Nigel Farage has described one of his MP’s comments as “ugly” and “wrong” after she said “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.
The Reform UK leader said he was “unhappy” with what Sarah Pochin had said, but stopped short of calling her remarks racist.
He told a press conference in London: “I understand the basic point, but the way she put it, the way she worded it, was wrong and was ugly, and if I thought that the intention behind it was racist, I would have taken a lot more action than I have.”
During an appearance on TalkTV over the weekend, Ms Pochin, the MP for Runcorn and Helsby, responded to a viewer complaining about the demographics of advertising by saying they were “absolutely right”.
She then added that “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.
It came as Sir Keir Starmer described Ms Pochin’s comments as “shocking racism”.
Asked whether the comments from the MP were racist, the prime minister said: “It’s shocking racism, and it’s sort of thing that will tear our country apart, and it tells you everything about Reform.”
He said that Mr Farage has to face questions about it “because either he doesn’t consider it racist, which in my view is shocking in itself, or he does think it’s racist and he’s shown absolutely no leadership”.
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