A racist or a naughty boy? The claims that Farage was a 'fascist' at school

The deputy prime minister, David Lammy, has found himself in hot water after claiming in an interview with the BBC that Nigel Farage "once flirted with Hitler Youth when he was younger".

- Daniel Boffey Chief reporter

Sources at Farage's Reform UK party responded by calling the comment "disgusting and libellous". Lammy has clarified his remarks. “He [Farage] has denied it and so I accept that he has denied it and I would like to clarify that position because in the end the prime minister is keen for us to focus on the policies not the individuals,” Lammy said.

The spat suggests that Farage's character - and his past - are likely to be front and centre of the country's political debate for the next few years.

What was David Lammy talking about?

Speaking on the BBC's Politics Live after Keir Starmer's Labour party conference speech, Lammy was asked whether he thought Farage was a racist. The deputy prime minister said Starmer had been attacking Farage's policy on ending indefinite leave to remain, which would make obtaining British citizenship the only route to permanent residence in the UK. People who now have such settled status would lose it under the Reform policy, and would have to follow the same new rules as new immigrants coming to Britain.

He said: “It’s not British. It doesn’t respect our values. I’m not going to play the man. I’m playing the ball, as our leader did. I will leave it for the public to come to their own judgments about someone who once flirted with Hitler Youth when he was younger.”

Lammy was referring to allegations first aired by Channel 4 News more than a decade ago and repeated in a book published in 2022 by the journalist Michael Crick, One Party After Another. Crick had unearthed a letter from Chloe Deakin, formerly an English teacher at Dulwich College, the public school Farage attended in the 1970s. Deakin had been appalled by a decision to make young Farage a prefect.

She said in her letter to the master of Dulwich College, David Emms, that she had no personal knowledge of Farage but went on to recall the testimony of other staff, including those who had described the young man as a “fascist”.