Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has hit out at the Prime Minister (Image: Getty)
Nigel Farage hit back at Sir Keir Starmer after the Prime Minister branded him “spineless” in a racism row. Sir Keir took the swipe after the Reform leader was accused of racist behaviour during his schooldays, which Mr Farage denies.
The Prime Minister said the Brexiteer does not have a “good track record” because he failed to take action against Reform MP Sarah Pochin over remarks about the number of ethnic minorities appearing in TV adverts. Speaking as he travelled to the G20 summit in South Africa, Sir Keir said: “He needs to explain those comments.
Get the latest politics news – straight from our team in Westminster and more
Invalid email
You agree you are 18 or over. We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and third parties based on our knowledge of you. You can unsubscribe at any time. More Info.
“I put that challenge indirectly to him at Prime Minister’s Questions. He needs to explain the comments, or alleged comments that were made, and he needs to do that as soon as possible.
“He hasn’t got a good track record in relation to this because Sarah Pochin, his MP, made some clearly racist comments and Nigel Farage has done absolutely nothing about it.
“The man is spineless. If that had been someone in my party, I’d have dealt with it straight away.
“He needs to explain the latest allegations and whilst he’s at it he needs to explain why he’s too spineless to take action in relation to what is obvious racism in the comments of his fellow MP.
“So far he’s said absolutely nothing about it. He’s got plenty to say about plenty on things, apart from showing some leadership when it comes to racism.”
But the Clacton MP branded Sir Keir’s comments as “utterly ludicrous”.
Mr Farage said: “For the weakest Prime Minister in living memory to call me spineless is utterly ludicrous.
“The voters will have their say on both of us at the ballot box next May.”
A Reform source added that the PM was “desperate, sinking in the polls and lashing out”.
It comes after Mr Farage earlier this week denied claims reported in the Guardian of racist behaviour while at Dulwich College as a teenager and has threatened to take legal action.
Sir Keir had called on Mr Farage to explain himself over the allegations during PMQs on Wednesday.
Nigel Farage Erupts at Keir Starmer in Furious Racism Row – “Utterly Ludicrous!”
A bitter political row erupted between Nigel Farage and Keir Starmer in November 2025 after the Prime Minister publicly challenged the Reform UK leader over allegations concerning his school years and his handling of controversial remarks by one of his MPs.
The confrontation quickly became personal.
Starmer described Farage as “spineless” and said the Reform leader had questions to answer over allegations published about his time as a teenager at Dulwich College. Farage responded with an equally forceful attack, describing Starmer’s criticism as “utterly ludicrous”.
The dispute combined two separate controversies: allegations about Farage’s behaviour nearly five decades earlier and comments made by Reform MP Sarah Pochin about the representation of Black and Asian people in advertising.
Neither controversy can be understood simply through the political rhetoric exchanged between the two leaders. The allegations against Farage were disputed, while Pochin had apologised for her comments. Nevertheless, the episode became another major confrontation between Labour and Reform UK.
The controversy begins with allegations from Farage’s school years
The immediate trigger was a report published by The Guardian concerning Farage’s time at Dulwich College.
The newspaper reported accounts from former school contemporaries who alleged that Farage had made racist and antisemitic comments during his teenage years. Among the allegations were claims that he had verbally abused minority-ethnic pupils, used references to Nazi Germany and participated in offensive songs.
One former pupil, filmmaker Peter Ettedgui, described alleged incidents involving comments about Hitler and gas chambers.
Other former pupils also provided accounts to the newspaper.
Farage’s representatives strongly rejected the allegations.
A spokesperson for Reform UK said the claims were “entirely without foundation”, arguing that they related to events more than 40 years earlier and that the newspaper had not produced contemporaneous evidence supporting the recollections.
The dispute therefore immediately became a question not only of what allegedly happened but also of how historical claims should be assessed decades after the events.
ITV reported that Farage’s representatives described his behaviour at school as “mischievous” while denying the more serious allegations.
The historical nature of the allegations was central to the defence.
Farage’s spokesman questioned why the allegations had not become a major issue during Farage’s previous political campaigns, including his years as leader of UKIP and his role during the Brexit campaign.
The Guardian, meanwhile, reported that more than a dozen former pupils had provided accounts.
The competing claims meant that the controversy quickly became politically charged.
Starmer intervenes at PMQs
The issue reached Prime Minister’s Questions on 19 November 2025.
Reform MP Lee Anderson challenged Starmer on local government and elections. Rather than allowing the exchange to remain focused exclusively on those issues, Starmer used his answer to refer to the controversy surrounding Farage.
He pointed to the recent comments made by Sarah Pochin and then challenged Anderson to ask Farage about the allegations appearing in that day’s newspapers.
Starmer’s intervention was politically significant because it brought the controversy directly into the Commons.
Rather than being solely a media dispute, the allegations had now become part of the confrontation between the Prime Minister and the leader of a rapidly expanding opposition party.
ITV reported that Starmer told Anderson to ask Farage whether he had time to explain the stories about his school years.
The Prime Minister’s approach was clear: he sought to connect the allegations about Farage’s past with the wider question of how Reform dealt with allegations of racism involving its members.
Sarah Pochin adds another dimension
The second part of the dispute concerned Reform MP Sarah Pochin.
Pochin had previously caused controversy after saying that she was frustrated by advertisements featuring large numbers of Black and Asian people.
She argued that such advertising did not accurately reflect the country as she saw it.
Pochin subsequently apologised for the remarks.
Farage condemned her comments as “ugly”, but he did not describe them as racist.
That distinction became central to Starmer’s attack.
The Prime Minister argued that Pochin’s comments were clearly racist and accused Farage of failing to take sufficiently strong action against his own MP.
This created a difficult political question for Reform.
Farage could condemn the remarks while still resisting Starmer’s description of them.
His position allowed him to distance himself from Pochin’s wording without accepting the political framework established by the Labour leader.
Starmer, however, used precisely that distinction to argue that Farage was unwilling to take decisive action when the controversy involved his own party.
Sky News reported that Starmer said Farage had failed to demonstrate leadership over what he described as racism within Reform.
Farage fires back
Farage’s response to Starmer was immediate and uncompromising.
He rejected the Prime Minister’s description of him as “spineless” and said it was “utterly ludicrous”.
Farage argued that Starmer was the wrong person to lecture him on political leadership and suggested that voters would ultimately judge both politicians.
His response transformed the dispute from a question about allegations into another direct contest between two political leaders.
The language was important.
Farage did not attempt to answer Starmer using the Prime Minister’s terminology. Instead, he attacked the credibility of the person making the accusation.
That is a familiar feature of political confrontations: one side raises a substantive allegation, while the other attempts to challenge the authority or credibility of the person raising it.
The result was an exchange in which neither politician accepted the other’s framing.
The question of historical evidence
One of the most complicated aspects of the controversy was the passage of time.
The allegations concerned events from Farage’s teenage years at Dulwich College.
Farage’s representatives argued that the claims lacked contemporaneous evidence and relied on memories from many decades ago.
The Guardian’s reporting, however, included accounts from multiple former pupils, while historical material about Farage’s school years had also appeared publicly before the 2025 controversy.
A timeline subsequently published by The Guardian noted that journalist Michael Crick had questioned Farage about allegations concerning his school behaviour as early as 2013. At that time, Farage acknowledged having said “ridiculous things” but disputed that they were necessarily racist.
This history complicated the argument that the subject had appeared for the first time in 2025.
At the same time, it does not independently establish the truth of every allegation reported decades later.
That distinction is important.
The existence of multiple witnesses is evidence that allegations were made by several people. It is not the same thing as a judicial finding that every allegation was proven.
Farage has continued to deny that he engaged in racist abuse.
The political consequences for Reform
For Reform UK, the controversy created a difficult political environment.
Farage has built much of his political identity around immigration, national identity and criticism of what he considers excessive political correctness.
That makes accusations involving racism particularly politically sensitive.
His opponents can argue that a party seeking to influence national policy should be held to high standards regarding language and conduct.
Reform, meanwhile, can argue that some accusations against it are politically motivated and that controversial statements should be judged individually rather than used to define the entire party.
The controversy over Pochin and the allegations concerning Farage’s school years therefore became intertwined.
Labour could present them as evidence of a wider problem involving Reform’s approach to race.
Reform could present them as separate disputes that were being combined for political effect.
Neither interpretation automatically resolves the underlying questions.
Starmer’s own political calculation
For Starmer, raising the issue carried both political advantages and risks.
The Prime Minister could demonstrate to Labour supporters that he was prepared to confront Farage directly on questions of racism and political conduct.
But highly personal exchanges can also reinforce the impression that Westminster politics is becoming increasingly adversarial.
The confrontation also risked moving attention away from the government’s own policy agenda.
Farage’s strength as a political communicator has often been his ability to turn criticism into another argument about the establishment attacking him.
The more intense the criticism becomes, the more easily Reform can argue that established politicians and institutions are attempting to discredit the party.
That dynamic was visible throughout the dispute.
A changing political landscape
The confrontation is also worth viewing in the context of what happened afterwards.
At the time, Starmer was still Prime Minister and Farage was positioning Reform as a major challenger to the established parties.
The political circumstances subsequently changed considerably.
Starmer resigned as Labour leader and Prime Minister in June 2026, meaning that the November 2025 exchange now belongs to the final period of his premiership.
That later development should not be used to suggest that this particular controversy caused his resignation. There is no basis for such a conclusion.
Instead, the episode illustrates the intense political pressure surrounding both Labour and Reform during a period of rapid change.
More than an argument between two politicians
The Farage-Starmer clash ultimately represented more than an exchange of insults.
It raised questions about how political parties should respond to allegations of racism, how historical accusations should be evaluated, and what responsibility party leaders have for controversial remarks made by their MPs.
It also demonstrated how quickly such issues can become part of the broader battle between Labour and Reform.
Starmer’s accusation that Farage was “spineless” was a political judgement, not an established fact. Farage’s description of Starmer’s criticism as “utterly ludicrous” was likewise a political response rather than an independent assessment.
The underlying allegations remain a matter requiring careful distinction between reported testimony, historical evidence, denials and established facts.
What is beyond dispute is that the row exposed one of the defining characteristics of British politics in this period: the increasingly direct confrontation between Reform and the established parties.
Farage has built his career around challenging political orthodoxies, while Labour has increasingly treated Reform as a significant political opponent.
That ensures that clashes over immigration, race, national identity and political conduct will continue to attract enormous attention.
The November 2025 confrontation therefore became another chapter in a much larger political struggle — one in which the arguments were often as much about competing narratives and leadership as they were about the original allegations themselves.