“It was a really kind of thin-skinned, petulant schoolboy response”
Former SNP MP Hannah Kennedy-Bardell tore into Nigel Farage’s “petulant” reaction to a BBC journalist quizzing him over allegations of racism from his school days yesterday.
Appearing on Sky News’ Politics Hub, Kennedy-Bardell denied Reform activist Tim Montgomerie’s claim that the BBC questioning Farage about the allegations was evidence of a “bias issue”.
The former SNP MP for Livingston said Farage had been called out for “pretty horrific” stuff and said there was a bit of “just deserts” to it.
“He’s probably feeling just a dash of what the person he bullied felt, and that isn’t very nice,” she said.
Kennedy-Bardell went on to say that “if you put yourself forward to be a politician, you put yourself forward for the highest level of scrutiny”.
Montgomerie countered: “When you were a child?”.
The ex-SNP politician then said that she found the “double standards” interesting, as Farage previously said that Shamima Begum who joined ISIS when she was 15, “knew exactly what she was doing, that she was fully responsible for her actions”.
Kennedy-Bardell added that Begum was the “same age as he [Farage] was when he made these comments”.
“I think the thing that really struck me today was that it was a really kind of thin-skinned, petulant schoolboy response,” she said.
She added: “It’s like he’s never grown up or he’s been taken back to that moment and he’s having this response.”
She also said that Farage’s comments about the BBC, “all felt very staged to me”.
At a Reform press conference yesterday, Farage criticised the BBC for “double standards”, arguing that at the time when he is accused of making racist comments, the BBC was airing blackface, racism and homophobia in sitcoms like the Black and White Minstrel Show.
“The difference is, the BBC then and the BBC now, the BBC has grown up and it has changed, it doesn’t feel like he has,” she said, referring to Reform’s policies and anti-migrant rhetoric.
“It doesn’t feel to me that they’ve grown up and moved on in the way that society has,” she added.
John Craig, Sky News’ chief political correspondent, said that Farage had “clearly planned” his tirade on the BBC, “because he had the letter to read out and he called the BBC first, whereas he might have called somebody else first”.
Farage read out a letter he said was from a former classmate, who allegedly said his comments were “macho tongue-in-cheek schoolboy banter” but that he never racially abused anyone.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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