Robert Jenrick, Reform UK's Treasury spokesperson and MP for Newark, went on BBC Radio 4's Today programme and made an extraordinary claim: Nigel Farage has "probably done more than almost anybody else to stand against racism and the far right." He said this the same week ITV Exposure released undercover footage showing Reform councillors calling Asian homeowners "parasites," party officials expressing racist, Islamophobic, and misogynistic views, and Farage himself pushing back against advisers who told him to sack a candidate his own head of communications called "clearly a racist." The candidate in question is Chris Parry, a retired rear admiral selected to contest the Hampshire and Solent mayoral election. Parry had told former Foreign Secretary David Lammy to "go home to the Caribbean" and suggested at least eight politicians from minority ethnic backgrounds lacked primary loyalty to the UK. Reform stood by him for months. Hidden camera footage shows Farage being told by Ed Sumner, Reform's head of communications, that he was "protecting" Parry. Farage's response was to insist Parry apologise and "move on" — not to remove him. Reform eventually suspended Parry in March, but only after the Guardian published additional remarks. The ITV investigation, which ran for a year using undercover reporters, has produced a cascade of damaging footage. Alan Feeney, a Reform councillor and deputy mayor of Solihull, was filmed calling Asian homeowners "parasites" and stating that "no more than 1% of the British population can be non-white." Jenrick's defence of Feeney was revealing: the councillor was "for a short time a Reform councillor, but for a much greater time a Conservative councillor." The implication — that the problem is inherited, not homegrown — is a deflection that sidesteps the question of what Reform does with such members once it has them. Sarah Pochin, one of Reform's two female MPs, was filmed complaining that party officials "are so fucking chauvinistic" and "just exclude you if you are a woman." This is not an outside critic. This is an elected Reform MP describing internal culture on hidden camera. It sits alongside the racism footage as evidence that the party's problems are structural, not isolated. Jenrick's strategy is textbook institutional defence: claim strong vetting exists, assert all parties have "bad apples," redirect to the previous employer of the exposed individual, and cast the investigation itself as an attack on Farage's character. The problem is that the footage doesn't show isolated individuals freelancing — it shows a pattern running from councillors through senior officials to the leader himself, who was recorded negotiating the softest possible landing for a candidate his own team flagged as racist. Farage has made "repeated promises over the last two years to rid Reform of extremists and bigots and introduce vetting." The party says it carries out vetting checks on all election candidates. The ITV footage suggests either the vetting is ineffective, or the definition of "extremist" is narrower than advertised. When your head of communications calls a candidate "clearly a racist" and your leader's instinct is to broker an apology rather than a removal, the vetting process is not the relevant variable. The 20-year question is straightforward: if a party's leadership response to internal racism is reputation management rather than removal, the incentive structure selects for people who know how to be quieter about their views, not people who don't hold them. Jenrick's defence — elevating Farage to anti-racist champion status — is not a miscalculation. It is the only available move when the evidence is this specific and this recorded.
