Nigel Farage today tried to downplay controversial views held by Reform UK election candidates – including one who backed appeasing Hitler – suggesting it was just ‘ordinary’ pub banter.
Ian Gribbin, one of the party’s presidential candidates, was questioned over comments he made, implying that the UK should not have fought Nazi Germany during World War II.
In a contentious LBC phone-in, he claimed that the inability to thoroughly screen candidates was the fault of his predecessor, Richard Tice, even though Tice had only held the position for nine days.
Asked why they had not been deselected by Reform, Mr Farage said: ‘I can’t, they are legally on the ballot paper. I can disown them, I might well do that… it’s ordinary folk down the pub speak.’
Mr Gribbin, who is standing for Nigel Farage’s party in Bexhill and Battle in Sussex, said that Britain would be better off today if it had taken up the German fascist dictator’s ‘offer of neutrality’.
In comments made in 2022, unearthed shortly after the 80th anniversary of D-Day, he criticised Britain for prioritising ‘weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people’ by staying out of the conflict.
In remarks made on the conservative Unherd website and unearthed by the BBC he said the UK had to ‘exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognize that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal’.
Mr Gribbin had previously written on the site that women were the ‘sponging gender’ who ‘only take from society’.
He tonight apologised for his comments, telling the BBC: ‘I apologise for these old comments and withdraw them unreservedly and the upset that they have caused.’
Mr Gribbin said that he himself had been ‘upset at the way these comments were taken out of context especially when my mother was the daughter of Russian Jews fleeing persecution.’
Mr Farage used the phone-in to claim his party was close to a ‘tipping point’ where it would eclipse the Conservative Party.
He cited a Sky News survey in which Reform trailed the Tories by only one point.
‘Do I think I’m capable of leading a national opposition to a Labour Party with a big majority, where I can stand up and hold them to account on issues? Yes.’
He added: ‘I would be prepared to lead the centre-right in this country, a centre-right that stands up for small business, a centre-right that believes in borders, a centre-right that isn’t scared of standing up for the British people.’
People will vote elsewhere if they don’t like the candidate, and that will be that. The fact is that most hate, division and intolerance are currently coming from everywhere.
It is not a good look at all to say that we should have joined the Nazis instead of resisting them! Characters like this guy shouldn’t be on the list in the first place, and I’m wondering why he is.
If they could, I’m sure all of the fallen service members and citizens who lost their lives along with their loved ones would look at the UK differently and they would disagree.
I disagree with this individual since our loved ones gave their all and battled for their life. I wonder whether he visited the concentration camps where innocent people were killed. He ought to keep his thoughts to himself since Hitler would have made it to the UK and killed and massacred everyone if it weren’t for our valiant military forces.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 