Reform UK councillors and candidates filmed making racist and extreme comments

Party faces fresh crisis as three councillors quit after ITV undercover filming exposed violence, misogyny and racist views

Reform UK has been rocked by a fresh crisis after councillors and election candidates for the party were caught on film making graphic threats of extreme violence and expressing racist and misogynistic views.

Reform leader Nigel Farage has postponed a major announcement that was due to take place in Essex on Thursday morning as the party tries to contain the fallout expected to come from further revelations in the coming days. That will include revelations from undercover filming of senior Reform politicians and officials working at its UK headquarters.

However, the first clips from ITV’s year-long undercover investigation showed Alan Feeney, a Reform councillor and deputy mayor of Solihull, calling Asian homeowners “parasites,” and stating that “no more than 1% of [the] British population can be non-white”.

Feeney won seats on Birmingham city council and Solihull Metropolitan borough council and was then appointed deputy mayor of Solihull. He has announced that he has left Reform “for personal reasons”.

Feeney was filmed with other candidates who went on to become councillors, Jamie Campbell and Chris Whelan, talking about where a local mosque might be built. After they make extreme racist comments in the discussion, Feeney says: “Oh god, we’re all going to end up in the papers”.

Dean Miller, a Reform councillor for Bromley, was filmed separately making a range of comments during campaigning for the Makerfield byelection, including when he discussed what he would do with illegal immigrants crossing the Channel.

Reform has been attempting to pre-empt the impact from the ITV investigation, which will potentially be at its most damaging when footage from inside Reform’s London HQ airs.

“They have infiltrated our workplace including commissioning an undercover journalist to provide altered identification documents, a false address, and false credentials so that they could be given access to Reform’s headquarters, computer systems, and spy on its employees,” it said.

The party said that this came at a time when Farage and other members of Reform were “being targeted by individuals who wished them harm and caused a security issue which was documented during the course of the undercover investigation”.

Reform said that not all individuals covertly recorded by ITV are members of Reform UK, adding: “Where members, activists and councillors have clearly behaved inappropriately, investigations have commenced. In some cases, there have been suspensions and due process must be followed.”

The outcome is also awaited of a parliamentary standards commissioner investigation into whether Farage should have declared a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.