Nigel Farage clashed with Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips after he was asked why Reform UK attracts “racists, homophobes and anti-Semites”.
The pair faced off against each other after the party was forced to ditch three candidates accused of making offensive statements.
Farage distanced himself from Edward Oakenfull, Robert Lomas and Leslie Lilley during a brutal grilling on the BBC’s Question Time on Friday night.
Reform UK has also gone to war with Channel 4 after it broadcast secretly recorded footage showing one of the party’s canvassers, Andrew Parker, advocating shooting people arriving in the UK on small boats across the Channel.
Farage has insisted it was a “set-up” because Parker is an actor – claims denied by the broadcaster.
On Sunday Morning With Trevor Philips, the presenter asked him: “Do you ever ask yourself this question, in the words of the immortal Mrs Merton, what was it about you, Nigel Farage, that first attracted these racists and homophobes and anti-Semites to your party?”
Farage, who took over as Reform UK leader earlier this month, replied: “The candidates that we’re kicking out came when I wasn’t there, that’s the first point to make.”
But Philips hit back: “Come on, Reform is your party, you own it, they knew it’s your party. So answer my question, what is it about you that attracted them?”
Farage said: “Ironically, destroying the BNP, means people who are minded that way don’t any longer have a home to go to, and some will gravitate in our direction. When we find out who they are they’ll be gone.”
The presenter then asked: “Why do you think that is? Why do they think that you are the person that’s going to give them a home?”
But Farage pointed out that at a Reform UK election rally in Birmingham later today, the “star of the show” will be Zia Yusuf, who he described as “a practicing Muslim who is going to say things about the growth of Islamic extremism”.
He added: “I can assure you that anybody who has a racist point of view, I don’t want to know.”
