DAVID Lammy appeared to go back on claims he made that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage “flirted with Hitler Youth” as a schoolboy.
The Deputy Prime Minister rebuked his comments after Reform sources called them “disgusting and libellous”.
Lammy then said that Farage “has denied it and so I accept that” before adding that Keir Starmer wants the Labour party to “focus on the policies, not the individuals”.
Where did David Lammy’s ‘Hitler Youth’ claims about Nigel Farage come from?
Lammy’s comment likely stemmed from an investigation done by Channel 4 in 2013, which alleged that a former teacher of Farage had written a letter expressing concerns over songs he sang that were linked to the Nazi youth movement.
The letter, penned by a teacher named Chloe Deakin, came after Farage was appointed as a prefect at Dulwich College despite teachers suggesting he had “publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views”.
Farage was given the position shortly after a series of race riots led by the National Front, a far-right organisation, erupted in Brixton, with police forces using the school as a base at the time.
Then-headmaster David Emms said he thought Farage’s behaviour was more in line with “naughtiness” and “cheekiness”.
A book written by journalist Michael Crick in 2022, titled One Party After Another, also contained the letter, alongside allegations from former classmates.
One claimed he had a “thing about the National Front” and that he often made racist remarks towards other pupils. A second alumni also claimed that Farage made antisemitic comments to Jewish pupils, allegedly singing songs with lyrics like “gas them all” and saying that “Hitler was right”.
What has Nigel Farage said about the claims?
Farage referred to the prefect row in his memoir, saying teachers were only hostile towards him because he was an admirer of Enoch Powell.
Powell is known for his notorious 1968 Rivers of Blood speech, warning against the “dangers” of migration. It was considered so extreme he was dismissed from the Conservative Party shortly afterwards.
In a statement that was published in Crick’s book, Farage wrote that when he joined the Tories in the late 1970s, he “thought all of the far-right parties/movements to be ludicrous/barmy/dangerous”.
The statement goes on to say that he and his school friends “thoroughly enjoyed” winding up “hard-left” teachers and that abusive names “thrown around between 15-year-olds were limitless”.
He also responded to the claims made by Channel 4, calling them “completely silly” and that he "did not know" any songs linked to the Hitler Youth.
In regard to allegations of throwing around racial slurs, the Reform leader said he had "said some ridiculous things". Farage added that the accusations of racism depended "on how you define it”, then saying that he had never been a member of “any extremist organisation, left or right”.
