Farage defends Reform's vetting after councillors filmed making racist comments

Warning: This report contains racist and offensive language.

Nigel Farage has insisted Reform UK does not have an issue with vetting, after ITV News broadcast undercover filming of some of its councillors and candidates using racist, violent and sexist language.

The Reform leader told BBC Look East his party vetted "to a much higher standard than other parties" but "you can't vet for future comments".

In the film, Undercover: A Year in Reform, a Reform councillor and deputy mayor of Solihull is recorded calling Asian homeowners "parasites".

ITV's filming, gathered over a year, involved eight figures in Reform – the BBC does not know how many it spoke to in total.

Reform says the people filmed by ITV are all under investigation, and have already either resigned or been suspended.

Two years ago, Farage vowed to root out "bad apples" among Reform's candidates, saying "bigots" and "extremists" were not welcome.

Defending the party's vetting processes, Farage told BBC Look East: "You can't vet for future comments. You can look at someone's CV. You can look at someone's social media...

"I can't predict what they're going to say after a drink, when they're being provoked by somebody or egged on to say something."

Pressed over whether the party had an issue with vetting, he said: "No, not at all. We actually vet to a much higher standard than the other parties."

He insisted "appropriate action" would be taken following the broadcast, but added: "I'm promising you, however heavily you vet, you cannot stop what people say in the future."

ITV News says it had reporters undercover with Reform UK candidates and councillors across England and Wales running up to the elections in May and four by-election campaigns this year and last.

These reporters joined a Reform councillor, Alan Feeney, in Solihull, in the West Midlands, where he was campaigning to retain his seat on the council, after defecting from the Conservative Party in 2025.

Feeney, Solihull's deputy mayor, told undercover reporters the area has been "infested" with Asian families, and called them "absolute parasites".

Later in the film, he is recorded saying: "I'd be saying no more than 1% of British population can be non-white."

Farage said "the most egregious case" in ITV's filming was "somebody who is a long-term Conservative councillor", in an apparent reference to Feeney.

He said "anyone who says stuff like that" was "not welcome".

The Reform UK leader added: "But I promise you, if an undercover investigation spoke to hundreds of Labour councillors or Conservative councillors or however many hundreds they spoke to, and you provoke people, you'll find unsavoury things said by all parties."

On a different day in the ITV broadcast, Feeney is joined by two other Reform candidates, Jamie Campbell and Chris Whelan, who discuss speculation of a mosque being built in the local area.

"There's got to be a way of stopping them - like, go and buy some pork chops; we'll bury it in the ground," Campbell is heard saying in the film.

Whelan says "we'll take pictures of it", prompting Feeney to add: "I was gonna say, 'Unfortunately, this is a pig cemetery, mate'."

Discussing a female Reform candidate from Birmingham, Feeney is heard saying, "I didn't know where to look", before Whelan adds: "I'd have been sniffing that seat as soon as she got up."

The BBC has tried to contact Feeney for a response. ITV has reported that on Monday evening he had "mutually agreed" to resign from Reform UK, citing "personal reasons" and would be continuing as an independent councillor.

The BBC has contacted Campbell and Whelan, who has resigned as a councillor, for a response.

A Reform UK Solihull spokesman condemned Feeney and Whelan's "misogynistic and offensive comments" and confirmed they were no longer Reform councillors.

The spokesman said Campbell's comment "was a joke in poor taste but with no malicious intent", adding: "It's something that he deeply regrets, and the party will not be taking any further action."

Elsewhere in the film, Dean Miller, a councillor in the south London borough of Bromley, is shown campaigning for Reform in the Makerfield by-election.

"We've been ethnically cleansed out of London because you never used to get any blacks over in Bromley," he tells an ITV undercover reporter. "And now, you know, Bromley's like massive Nigerian communities there."

Miller says he is "not racist", before later adding: "The Muslim thing, that is going to be that thing that takes over everything and then everyone just has one religion. Because, apparently, King Charles is a [expletive] Muslim... I think that's [expletive] traitorous."

ITV reported that Miller would now sit as an independent councillor having resigned from Reform and had told them in a statement that he was heavily medicated due to a chronic pain condition when he made the comments.

The BBC has contacted him for comment.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Reform should take "immediate and firm action against those who've been revealed to be making these abhorrent comments".

He added: "There is no place for any form of racism, antisemitism, discrimination in British politics, and we all should be relentless in repeating that and taking the firmest possible action."

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: "We should be asking why there's so many stories like this of people in Reform who are making these appalling comments."

Asked about one of the individuals being a former Tory councillor, she said: "It's not my problem anymore."

Badenoch added: "I don't want people like that in the Conservative Party. I'm glad they have gone."

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: "This is chilling. I feel for anyone watching this tonight who is frightened to see such racism and hatred festering in their community."

A Green Party spokesman said: "Vilifying migrants and Muslims is Reform's main focus, and these racist comments reflect party policy."

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