Reform’s London mayor candidate criticises Farage’s ‘mass deportation’ election pitch
Nigel Farage has been warned that Reform UK’s extreme language on immigration is to blame for the party’s failure to make the gains it had hoped for in London.
To talk Independent Reform’s London mayoral candidate, Laila Cunningham, criticized the “mass deportation” rhetoric that played into the hands of her party’s opponents in the capital.
While Reformation made huge gains across England, winning more than 1,400 council seats, finishing a strong second in Wales and a joint second with Labor in Scotland, the expected gains in London largely failed to materialise.
Ahead of Thursday’s election, Mr Farage boasted that Reformation had a very good chance of winning “half a dozen” of London’s 32 boroughs.
But while the party early gained control of the borough of Havering on the border with Essex, it failed at Bexley, Barking and other targets such as Dagenham and Bromley. Meanwhile, Waltham Forest went Green, Labor remained in Redbridge and Reformation fared badly in the west, north and central London.
Independent It revealed that the party’s hopes at Bexley and Waltham Forest were further disrupted by the fielding of candidates who made racist and Islamophobic comments on social media.
Victories in London were supposed to make Ms Cunningham the main rival to Labour’s Sir Sadiq Khan in the 2028 mayoral election.
But Ms Cunningham said Labor and the Greens had managed to capitalize on the immigration debate by describing Reformation as “racist”.
Just before the elections, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, Ziya Yusuf, announced a policy of “mass deportation” that appeared to frighten voters in the capital.
Ms Cunningham said: “When we talk about mass deportation, these are illegal immigrants and maybe we should be more explicit about that because mass deportation has certain connotations, right?”
He said: “I think the opposition parties [Labour and the Greens] We’ve done a very good job of simply labeling us as racial or divisive rather than discussing our actual politics. Unfortunately, this happened.”
Ms. Cunningham, the daughter of immigrants, detailed how she had to deal with voters’ concerns about Reformation’s extreme language while knocking on doors during the campaign.
“I knocked on someone’s door and they said to me: ‘Your mother is Egyptian, how come you’re running for Reformation? You’re a sellout.’
“And then I explain, actually, it’s not about that. It’s about justice. It’s about illegal immigration. You know, my family came to contribute and integrate and assimilate, and that’s all we want. And then this message comes along.”
“Now, what Labor and the Greens have done is they’ve divided the country along religious and ethnic lines, and they’ve said to all these different ethnic groups: ‘You’re a victim. You’ve been oppressed by this country. You’ve been let down by the country. Only Labor or the Greens can save you.’ “They provided support by instilling hatred in the country.”
He added: “There are nuances to politics.”
