A senior minister has been warned she is making politics ‘more dangerous’ after suggesting that a Reform government would be fascist.
Lisa Nandy was branded irresponsible after she refused to deny reports that she had made the incendiary claim to her Labour colleagues about Nigel Farage‘s party.
She then went on to accuse Reform of trying to scapegoat and demonise migrants and ethnic minorities.
Asked by Sky News yesterday if she had warned in last week’s Cabinet meeting of the prospect of a fascist government led by Mr Farage, the Culture Secretary replied: ‘To be really clear about what I think about Reform and Nigel Farage, I think we’ve been here many times in history before, certainly when I was growing up in the 1980s in Manchester.’
Ms Nandy, whose father is Indian, said she had seen the ‘playbook’ where ‘people try to scapegoat and demonise other people’ because ‘they have no answers to the problems that the country faces’.
‘It takes this country to some very dark and dangerous places and I think we should have no truck with it at all,’ she added.
Pressed on whether she would use the word fascist to describe a future administration led by Mr Farage, she replied: ‘I’ve got a lot of experience of living with the consequences of othering and people who are trying to divide us from one another.
‘And I guess I would just say that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, in my experience, it usually is a duck.’
Lisa Nandy (pictured) was branded irresponsible after she refused to deny reports that she had made the incendiary claim to her Labour colleagues that a future Reform government would be ‘fascist’
But Reform’s head of policy Zia Yusuf pointed out that it was the Labour Government that has cancelled council elections for millions of people and is curtailing the right to a jury trial.
‘Those things sound far, far more worrying than anything Nigel Farage has ever said or done,’ he told Sky News.
But asked if he was calling Labour fascist, he replied: ‘I’m not, because I think that if you overuse those words and you throw around these sorts of labels… you cheapen that language.
‘You diminish the memories of the people who suffered under people who were those things. And you make politics in this country even more dangerous than it is. I think it’s deeply irresponsible to do that.’
A Reform UK spokesman added: ‘Lisa Nandy’s attack on the most popular party in Britain is an insult to millions of people who support Reform UK.
‘Labour should stop hurling lazy, baseless smears and focus on fixing the broken country they helped create.
‘Fascists cancel elections and that’s exactly what this Government is doing.’
