Journalist and Nigel Farage biographer Michael Crick has been out defending his muse against allegations of racism, describing some of them as “absurd”.
The veteran hack appeared on the Daily Telegraph’s Daily T podcast to discuss allegations resurfaced by deputy prime minister David Lammy that the Reform leader had sung Hitler Youth songs as a schoolboy, telling hosts and Farage fans Camilla Tominey and Tim Stanley that, when writing his book, he “approached and spoke to, it must be 60 to 80 people from his Dulwich College days, teachers and other boys, and nobody could corroborate the Hitler Youth songs allegation.
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“I think that, on the balance of probabilities, that it is wrong, and I think Lammy got it wrong. I’m surprised, really, that Lammy was so reckless in making the allegation, given that he is the justice secretary.”
Quite. Perhaps Crick should have a word with the journalist who initially reported the claims of the songs – Crick himself on Channel 4 News in September 2013!
Still, perhaps Lammy was reckless – especially when there are so many other allegations about Farage’s youthless indiscretions in Crick’s own book. Across several pages of One Party After Another, Crick details claims of Farage saying to a Jewish schoolmate “Hitler was right”, singing ‘Gas ‘Em All’ to the tune of George Formby’s Bless ‘Em All, being “a very vocal National Front supporter”, using “words like w*gs and P***s” , backing the extremist British Movement, performing Nazi salutes… as Crick quotes Farage’s classmate David Edmonds as saying: “Wherever you draw the line, by whatever definition, he was a racist.”
