“This whole episode does not add up”, Nigel Farage said on Friday morning after claims emerged asserting an alleged Reform Party activist recorded making racial statements is actually a professional actor who specialises in “rough speaking”.
Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcaster splashed on “extremely offensive language” they said they’d recorded while going undercover with the Reform UK Clacton campaign on Thursday, but “All may well not be as it seems”, a party insider has said.
Introducing “property dealer” Andrew Parker who claimed to have known Mr Farage “for years”, Channel 4 confronted the Reform leader with the footage, which he called “horrible”. Mr Farage said on Thursday: “I don’t know who this bloke is. Someone I met once years ago? Awful, horrible. Almost as bad as the Labour candidate in Clacton and his slurs on white people.”
But overnight, a group calling themselves Unmasked Antifa claimed to have identified the man who professed to be a Reform UK campaigner as a London-based actor. In a blurb on this actor’s casting profile, he says of his range: “Although I am well spoken find it easy to play… the villain and mafia type which I get offered often… Its easy for me to play the serious villain and also comedy roles”. A post on the profile shows off his proficiency in what he calls “rough speaking”, in which the actor says to the camera: “if I had my way, this lot would be out of here, I’m telling you”.
The group claimed to have used A.I. face-recognition software in making a match. The Daily Telegraph states it contacted Andrew Parker, who denied being an actor. GB News meanwhile said Parker had claimed he was “goaded” by the undercover Channel 4 man into making remarks, and that acting was only a “tiny” portion of his income.
While these allegations that Channel 4 News may have — knowingly or unknowingly — recorded a professional actor with experience in playing “rough” characters in their scoop have not been proven, senior Reform UK figures including Mr Farage have spoken about them.
Isabel Oakeshott, who is dating Reform UK party chairman Richard Tice, appeared on TalkTV on Friday morning and said: “All may well not be as it seems with this Channel 4 ‘undercover Exposé’.”
Saying she wished to “give plenty of caveats” and make no specific allegations yet, Oakeshott said Reform UK was now “urgently investigating” and said more twists in the tale may be yet to come. But should the allegations prove to be true, she said, there would be “all hell to pay” for the production company that made the film, and Channel 4 that broadcast it. Oakeshott cited Farage’s crusade against immoral banking practices in the United Kingdom which saw several top figures at the NatWest bank forced to resign in disgrace.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage himself waded into the debate on Friday morning, making reference to the Unmasked Antifa investigation and stating: “We now learn that he is an actor by profession. His own website says he is ‘well spoken’ but from the moment he arrived in Clacton he was doing what he calls ‘rough speaking’.
“This whole episode does not add up.”