Farage Filmed Telling an Aide to Take the Deal Over a Candidate
The year-long undercover film was broadcast tonight. In footage released before it, the Reform leader is recorded discussing a mayoral candidate who had said a then-cabinet minister should “go home to the Caribbean”, telling his communications director an apology would do: “Just take the f***ing deal.” After he leaves, the aide says he would have removed the man “months ago”.
The documentary went out at 22:20 and no approved outlet had published a review of it by the time this edition closed, so everything here is footage the broadcaster had already released rather than anything revealed on air, and there is as yet no reaction from Reform’s leader or any other party since transmission. What has moved today is the casualty list. A councillor who was deputy mayor of Solihull has resigned every post after being filmed calling Asian families “absolute parasites” and saying the area was “infested”; his own statement concedes “my remarks were wrong, offensive and completely unacceptable”, and the Ministry of Justice has suspended him from his prison service job, calling the comments “despicable”. Two byelections now follow. A candidate in the same borough resigned citing health. In Bromley, Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors have jointly called on a councillor filmed saying the King should be beheaded to stand down. One correction to this morning’s edition: it reported that two Hounslow councillors recorded advocating mass shootings were under investigation; the party now says they are not.