British Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, has condemned what she described as racist attacks against her after a former aide to Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, called her a \u201cNigerian scammer\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
Badenoch said the attacks, which referenced her Nigerian background, would not work, accusing Reform politicians of using her race to improve their political standing.\n<\/p>\n
She made the remarks during an interview on ITV\u2019s Good Morning Britain on Thursday, following comments by Raheem Kassam, a former senior aide to Farage, who posted a series of attacks against her on social media.\n<\/p>\n
Kassam, who previously served as editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, described Badenoch as an \u201cunrelenting scammer\u201d and accused her of using her Nigerian background to advance her career.<\/p>\n
In another post, he wrote, \u201cHow are people still falling for this Nigerian scammer? Don\u2019t give her your credit card number and bank account details!\u201d<\/p>\n
Responding to the comments, Badenoch said, \u201cI think it just shows the sort of people they are.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
She added that Reform politicians were spending more time attacking her than discussing policies to improve people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they think that maybe using my race is a way for them to improve their standing.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBritain is not a racist country, and because it\u2019s not a racist country, their racist attacks and using my race as an attack form is not going to work,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The controversy also drew criticism over the response of Robert Jenrick, Reform\u2019s Treasury spokesman, who declined to condemn Kassam\u2019s remarks.\n<\/p>\n
Asked whether he considered the comments racist during an ITV interview, Jenrick said he did not, although he described them as potentially unpleasant or rude.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not my place to police everybody\u2019s tweets who may or may not be a supporter of Reform,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
Jenrick also referred to a controversy over Badenoch\u2019s claim that she had received an offer from Stanford University at the age of 16 for a pre-medical course. Badenoch has maintained that she received the offer but said she no longer had the relevant documents.\n<\/p>\n
Farage also dismissed suggestions that Kassam\u2019s comments were racist, telling BBC Breakfast that referring to someone growing up in Nigeria was not racist. He later acknowledged that the remarks were \u201cover the top\u201d but said he did not believe they were intentionally racist.<\/p>\n
Reacting to Jenrick\u2019s refusal to condemn the comments, a Labour spokesman said calling out racism was not a matter of party politics but \u201cbasic decency\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
The comments came amid political tensions between Badenoch\u2019s Conservatives and Reform UK, which has sought to attract voters who previously supported the Conservative Party.\n<\/p>\n
Badenoch, who was born in London and grew up partly in Nigeria, has led the Conservative Party since November 2024.\n <\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
British Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, has condemned what she described as racist attacks against her after a former aide to Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, called her a \u201cNigerian… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}