A prominent Reform figure was included on an email chain comparing migrants to birds that “shit everywhere”, reveal messages circulated 17 years ago and which have now been shared with the New Statesman.
A round-robin email sent to the north-east mailing list of Nigel Farage’s former party Ukip on 23 April 2009 by Gordon Parkin included an anonymously penned “pass it on” message likening immigrants to “mean” birds at a bird bath “squawking and screaming” that “shit everywhere”. Parkin later became the assistant manager for the north-east region for the Farage-founded Brexit Party, but was expelled in 2019 over racist comments. (Farage, who was Ukip’s leader at the time the round-robin email was sent, was not included as a recipient.)
While Parkin does not seem to be the author of these lines – oddly presented in a lighthearted comic font – the chain email included an approving preface to the analogy: “Haven’t heard it put this way before, but it’s a great analogy.” It is unclear who wrote this preface; the New Statesman has made enquiries with Parkin but has so far received no reply.
The message also included a complaint that people “waving flags other than the our Flag are squawking and screaming in the streets [sic]”, as well as lamenting that “Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box” and “I have to ‘press one’ to hear my bank talk to me in English”.
The 20-odd recipients of this round-robin included an email address for Gawain Towler, a Reform board member who was the party’s director of communications from 2019 to 2024 and remains an influential figure on the Faragist right.
There is no evidence any of the recipients replied to it, approved of it or sent it on afterwards (or even that they opened the email at all).
Here it is:
Images: New Statesman source
Also among the recipients were Dave Pascoe, who was press officer for Ukip’s Hartlepool branch and a Ukip council candidate. He was in post when Ukip was still a Farage vehicle.
While Farage was not part of this email chain, Hartlepool – a town in the north-east of England – and the wider north-east have long been a focus of his succession of political projects (Ukip, the Brexit campaign, the Brexit Party and Reform UK). Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, ran as a Brexit Party candidate in the 2019 Hartlepool by-election.
That this tenor of conversation appears to have been acceptable in a target heartland, among figures with notable positions in both his former and current parties, doesn’t do much to rid Reform of the image of fruitcakeism that Farage is trying hard to shed.
Towler and Parkin were asked for comment (Pascoe died in 2016). Ukip responded to say this was an issue for Reform, “as these comments reflect Ukip under their administration rather than the new Christian-focused Ukip of today”.
A Reform spokesman said: “This is desperate stuff. The man who sent the email in 2009 is nothing to do with Reform UK and never has been.
“The New Statesman really are scraping the barrel.”
[Further reading: Exclusive: Greens to ditch “normal” childbirth policy]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment