Several Reform councillors in Staffordshire have faced racism allegations
Ian Cooper, the former Reform leader of Staffordshire County Council accused of sharing racist and white supremacist content online, resigned from his role yesterday.
This comes after Reform UK revoked Cooper’s party membership on Friday.
Councillor Ian Cooper will now sit as an Independent councillor. Credit: SCC
Reform councillor Martin Murray, who was previously deputy leader on the council, will now take over as interim leader.
Cooper has not responded to the allegations made against him. He will continue to be a sitting councillor.
Cooper, who was a parliamentary candidate for Nigel Farage’s party in a 2023 by-election in Tamworth, was found to have 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”.
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”.
Last month, Peter Mason, a Reform councillor in East Staffordshire, 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.”
Another Reform county councillor in Staffordshire, Chris Large, said in a YouTube comment that racism “is a left-leaning term used to stop free speech”.
Wayne Titley, who stood down two weeks after getting elected in May this year, said in a Facebook post that the Navy should intercept small boats trying to reach Britain by using a “volley of gun fire aimed at sinking them”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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