Prime Minister Keir Starmer has urged Nigel Farage to meet young Jewish students and listen directly to their accounts of antisemitism, after hearing what he described as “hugely impactful”
testimony during a visit to Bushey United Synagogue in Hertsmere on Thursday.
Starmer appeared visibly shaken as students, parents and community members recounted their experiences during a two-hour discussion at the shul. Young people from both schools and universities described the toll that antisemitic abuse has taken on them over the past two years.
Speaking to ‘Jewish News’ shortly after the meeting, the prime minister said he had been struck by the depth of the trauma shared with him. “It was really difficult for some to even talk about it,” he said. “I know they’re going to carry that for years and years and years; this is not just something which can be passed over.”
Asked about allegations from Jewish former pupils at Dulwich College—who claimed Farage had used racist and antisemitic slurs as a teenager—Starmer called the claims “serious” and said they “affect human beings in a visceral way.”
Drawing on the testimonies he had just heard, Starmer added: “If he [Farage] has an idea that some of this doesn’t impact people, he should spend an afternoon, as I have, listening to people describe their experience of antisemitism, which they will carry for years to come because it’s hugely impactful. That’s what he should do.”
He suggested that Farage should respond to the allegations “by seeking out some of the people who’ve come forward … and apologise to them,” adding: “This is about who he is as a person. It’s who he is as a leader. I would have expected him to want to address this and to explain what actually happened.”
Farage, 61, has denied the allegations reported by ‘The Guardian’, saying he had “never directly racially abused anybody” during his time at Dulwich College. However, several Jewish former pupils—including Peter Ettedgui, Stefan Benarroch and Rickard Berg—have alleged that they either experienced or witnessed antisemitic taunts from Farage as teenagers.
Farage has insisted he did not make the remarks attributed to him, though he conceded he may have “misspoken” in his younger years. He also suggested that comments made half a century ago might be perceived differently today, but maintained that he did not “directly” abuse anyone on the basis of their identity. Photo by Quinn Dombrowski from Berkeley, USA, Wikimedia commons.