Exclusive:
The Reform UK leader says he didn’t hear the vile speech of young Republican Nathan Berger just 45 seconds before he introduced him onto the stage in New York last month
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accepted an award from a US far-right activist who had just launched a racist rant calling for migrant boats to be “sunk” in the English channel.
Farage claims he didn’t hear the vile views of young Republican Nathan Berger expressed just 45 seconds before he joined him on the stage at a gala dinner in New York last month. Video of the New York Young Republican Club gala dinner shows Farage being introduced on stage by Berger, the club’s vice president, who makes an unhinged assault on British politics.
Berger said that Britain had “forgotten the virtue of empire and the valour of conquest” and called on the British Government to “sink the ships” of “invaders” as there was “plenty of room at the bottom of the Channel”. It was a clear reference to the small boats of migrants crossing the English Channel. Last year was believed to be the deadliest year for such crossings, with 53 migrant deaths according to the French coastguard. He also claimed the UK was being “pillaged” by migrants from former British colonies.
Georgina Laming of HOPE not hate said: “Nathan Berger’s words are undeniably racist, far right and extreme, any reasonable person would have called them out for what they are. Nigel Farage continues to deny that he leads a far-right party, but you can judge a man by the company he keeps.”
Farage accepted from Berger the John Foster Dulles award, which is awarded by the club each year to “an individual that best embodies the anti-Communist spirit” of Dulles, a Cold War era Republican politician. Recent winners include US mercenary boss Eric Prince and far right Hungarian leader Viktor Orban.
Farage told the Mirror: “I didn’t realise, to be honest. I was out the back, then ushered around the side, then selfies were being taken second before I went on.” We asked Farage his opinion of Berger’s rant and he did not respond.
In his introduction, Berger told guests – who had paid between $500 (£404) to $30,000 (£24,270) for tickets – that: “The magnitude of Britain’s decline under its post-war leadership can not be overstated. The UK has become a shadow of its glorious imperial past. Successive British governments from both the Labour and Conservative parties, infected with hatred for their heritage, have forgotten the virtue of empire and the valour of conquest. From dominating and civilising a quarter of the world to being pillaged by its former colonial subjects on its tenuous remaining territory, Britain has ceased to be a model and it is now a warning.”
He claimed the former Conservative Government “could never figure out how to defend an island from invader-filled ships. I’ll give them some advice – sink the ships. There is plenty of room at the bottom of the Channel for the last chance Armada.” He added: “In a country where free speech is a qualified right and the police focuses more on X posts containing hate speech than on so-called Asian grooming gangs, it’s hard to stand up and keep fighting.”
Berger told the Mirror: “I said what I said, and, by every measure, the British public are in agreement. Illegal migration must be stopped—the easy way or the hard way.” Jo Maugham, of the Good Law Project, said: “Even by Farage’s standards it is shocking that he accepted an award from and posed smiling with a man who just moments earlier made a racist speech calling for the murder of migrants and refugees. In the UK he chooses to cos-play moderate but he’s happy to wear his true political clothing in the States.”
Farage told the dinner how he started his career working for a Wall Street investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert. Once one of America’s biggest investment banks, it was bankrupted in 1990 after illegal activity in the junk bond market. At no point, does Farage refer to Clacton, the Essex town he represents as MP. He faced ridicule after claiming that a free £33,000 trip to the US last year was in part to “represent Clacton on the world stage”.
The next speaker after Farage was Steve Bannon, freshly released from jail after serving a 120-day sentence for contempt of Congress. He was billed by the New York Young Republican Club as a “political prisoner”. He served as Trump’s chief strategist for the first seven months of his presidency in 2017 but was convicted in 2022 for not complying with a subpoena from the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol.
In a fiery speech, Bannon repeated the discredited theory that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and threatened “retribution” on opponents in Trump’s second term. He said: “They need to know what populist, nationalist power is on the receiving end. I mean investigations, trials and then incarceration and I’m just talking about the media.”
Farage has come under scrutiny for the number of lucrative foreign trips he has made since he was elected MP. Barely a fortnight after the general election, a party donor paid for Farage and “a staffer” to fly to Milwaukee in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Mr Farage went on to earn nearly £25,000 speaking at the “Keep Arizona Free Summit” in Scottdale, Arizona, in August.
In September, he was the main speaker at a benefit event for the Heartland Institute, an Chicago-based rightwing thinktank accused of denying human-created climate change. Also, that month, he flew to Malaysia to speak at the Nomad Capitalist conference, earning a further £40,075.37. He has declared more than £570,000 in outsideincome since he was elected MP for Clacton in July, on top of his £91,000 MPs salary. He also earned rent from two buy-to-let properties and is renovating a third.
