Ian Cooper is being probed by the party over racist social media posts
Nigel Farage has said that his party’s racism probe into Ian Cooper, the Reform leader of Staffordshire County Council, “doesn’t look very good”.
Farage said that Reform is “going through due process” after it emerged that Cooper had been given a “top fan” badge for his frequent interactions with white supremacist Facebook page The European Race.
Cooper has also made offensive posts on social media directed at the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, David Lammy, presenter Sangita Myska and lawyer Shola Mos-Shogbamimu.
Asked by a journalist at a press conference yesterday whether Cooper should be suspended, Farage said: “We’re going through due process, all I can say is it doesn’t look very good.”
The Reform leader said that he was “slightly shocked”, claiming that Cooper had not declared his social media account during vetting.
“Part of vetting is that people have to be honest with us and declare what social media accounts they’ve had,” Farage stated.
Farage said that “with candidates, whether they’re candidates or elected, you can deal with problems in the past, whatever they might be, […] but you have to know what they are.”
He then said he had made “a snap decision” at 5 o’clock on Wednesday to investigate Cooper’s social media posts.
These are some of the comments Cooper has made on social media.
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”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
Left Foot Forward doesn’t have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
