A Reform activist and potential parliamentary candidate caught on camera saying ‘you cannot be a Muslim and British’ and advocating for migrant concentration camps has been suspended by the party.
Jason Powell is being investigated by the party after being filmed making the remarks by an undercover ITV Exposure team at a ‘Farage Fest’ in the summer after the party leader was re-elected as the MP for Clacton.
The activist, who said he had passed the vetting required to stand to be a Reform MP, told an undercover reporter he was ‘pretty hard-line about Islam’ and was likely to have disagreements with the party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf, a British Muslim.
Mr Powell was also outspoken about migrant boats, saying that on the first day of a Reform government ‘they just need to be rounded up, every single last one of them, and sent to those concentration camps’.
He said if they failed to reveal their true country of origin they should be told: ‘You’re staying here for the rest of your life.’
Asked if Mr Powell had been suspended, a Reform spokesman said: ‘Where members, activists and councillors have clearly behaved inappropriately, investigations have commenced. In some cases, there have been suspensions and due process must be followed.’
Reform leader Nigel Farage said the ITV Exposure investigation was carried out ‘because the establishment frankly want us out of the picture’
It comes ahead of the broadcast of the year-long probe into Reform by ITV Exposure and Hardcash Productions, which is due to be aired tonight.
Several Reform councillors have already quit after the probe filmed them describing black children as ‘animals’, making sexist jokes – including about incest – and suggesting the King should be beheaded for being a secret Muslim.
In other scenes released ahead of broadcast one member said the party had a vetting philosophy that asked if applicants were ‘a f***ing lunatic’ and likely to create bad headlines.
In another, Runcorn and Helsby MP Sarah Pochin branded the party ‘so f***ing chauvinistic’, telling an undercover reporter: ‘I go out on all the shows, and go: “Oh no, it’s lovely, oh they’re all so welcoming.” Shit… they just exclude you if you’re a woman… It’s really tough being a girl with all of this alpha male shit going on.’
Other footage included a councillor saying the party’s board was ‘hard-line’, adding they held views that would result in their expulsion if expressed publicly.
Reform UK has insisted there is ‘no room for racism’ in its ranks, while its leader Nigel Farage said the ITV Exposure investigation was carried out ‘because the establishment frankly want us out of the picture’.
The party has been embroiled in a separate row over what it means to be English.
Earlier this month Suella Braverman, who was home secretary in the previous Tory government before defecting to Reform UK, suggested that British Asians like herself can’t be English.
In an appearance on BBC‘s Question Time the MP said she is ‘British of Asian ethnicity’ rather than English because of her family’s foreign heritage.
Mrs Braverman followed up on social media by saying ‘Englishness is an ethnicity’, which sparked criticism from figures including Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.
She was also criticised by Mr Yusuf, her party colleague. Asked by Sky News about the nationality of black England footballers Ashley Cole, Bukayo Saka and Jude Bellingham, he replied: ‘Every single person that you just mentioned there, whether it’s Saka, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English, is an alien concept to me.
‘I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.’
