Nigel Farage’s Reform UK are under investigation after being accused of breaking data protections laws. Byline Times reports the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was tipped off by a voter who says he got unsolicited communication from Farage.

In March 2025, Charles Parkinson had requested to know what information Reform had on him. After multiple requests were ignored, he approach the ICO.

Byline Times reported that:

In October, the ICO replied to Parkinson’s complaint, saying they’d been told by Reform UK that the party had attempted to contact him via email but was unable to reach his mailbox.

The ICO officer told Parkinson:

Attached…is a copy of the Reform Party’s response to your complaint, which they have asked us to pass on to you due to their struggles in contacting you.

However:

The ICO passed on a document apparently showing evidence Reform UK had tried to contact him. But the supposed email is dated 1 March 2025 – weeks before Parkinson had even contacted the party on 27 March.

Farage ICO row

Parkinson is now taking the case further. Reform denies wrongdoing, and has even suggested: “I would not have responded to Parkinson’s DSAR because it is in my view abusive.”

They quoted an email from Parkinson which said:

Reform UK is a racist bigoted party with values reflective of the Nazi party. Reform has no place in British politics. You demonise vulnerable parts of society, much like the Nazis did with Jews and other marginalised groups.

Reform has always denied being a racist party. And so has their leader Nigel Farage. Though another revelation this week about his ‘bigotry’ as a youth has clearly stung the former banker.

Youthful racism allegations

A Jewish former classmate at Dulwich College has claimed Farage was a rabid racist and supported the fascist National Front as a teenager.

Award winning film director Peter Ettedgui told the Guardian Farage would sidle up to him and say “gas them” and “Hitler was right”.

Ettedgui, whose grandparents had escaped the Holocaust, told the Guardian:

I’d never experienced antisemitism growing up, so the first time that this vicious verbal abuse came out of Farage’s mouth was deeply shocking.

But I wasn’t his only target. I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’, and urging them to ‘go home’. I tried to ignore him, but it was humiliating. It was shaming. This kind of abuse cuts through to the core of your identity.

Another classmate told the paper Farage regularly did Hitler salutes and said ‘seig heil’. Tim France said:

It was habitual, you know, it happened all the time. He would often be doing Nazi salutes and saying ‘Sieg heil’ and, you know, strutting around the classroom.

He was a member of the cadet force, [so] often being in uniform. And, yeah, it might have been for shock value, partly, but I think, you know, clearly, he also is very rightwing politically.

Oswald Mosley ‘fanboy’

Another student, Mark Haward, recalled Farage chanting the name of Hitler’s British counterpart:

He loved the sound of his own voice; he would come in usually chanting something. He always wanted to be listened to – I distinctly remember him coming in several times chanting ‘Oswald Ernald Mosley’ [the name of the far-right leader of the British Union of Fascists].

Reform UK told the Guardian that the paper was trying to smear them, a party which had “led in over 150 consecutive opinion polls and whose leader bookmakers now have as the favourite to be the next prime minister”.

In that last matter, at least, Reform are broadly correct. Reform are still ahead in many polls. And unless we want to see the evolution of Farage’s alleged childhood views dictating policy in the country, the left better start pulling itself together.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

This post was originally published on Canary.