Reform rocked by undercover footage | Lewis Goodall reacts

Now, we spoke yesterday, didn't we, about ITV Exposure, that programme, a full documentary coming out on Sunday night, I'm told, at 10.20. They sent an undercover reporter inside the Reform Party in January of 2026, where she worked as a press officer. And this is a clip that came out of her conversation with Reform UK MP for Runcorn, Sarah Potchin. I'm a press officer. I'm starting in January. Oh, my God! I can't remember that! Oh, I thought we so need women press officers. Yeah, they are so chauvinistic. I go out on all the shows and go, oh, that's lovely. Oh, so welcoming. What do they do? Well, they just exclude you if you're a woman. There's a bit of a male issue here. A bit of a male issue here. They just exclude you if you're a woman. Lewis Goodall joins me, presenter of Sundays with Lewis Goodall on LBC and co-host of Global's podcast, The News Agents. We're getting a drip feed here, aren't we, of audio. Yesterday we had racism, sexism, sexism with a sort of hint of incest about it. It was very unedifying. Those are words I never thought I'd hear you say, Sheila. Well, I'm sorry, but I have to. I'm just telling the news. So what do we make of what's emerging here? Because it's the latest in a long line of issues for Reform, isn't it? It is. And look, I spoke to Reform people about this, and we can maybe talk about what they think their defence would be in a second. But clearly, you know, some of these revelations are appalling. And clearly there are people, and the problem with it is, I think, Sheila, is that it rather goes to the heart of what Nigel Farage has said about these things before, which he's talking about a few bad apples and we're taking real action against these bad apples. And some of this material, not all, would imply, particularly what came out last night, that Farage himself is not necessarily that committed to doing so. I'm talking here in particular about, for example, Dr Chris Parry. Dr Chris Parry, who was Reform's candidate for the mayoralty of Southampton and the Solent. And Mr Parry said something that I think anybody, any reasonable person would interpret as completely racist. He said that the then Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy, who was born and raised in Britain, must go home to the Caribbean where his loyalty lies. Now, I think anybody listening to that could only conclude that that is a deeply racist statement because, of course, Mr Parry, Dr Parry, would not have said that thing clearly about a white politician. Clearly. So self-evidently, it is racist. Now, this was reported at the time, but then obviously what we've got here is how reform were talking about it internally at the time. Now, the director of comms, as has been heard in one of these clips, to his credit, actually says, this guy's a racist, we should be dealing with this and so on. But it's Mr Farage who is responding to it by basically saying he's got to apologise if David Lammy has taken offence. And he says, just tell him he must do it now, move on, tell him from me, show a bit of sorrow. Look, I'm sorry is probably a good thing to hear. Just take the effing deal. Trouble is, he's a rear admiral. That's the problem, and laughing. Now, what that would imply, clearly, and I think what is striking about that exchange, is that what Farage is not doing there is sort of saying, right, this is clearly racist and wrong and we're going to send a message. What he's doing is managing and thinking about, basically, what's the best way we can get this guy... Stick out a fake apology. ..we can get this guy out of problems and out of the problem that we're in. And it's just worth noting, by the way, that after apologising to David Lammy, which he did, Dr Parry was allowed to remain as Reform candidate, but he was later suspended some months later, pending investigation over controversial comments about a Jewish neighbourhood watch group. And again, I think what is potentially the problematic thing here is not that there are problematic candidates in a party, because you do get that in other parties, that is absolutely true. The question is, is the culture internally in Reform actually dealing with the problems and the prejudices which may exist? Another example, just to illustrate what I mean, which has been revealed by all of this. They've discovered all, the undercover reporter saw firsthand first-hand, that it emerged that a Reform councillor in North Northamptonshire was registered on a white supremacist dating website. Now, I've heard about swiping right, but that's perhaps taking it to a whole new level. Swiping far right. A newspaper reported the site was exclusively for whites and Europids seeking tribal love, promoting the survival of the white race. And the website in question had links to forums and material associated you'll be amazed to hear, Sheila, with fascist and Nazi ideology. But the recording seems to demonstrate that Reform's press officers were unaware or unconcerned. A senior press officer said, you get Muslim dating websites, Christian dating websites, black dating websites, Jamaican dating websites. It's not great, but it's not a resignation. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? And it seems to completely not even occur to this person that there is a whole world of difference between a dating website, which is dedicated for a group of people who perhaps, for example, share an ethnicity or whatever or a religion, and a dating website which is dedicated to the promotion of an ideology which is fascistic and deeply racist and that maybe having a candidate who is interested in that sort of thing might not be not just a good look for the party, but it would be a good signal to demonstrate we don't want him to be a candidate. It shouldn't take a great deal of vetting, should it? Yeah, I think it might have taken something a bit better than the shrugs emoji, which seems to have basically been more or less what the response was at the time. Do you get the feeling that with the drip feed of some of the audio that we've alluded to already from that documentary on Sunday, that they're going to save their best till airtime? Well, perhaps so. And look, you know, if you speak to reform people, what they'll say, and there's some truth in this, is that they'll say, look, we have actually spent a lot of money trying to vet our candidates. They'll say that they spend more money than, for example, the Conservative and Labour Party parties do. They'll say that, and I think, again, there's truth to this, that they are still a newish party. They don't have deep roots across the country. You know, the Labour and Tory party is a bit easier. When you've got CLPs and Conservative associations, all the sort of local bigwigs in these parties, they kind of know the people locally. They know that, oh, he's a bit weird, he's a bit eccentric, she's a bit of an oddball, we don't want them standing. They can kind of sift. First political meeting I ever went to at seventeen, St George's Hall, Liverpool because Liverpool was on fire politically in a bad way at the time and I found myself sitting next to a woman in a gabardine trench coat straight out of World War II balaclava telling me she was a white witch. Right and did this inspire you for a career in politics or clearly not? It put me off party politics for the rest of my life. And anybody who has had any exposure to party politics particularly at a local level knows that you know it does attract some of the more eccentric members of the local community and there's quite so and you know it is hard They are a party which has grown very quickly and they've got to try and, you know, field, you know, hundreds, thousands of candidates. You're going to get some difficulties and problems. I think and I think that's all fair enough, by the way. I would actually completely agree with them. I think the deeper question that maybe they're not asking themselves is this, though. What is it about all of these sorts of people who exhibit a certain type of view? We're not just talking about a load, a sort of spectrum of bad qualities. You know, people who've got, you know, you know, I don't know whether it's sort of like fraudsters or drug addiction or what we're talking about here. people who seem to share a certain predilection for certain types of extreme far-right views, right? What is it that attracts them to reform? And might it be, might it be that sometimes we have heard from the leadership of the Reform Party certain signals and cues which might attract them? So, for example, whether it's Suella Braverman talking about an invasion of Britain, a far-right trope, whether it's Robert Jenrick saying that he's gone to Handsworth, I think he did this when who was a Conservative at the time, in fairness, but that he's gone to Handsworth in Birmingham and not seen a single white face. Whether it's Sarah Pochin watching television and saying that there are too many black people in advertising. Whether it's Zia Youssef talking about a Labour Somalian candidate at the time, now a Member of Parliament, basically saying we all know what's going on here, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. These are cues that extreme people in the country will hear and think, well, maybe I want a bit of that. So I think it's totally fair enough for them to say they've had growing problems and pains. but they've also got to ask themselves questions about the sort of signals that they've been emitting. Well, I look forward to speaking to you about it next week once we've seen the actual documentary in full as well. It's a little bit late, isn't it? 10.20. A bit late on a Sunday. Post-watershed.