Britain’s top law official, who is one of the most senior Jewish government ministers, has urged Nigel Farage to apologize to school contemporaries who claim the Reform UK leader racially abused them at school.
Attorney General Richard Harmer said that Farage had “obviously deeply offended” many people by the details of his behavior, and that his “constantly changing” denials were unconvincing.
Speaking to the Guardian, Harmer said: “During his defensive answers to legitimate questions asked of him, not once has Farage actually condemned anti-Semitism.”
A Guardian investigation last month reported testimony from more than a dozen of Farage’s former classmates at Dulwich College, south London.
They included Peter Ettedegui, who said that a 13-year-old Faraj “would come up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘Gasing them’, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of gas splashes”.
Another minority ethnic student claimed he was similarly targeted by 17-year-old Faraj when he was about nine years old.
“He went up to a student body with two equally tall classmates and talked down to anyone who looked ‘different’,” the student said. “This involved me on three occasions; asking me where I was from, and pointing away and saying: ‘That’s the way’, whereupon you replied where you were from.”
More people have come forward since the Guardian published its initial story; Nearly 20 individuals have now alleged that they were either victims of or witnesses to Faraz’s extremely aggressive past behavior.
The events he describes cover the period when Faraj was aged 13 to 18.
The Reform leader has denied that anything he did was ‘directly’ racist or anti-Semitic, and claimed not all former classmates are telling the truth. Harmer’s intervention came after Keir Starmer accused the Reform UK leader of being “spineless”, arguing he had “questions to answer” about alleged comments and chants as a teenager that included singing about the Holocaust and allegations of bullying towards minority ethnic schoolchildren.
Critics have noted that Farages fails to condemn anti-Semitism and other forms of racism more broadly in his rebuttal.
They also point to his failure to discipline his fellow Reform MP Sarah Pochin after she complained about the number of black and brown people seen in ads.
He later apologized for the comments.
Following reports of the Reform UK leader’s school days, Harmer told the Guardian that he considered… “Nigel Farage’s constantly changing story about his behavior towards his Jewish classmates is unconvincing to say the least”.
He added: “To argue that 20 people have somehow misremembered the same thing about his bad behavior is not credible. During his defensive responses to legitimate questions asked of him, not once has Farage actually condemned anti-Semitism.
“If he wants to be seen as a legitimate candidate for Prime Minister, he must immediately address the concerns of the Jewish community, and apologize to the many people who have clearly been deeply offended by his behavior.
“Racism in all its forms is anathema to this country’s values and we can never allow it to be legitimized in public life.”
In the days following the anti-Semitic attack in Manchester in October, Lord Harmer spoke at his local synagogue about the fear of the British Jewish community, saying that they simply wanted to live and worship freely without fear.
In a separate interview with the Guardian, Rachel Reeves said that Farage must “speak up and say something” if he wants to look like a real leader.
The Chancellor said, “It speaks volumes about how little he had to say, and very careful language that you and I would both recognize as being crafted in a particular way to say something, but not to say anything.”
“He just sits there during PMQs, where people put these things in front of him, and he hides. He says he is the real leader of the opposition. Well, a real leader will speak up and say something. He should clarify what he really thinks.”
In legal papers ahead of publication of the Guardian’s investigation, Farage’s lawyers claimed to “categorically reject the suggestion that Mr Farage ever engaged in, condoned, or led racist or anti-Semitic behaviour.”
Faraz later changed his position in an interview with the BBC: “Did I say things 50 years ago that you could interpret as a playground joke, that you could somehow interpret in a modern way today? Yes.”
He said he “never tried to directly, actually go and hurt anybody”. Farage later issued a new statement: “I can tell you categorically that I did not say the things that were published in the Guardian at the age of 13 almost 50 years ago.”
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