United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was hurt and angry that a supporter of the right-wing Reform UK party passed a racial slur about him.
Sunak, Britain’s first ethnic-minority prime minister, currently campaigning for the July 4 national election that his Conservative Party is tipped to lose after 14 years in power, was responding to the comments broadcast by a man identified as Andrew Parker, calling Sunak a “f***ing Paki” – a British racial slur for people of South Asian descent.
“My two daughters have to see and hear Reform people who campaign for Nigel Farage calling me an effing Paki. It hurts and it makes me angry, and I think he has some questions to answer,” Sunak told reporters.
“I don’t repeat those words lightly, I do so deliberately because this is too important not to call out clearly for what it is,” he added.
Nigel Farage, the leader of right wing Reform party initially said he was dismayed by the language when the comments were first broadcast on Thursday. But on Friday he suggested, without providing evidence, that Parker was an actor involved in “a political setup” to undermine Reform during the election.
Asked during a television debate when he would accept some responsibility, Farage said: “I am not going to apologise […] it is a setup, a deliberate attempt to smear us.”
