Let’s put aside the schooldays accusations and look, instead, at the Reform leader’s path since then. I think a pretty clear picture of the man emerges
When I see the allegations of racism against Nigel Farage from his schooldays, I can’t say I am greatly surprised. There are those who believe that the Reform UK leader’s persona must have been developed to win over working-class voters, or the “red wall”. I know that it is quite in keeping with the sentiments expressed by plenty of young men in elite institutions like English public schools – the kind of men who run the world.
Farage was educated at Dulwich college from 1975 to 1982; there, fellow students have told the Guardian, he allegedly used racist insults about fellow pupils and sang a song with the lyrics “Gas ’em all”. I attended Eton a couple of decades later, but the attitudes of some of the people I encountered there were not very different. One pupil, having fallen out with me over some perceived slight, boasted that his great-grandfather was a slave driver. A Jewish friend who was there with me at the same time told me how common it was to hear “Jew” or “rabbi” being used to describe anyone who was thought to be mean with their money. When I later saw Old Etonian Boris Johnson referring to black people as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”, I thought back to the peers of mine who would erupt into rants filled with racist stereotypes whenever they saw the West Indies cricket team on the TV.
Musa Okwonga is an author and football podcaster based in Berlin
