HARD-RIGHT lawmaker Nigel Farage, tipped by polls to become the next prime minister, denies claims he made racist and antisemitic comments while at school, his spokesman said Wednesday (19).
The Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday (18) that Farage engaged in offensive behaviour while a pupil at the elite Dulwich College in south London in the 1970s.
It said its report was based on allegations from more than a dozen former pupils, including by film director Peter Ettedgui who said he had been verbally abused by Farage as a young teenager.
"These allegations are entirely without foundation," a spokesman for Farage's party, Reform UK, said in a statement sent to AFP.
He said the paper had produced "no contemporaneous record or corroborating evidence to support these disputed recollections from nearly 50 years ago".
"It is no coincidence that this newspaper seeks to discredit Reform UK -- a party that has led in over 150 consecutive opinion polls and whose leader bookmakers now have as the favourite to be the next prime minister.
"We fully expect these cynical attempts to smear Reform and mislead the public to intensify further as we move closer to the next election," he added.
Bafta and Emmy-award winning director Ettedgui, 61, told the Guardian that Farage would "sidle up to me and growl: 'Hitler was right,' or 'Gas them', sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers".
Another contemporary claimed that Farage sang a racist song and performed the Nazi "Sieg heil" salute, while another alleged that as a prefect the future politician put a child in detention because of his skin colour.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, a Reform spokesman said Farage was not going to sue over the claims "at this stage" but that "potentially, yes", it was an option in the future.
Reform has led prime minister Keir Starmer's struggling Labour party by double-digit margins in opinion polls for most of this year, although the next general election is not due until 2029.
(AFP)
