Anti-racism protesters heckled Nigel Farage at his first event in London since his election as an MP, where he said he would “professionalise” Reform UK and displace the Conservatives as the voice of opposition. Several men and women were thrown out by security as they took it in turns to stand up and disrupt the event featuring Farage and three fellow MPs from the hard-right party. Reform added a fifth MP on Friday evening after a recount in Essex went its way. “The political establishment are in fear about what happened last night in the election,” Farage claimed after trading barbs with activists, asking one of them where he was from. “Glasgow,” said the man as he was being manhandled away, to which Farage replied: “Well that explains it.” The campaign group Stand Up to Racism claimed it was behind the disruption and said: “We are speaking to the millions of people who will be appalled at the advances made by Reform UK, exposed as a racist party, and the divisive hate spewed by Farage.” Farage, elected in Clacton, was appearing near Westminster with his fellow MPs Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness), Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) and Lee Anderson (Ashfield). After a recount in Basildon South and East Thurrock, James McMurdock won that seat with a majority of 98 votes.
Anderson, a former Labour member who became a Tory MP and then switched again, was introduced by Farage as someone who had been “on a journey that millions of other people have been on”. Farage said Reform UK now planned to “come after” Labour. “Old Labour was very, very patriotic. It believed in the country. It believed in its people. New Labour far less so,” he said. He went on to give what he described as a “100% promise” to rid Reform UK of “bad apples”, a reference to the dozens of candidates who had been dropped by the party in recent months after they were accused of making racist and other offensive comments in the past. Asked who would decide who would go and what constituted racism, he said it would “ultimately be the leader” or the chairman, nodding to Tice, Reform sought to seize the political initiative after winning more than 4m votes as Farage finally became an MP at his eighth attempt. Among those congratulating him on Friday was Donald Trump, who used his Truth Social media platform to hail the win. “Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success. Nigel is a man who truly loves his Country! DJT,” Trump posted. Farage told Anderson earlier that vanquished Conservative MPs would have survived if they had joined Reform UK as Anderson had done earlier this year. Anderson joined Reform after he lost the Tory whip over comments he had made about Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, that were condemned as Islamophobic. “Fortune favours the brave,” Farage told Anderson in a video clip shared on the party leader’s X account. “Do you think Andrea Jenkyns, all the others … they would all have won? They would all have bloody won.” Jenkyns, a supporter of Boris Johnson, had provoked controversy over her use of a picture of Farage on an election leaflet during the campaign but ultimately stayed with the Tories. She lost the new Leeds South West and Morley constituency seat to Labour by 8,423 votes. She took 9,258 votes while Reform’s candidate got 8,187. Anderson told the press conference that between 10 and 15 of his “wavering” Tory colleagues from the last parliament could have been sitting alongside him now as Reform UK MPs. In all, there were 180 constituencies where the Tories would have won on Thursday night if all the Reform votes had gone to Sunak’s party instead.