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The United Kingdom's top law officer, one of the most senior Jewish ministers, has urged Nigel Farage to issue an apology to school contemporaries who assert he targeted with racist abuse them during their school days.

Hermer stated that Farage had "undoubtedly deeply hurt" many people, based on their descriptions of his alleged conduct. He added that the leader's "shifting" explanations had been unconvincing.

“In his defensive responses to valid inquiries, not once has Farage actually condemned antisemitism,” Hermer told a news outlet.

New Allegations Come to Light

A series of inquiries last month outlined the statements of more than a dozen ex-pupils of Farage from a south London school.

One, a former pupil, recalled that a teenage Farage "came up to me and utter: ‘The Nazi leader was correct’ or ‘send them to the gas chambers’, sometimes adding a long hiss to imitate the sound of the Nazi gas chambers”.

Another pupil from an ethnic minority stated that when he was roughly nine years old, he was singled out by a older Farage.

“He approached a pupil with two equally tall mates and targeted anyone looking ‘different’,” the individual said. “That included me on three separate times; asking me where I was from, and motioning, saying: ‘That's how you get back,’ to wherever you replied you were from.”

Since then, others have stepped forward; approximately twenty people have now claimed they were either targets of or saw deeply offensive past behaviour by Farage.

The incidents they described cover the period when Farage was aged a teenager.

Evolving Explanations

The Reform leader has disputed that anything he did was "explicitly" racist or antisemitic, and has claimed the former classmates were not telling the truth.

Critics have highlighted that Farage has not managed to condemn antisemitism and other forms of racism outright in his statements.

They also point to his failure to sanction a colleague in his party, Sarah Pochin, after she expressed views about the number of black and brown people she saw in television commercials. She later said sorry for the comments.

“Nigel Farage’s shifting account about his behaviour to his peers [is] not credible, to say the least,” Hermer stated.

He added: “Arguing that 20 people have somehow misremembered the same things about his nasty behaviour simply lacks credibility."

Call for Leadership

“If he wants to be seen as a serious contender for prime minister, he has to address the anxieties of the Jewish community, and apologise to the those he has clearly deeply hurt by his behaviour,” Hermer concluded.

“Prejudice in all its forms is anathema to the standards of this country and we cannot allow it to ever become legitimised in public life.”

In a separate interview, the Chancellor said Farage should “say something” if he wanted to look like a real leader.

“It speaks volumes how very little he has to say, and the very careful language that both you and I would recognise as being drafted in a specific manner to say something, but also not to say something,” she noted.

Legal Letters and Later Statements

In legal letters prior to the publication of the investigation, Farage’s lawyers claimed that “the suggestion that Mr Farage ever engaged in, supported, or led racist or antisemitic behaviour is categorically denied”.

Farage later seemingly shifted his stance in an discussion, saying: “Did I say things as a youth that you could see as being playground talk, you could interpret in a contemporary context today in some sort of way? Possibly.”

He added that he had “not ever purposely sought to go and harm anybody”. Farage afterwards put out a new statement: “I can tell you categorically that I did not say the things that have been reported when I was 13, decades in the past.”