'Toxic content' Growing calls to sack council leader over posts

Nigel Farage has been urged to sack a Reform UK council leader accused of racism over social media posts, including one saying a black British lawyer should have “F’d off back to Nigeria”.

- Josh Halliday North of England editor

Ian Cooper, the leader of Stafford-shire county council, allegedly called Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, a “narcissistic Pakistani” and said migrants were “intent on colonis-ing the UK, destroying all that has gone before”.

In apost this year attacking the justice secretary, David Lammy, Cooper allegedly wrote: “No foreign national or first generation migrant should be allowed to sit in parliament.”

Reform said on Wednesday it had launched an urgent internal investigation into the council leader’s “nondisclosure of social media accounts”. Responding to a question at a press conference yesterday, Farage said Cooper seemed to have a social media account of which the party was not aware.