The leader of Staffordshire County Council is a ‘top contributor’ on a white supremacist Facebook page
The Reform leader of Staffordshire County Council, Ian Cooper, has been accused of racism and supporting white supremacist content on social media.
Cooper, who was a parliamentary candidate for Nigel Farage’s party in a 2023 by-election in Tamworth, has a “top fan” badge for Facebook page The European Race.
The page posts about “duplicating white genes” and how “the white race is god’s chosen”.
A “top fan” badge is given to users who are considered among the page’s most “active and engaged” supporters.
Reform leader of Staffordshire County Council, Ian Cooper. Credit: Staffordshire County Council.
Responding to a post from anti-migrant X account Radio Genoa, Cooper called the mayor of London Sadiq Khan “a narcissistic Pakistani”. He also said that “London has become a 3rd world s***hole”.
In another post on X, he replied to a video of David Lammy calling for Britain to pay slavery reparations to Caribbean nations back in 2018, saying “No foreign national or first generation migrant should be able to sit in parliament”.
In a comment on YouTube, he crudely misspelled Black British lawyer Shola Mos-Shogbamimu’s name and told her to “f*** off back to Nigeria”.
The Reform councillor also told presenter Sangita Myska that she is not English. Cooper said: “You are neither culturally, ethnically or historically English […] All you have is a piece of paper entitling you to British citizenship.”
Cooper is not the only Reform councillor on Staffordshire County Council to be accused of racism.
Last month, Councillor Peter Mason came under scrutiny for posts he shared in 2023 and 2024.
In one post, Mason called the police “a bunch of politically indoctrinated British hating scum”.
In another from March 2024, he wrote: “What a surprise a statue of a fat arsed black woman.”
Cooper did not condemn Mason’s now-deleted posts, and instead dismissed the concerns as a “politically motivated smear campaign”.
Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, said on X: “I expect Reform may well decide that they will need to rapidly suspend Ian Cooper, their leader of Staffordshire County Council, over the overt racism set out here.”
Reform said it is undertaking an “urgent internal investigation over Councillor Cooper’s non-disclosure of social media accounts”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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