Nigel Farage is today’s Enoch Powell and his appeal down to slow economy, says minister | Reform UK
Speaking at the co-operative party conference, Business Secretary Peter Kyle said Nigel Farage was “the current embodiment of Enoch Powell’s politics”.
While Kyle described Reform UK as “far-right”, he stressed that boosting economic growth was necessary to “build an economy and politics that people can trust for themselves, their families and their communities”.
He told the conference: “The reality is that without delivering higher, sustainable economic growth, without reconnecting people and politics, without creating confidence in the potential of democracy and the importance of good government, it becomes almost impossible.
“And the appeal of parties on the far right, with their dogmas of fragmentation, division and despair, is also becoming attractive.”
Kyle added: “We see this in Reformation today, just as we saw it in earlier times with the National Front and the British National Party.
“The reason is the lack of economic growth. Nigel Farage, the current embodiment of Enoch Powell’s politics, is the result.”
While Powell was a Conservative shadow minister in 1968, he gave a speech widely remembered for using the phrase “rivers of blood” that was blamed at the time for inflaming racial tensions.
It comes after Reform UK was accused of espousing racism after it elected a former academic as president of its new student organisation, arguing that British-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British.
Matthew Goodwin, now a far-right activist and leading Reform supporter, shared in
Earlier this year, in response to Farage’s opposition to the government’s Online Safety Bill, Kyle claimed people like Jimmy Savile would use the internet to exploit children if he were still alive. He insisted that anyone who opposed the action, like Farage, was “on their side”.
