like to apologise to anyone who you know I offended at the time and with hindsight now I can see that you know I was a bit of a jerk. it's quite straightforward and I think that anyone would kind of forgive you for that because God knows we've all done things when we were 15 or 16 which we think oh God you know looking back on that now you feel it's an idiot but there is also as they've reached the position which they now have there is just this logical inconsistency between what they're saying which is these guys how can they remember that far back what Nigel Farage said at the same time as saying Nigel Farage didn't say it well hang on if Nigel Farage didn't say it Nigel Farage does remember but these kids these 20 people who all corroborate each other's stories don't remember accurately you can't have both and that is the sort of impossibility I think of where reform is ending up now where you just think well hang on but Nigel Farage does remember not saying this that's interesting and you can't reconcile it I think what Emily's saying is exactly right which is is that look it is actually I think we're getting to a place which is more serious now that what Richard Tice has done today is not just say, you know, well, to use that expression from the Queen, the late Queen, you know, recollections may vary.

6:13Richard Tice:And you sort of say, well, as you say, John, look, but obviously if I did say anything that offended, I'm sorry, I don't recall all of this. It was a long time ago, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But what Tice has done today, and this just builds on slowly the reform response, is to dismiss out of hand and accuse indeed of lying people who are coming forward with serious charges, serious allegations of anti-Semitism, which they themselves clearly feel deeply. They are being highly dismissive of these claims. And I note, I note that, well, two things. First of all, many of the same parts of the press and commentators who have spent the last few years lecturing everybody else about not taking anti-Semitism seriously are curiously quiet on this question, or not just quiet, they are actively attacking those coming forward and the reporting that details their allegations.

7:06Richard Tice:But likewise, you know, unfortunately, for various reasons, accusations of anti-Semitism in politics on left and right have become more commonplace over the last 10 years. And I would just say, you know, if, for example, I don't know, at the height of the anti-Semitism allegations in the Labour Party, If John McDonnell, for example, had just gone on when Jeremy Corbyn was leader on the airwaves and just said, this is just a load of twaddle. You know, we're not listening to it. We don't believe it. We don't accept it. Blah, blah, blah. Now, there were some people who did those sorts of things and they were rightly excoriated because they were saying, look, even if you do not agree, even if you personally do not believe you have done or meant to do what these people have interpreted, Clearly, these people and their feelings about this ought to be taken seriously, no matter how long ago it was.

7:54Nigel Farage:I also think, to that very point, these are not uncorroborated, they're not unsubstantiated. It's not just one person. It's not one person who's come out suddenly. You know, Michael Crick was doing work on this. He then was the author of a biography on Nigel Farage. When Michael Crick was reporting this, he went to speak to the teachers at Dulwich College. He saw evidence, he saw letters, he saw people recommending that Nigel Farage not be made a prefect because of his past behaviour. And, you know, to your point, I think it's not like a schoolboy chant age 11. He was getting on for 18. That is the last year of school.

8:31Nigel Farage:So to sort of somehow pretend that Farage would have had no idea what gas them all meant or the ramifications of a phrase like that, I think is probably stretching it. But yes, I mean, I think this has put them on a collision course with where they want to position the Reform Party. And, you know, people to the right have, I think, for the last few years, been in the mindset of the protests are bad, Muslim protests are bad, and that is why we need to support the Jews. I think we've long said that actually anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are quite often bedfellows of the same mindset. You end up sort of revealing what you think about both when you start on one quite often.

9:17Nigel Farage:And for me, this just suggests that they've put themselves in a really complicated position now, which is, did you think you would be the establishment party? Did you think you'd be the pro-Israel party? Did you think you'd get the sort of people who were shocked at Corbyn sort of coming to reform because they thought you were a respectable party who wouldn't be anti-Semitic, who would make Jews feel at home in your party? What message does that send out now? I think it's a really critical moment, actually.

9:46Richard Tice:I think it's very interesting the way that the position, and Lewis, you kind of sketched it out, of how their line has evolved since the accusations first came. I feel they are in full Donald Trump mode, which is, you know, when Donald Trump was accused by E. Jean Carroll, he accuses her back and goes on television saying, hello, good-looking guy like me. Do you think I'm going to go for a woman like that? You must be bloody joking. E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape in a department store. And subsequently won a huge amount on damages from him when he defamed her afterwards. So when Donald Trump is accused, he goes after the accuser.

10:26Richard Tice:And that is exactly where Richard Tice has ended up today, which is in its very 2025 that you don't ever admit that you've done anything wrong. It must be the person who's accusing you is a liar. just one other thing that i would add to that and it's it's something that we heard in that clip at the introduction of the show look if you have been the victim of anti-semitism that is going to be seared on your brain about when someone was really vile to you and said not hideous things to you and you know the person who's saying it probably doesn't remember that well because it doesn't seem a big deal to them to say something like that whereas if you are a minority and someone uses an offensive slur or you know says that there weren't enough gas ovens in nazi germany then frankly you're not going to forget in the 1970s as well when those events were very you know very present you know only sort of 25 years before i'm of a similar vintage in the 1970s when that was happening you still had your grandparents alive who had survived all of this and had escaped you know from Nazi Germany and the idea that this would just be dismissed as playground banter I mean I think Emily you're right I think at the age of 17 or 18 you know what you're doing

11:40Nigel Farage:yeah I mean you're about to enter the working world but this is but I think I think you're

11:45Richard Tice:completely right to sort of invoke the Trump comparison because I think this is what's kind of most disturbing about this story I mean one of the disturbing things is the fact that basically we've got to a point in our politics now where you know people a lot of people not just one person not just two people, but, you know, 20 people can come forward with corroboration and make these claims that are serious, of a form of racism, and it just be so breezily dismissed. I think that's problematic. But also, as you say, that instead of engaging with it and finding a position which would have been more reasonable, to simply dismiss it as slurs and smears and so on.

12:23Richard Tice:Because I think two things can be true at once. I do think that, actually your school day there probably ought to be some statute of limitations in these things in politics in politics i do think school days we are sort of scraping the barrel a little bit bringing and invoking those things i think you should be allowed a sort of life before you go into politics and to say things that you would regret now but that is the key point you have to regret them now you have to accept it and you have to get to a position where if you have done wrong And we should say again, you know, he denies it. But, you know, these people clearly feel it.

12:55Richard Tice:Apologize to them. I was thinking a lot of my Sunday show on LBC this weekend. I interviewed George Aberonny. If you remember that, this is this is the guy, the president elect of the Oxford Union, right, who made that, you know, stupid, stupid comment in a private WhatsApp group where he basically said he was glad that Charlie Kirk was dead. he was then this was then leaked and his you know reputation his name i mean it went all over the world you had everyone from the MAGA right down all over the US UK tweeting about him basically you know calling him everything under the sun suggesting he's a DEI person getting into Oxford he ended up being subject to you know a lot of racism it was clearly stupid he ended up being basically scrutinized almost as if he was like a leading politician rather than just basically the student leader of a debating society.

13:39Richard Tice:Anyway, here's just a clip of him on my show on Sunday. Silly thing for me to say. I reacted to kind of a notification and the headline. I had no real context for, you know, what happened. I didn't really understand the severity of the situation. There'll be some people listening saying, well, you know, did you really need to know how severe the situation was? I mean, you knew a guy who you'd met had got shot. I mean, some people would say, how could you react that way? No, of course. And I think it's a valid position. I think. Why did you? I think part of the... Mr. Kirk's comments don't exist in a vacuum, you know.

14:10Richard Tice:He's an incredibly kind of polarising figure. And I think it's almost a symptom of him and my reaction, a symptom of kind of how we have discourse online, in which, you know, it's oftentimes very reactive. It's oftentimes about saying something almost inflammatory, almost because I wanted to, say, spark a conversation about kind of what happened, the fact that, oh, my God, I guess it's such a major event that's just taken place. You wanted to get a reaction? Exactly, I wanted to get a reaction, I wanted to have a conversation. A laugh? Almost exactly, like a laugh and a bit of a reaction, and I realised afterwards that that wasn't the right way to go.

14:44Richard Tice:You can hear that. He is genuinely contrite. He really regrets what he said. He's 20 years old, he's an adult, he should be held accountable to that. Many of those same people who are dismissing what Farage is alleged to have done as completely immaterial and irrelevant because he was a young man and who cares and it's just scraping the barrel, etc. are the same people who are absolutely willing to slam Aberogne, furious Aberogne, despite the fact that he's accepted Fess up,

15:09Nigel Farage:said he did something wrong and has apologised for it. Can I just take us back to where we started? The full circle of this, and I think it's to your point, that people don't seem to mind, don't seem to notice, don't seem to recognise that complete dislocation between the two stories. Nigel Farage has just received, or the Reform Party, I should say, has just received a£9 million donation from a leading, I think it's a cryptocurrency investor. He previously rolled the Brexit party. His name is Christopher Harbourn. And this is a record donation. It's the largest amount that any person has ever given to a British political party.

15:48And you have to sort of step back from this and say, well, how did that£9 million come in right now?

15:56Nigel Farage:Is that somebody who just goes, I don't care what accusations there are. I don't really mind how Farage is seen. I don't really care if he might be racist or if he might be unsemitic. Because we're getting to a place where if Labour or I think if the Tories did anything like that, then the investments would drop. Whereas with reform, it seems to go the other way. It's like jolly good. OK, on we go.

16:22Richard Tice:Well, I think that reform is in a position now where a lot of people think it is the alternative to the Conservative Party. And I think the Conservative Party is done. I'm going to put my money into reform. You talk about this nine million donation, which is the biggest donation in British political history and therefore remarkable. There is also a smaller donation of 50 ,000, which I would argue is even more significant. And it's come from Lady Rothermere, who she wife of the owner of the Daily Mail. And so are we seeing a realignment of the right wing newspapers to get behind reform and to abandon the Conservative Party, which would be a seismic change if you've suddenly got the Telegraph and the Mail.

17:06Nigel Farage:I mean, arguably 50 ,000 is peanuts compared to the Mail's endorsement, which presumably comes next.

17:11Richard Tice:But just at the moment as well, of course, where Rothermere is in pole position to buy the Telegraph and create, you know, consolidate his media position as easily the most powerful media player in the British print press. If you were able to control both the Daily Mail, which remains enormously influential, and the Telegraph, which is very influential on certainly historically on the Conservative Party, but also increasingly digitally. I mean, the reason Rothermere would probably want to buy the Telegraph for many reasons, one of them is that, you know, it's got a big subscriber base that they can build on, which the Daily Mail hasn't got because the Daily Mail has chosen, perhaps as a mistake now, but to go for the sort of, you know, free kind of model online and advertising.

17:47Richard Tice:So, you know, you could be looking at a sort of new BMO being created in the British media landscape, which is throwing its weight behind reform, which would be no small thing.

17:56Nigel Farage:And to your point earlier, this will then influence, I mean, this will determine what we as a country actually learn about in terms of news. There are very few websites, news sites that are covering Richard Tice's remarks this morning. It's just The Guardian who thinks of itself as the leader of the story. I don't think even the BBC has written it up.

18:16Richard Tice:I can't see anything on the BBC News website, as you say. It was their interview. Yeah, it was their interview, and yet there is nothing. And I think that to be... I don't like to say this in particular, but I think it's fair to say that with regards to this story, the BBC has been nowhere, really. And I think we see this as a bit of a pattern with reform, and I can understand their angst about it, but that is a problem. And I think actually the way you can contrast it is the only place that is doing some, or one of the only places, which is doing some great work on reform locally, are BBC local news reporters.

18:47Richard Tice:There's a great story today in Staffordshire about potentially racist remarks that the local council leader there has made about David Lammy. That's a BBC local reporting. That is going on locally because BBC often is some of the only real local reporters left with the hollowing out of regional newspapers. But nationally, I mean, come on, this is a great interview. It's on their flagship show. Great interview, great line. And yet on the BBC News website, I can't see it anywhere. Indeed, when I just look up Richard Dice on Google News at the moment, I see Guardian, CITV have reported on it. But apart from that, it's pretty much like, you know, it's just actually just positive stuff from GB News, the Express, all of the rest of it and so on.

19:24Richard Tice:So, you know, the Guardian are ploughing a bit of a lonely furrow. I don't know whether it's timidity or a loss of confidence or a feeling. I just don't know whether it's just kind of cock up that no one was really listening at, you know, quarter past seven this morning when this was on. I know you're pulling a face at me and I think you're absolutely right to. It's a good story, isn't it? I mean, we think it's kind of fascinating. Again, I'm sorry, go back to the period, you know, when I was in the lobby in the sort of, you know, the sort of 2017, 2018, with regards to Labour and antisemitism, that was a huge story.

19:54Richard Tice:It was covered everywhere, ubiquitously, day after day. Now, I think you could make an argument to say that there were, you know, problems around antisemitism, at least to some extent, more endemic, certainly in the grassroots of the Labour Party or elements of the grassroots of the Labour Party at the time. But we are talking about the leader of the party here, and we're talking about, you know, 20 people who have come forward. Again, he denies it. But that's serious, right? I mean, either one's serious or they're both serious or neither was serious.

20:18Nigel Farage:And the point is that Richard Tice said we have done more than anyone to combat anti-Semitism. And the interviewer just says...