'We never hear far-left!' Nigel Farage lashes out at BBC for calling Reform UK 'far-right'

By Katie Harris, Political Reporter

Nigel Farage reacts to BBC apologising for calling Reform 'far right'

Nigel Farage lashed out at the BBC after the corporation apologised for calling Reform UK "far-right".

The honorary president of the rebranded Brexit Party said that according to the broadcaster "almost everybody's far-right".

He added that you "never ever hear the phrase far-left" being used.

Asked by GB News if the BBC had "shown its true colours", he said: "I'm afraid so.

"I understand that Richard Tice had to go to law to get this corrected, but corrected it has been. Let's hope that no other media outlets make the same mistake."

Mr Farage went on: "According to the BBC, almost everybody's far-right, aren't they? Any new party that rises up or a new government that gets elected gets called far-right.

"We never hear far-left, we never ever hear the phrase far-left."

The BBC made the claim about Reform UK in an online article about the Lib Dems' spring conference as it referred to Richard Tice's party surging ahead in national polls.

In a statement yesterday, the corporation said: “In an article about the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference, we wrongly described the political party Reform UK as far-right when referring to polling.

“This sentence was subsequently removed from the article as it fell short of our usual editorial standards.

"While the original wording was based on news agency copy, we take full responsibility and apologise for the error.”

Mr Tice said he viewed the claim as "defamatory and libellous".

He said: “The BBC has apologised for the news website referring to Reform UK as ‘far-right’ following an intervention from my lawyers.

“My lawyers are also in touch with other news organisations who repeated the BBC line."