LBC presenter James O’Brien has given Nigel Farage a strong dressing-down live on air – while the Reform UK leader was still in the same studio.
Farage had just finished a half-hour appearance on Nick Ferrari’s show, in which he answered questions from listeners a day before Reform’s party conference kicks off.
As the new MP prepared to head off following a long morning of interviews on BBC local radio stations, O’Brien launched into an indirect but unsubtle list of digs at him.
The presenter said: ‘There’s a lot to get through today.
‘For example, have you ever had violent race riots named after you? Or indeed, been accused by the head of the Met of emboldening the racist thugs responsible?
‘Has your vile and ignorant rhetoric ever helped instigate attempts to burn people alive in their beds?
‘Have you ever cited a self-described misogynist facing rape and people trafficking charges in Romania as a trustworthy news source for events in the UK? Or described yourself as part of a similar phenomenon to him?
‘Have you ever helped a convicted woman-beater get elected to the UK parliament, and have any newly elected MPs spent more time in America getting binned off by Donald Trump than they have in their own constituency?’
He finished off by asking: ‘And what would you call someone who answers yes to all those questions?’
The reaction of Farage in the studio has not been made public, and a spokesperson for the MP declined to comment.
O’Brien’s reference to a ‘self-described misogynist’ appears to be a nod towards Andrew Tate.
In a previous appearance on LBC, Farage cited Tate as a source for a claim that the person responsible for the Southport attack in August had crossed the English Channel on a small boat, which prompted the MP to film a video in which he suggested ‘the truth is being withheld from us’.
Asked in that same interview if he had fallen for those false claims, Farage said: ‘I didn’t believe any of it, I hadn’t got a clue.’
Meanwhile, the reference to a ‘convicted woman-beater’ in O’Brien’s monologue appears to refer to James McMurdock, one of Reform’s five new MPs who spent a week in a young offenders institute when he was 19 for assaulting a former girlfriend.
When the story first broke, McMurdock described the incident as ‘the biggest regret of my life’, adding: ‘I wish I could go back and fix things.’
In his LBC slot today, Farage blamed ‘incitement’ from ‘Labour and Conservative politicians’ for a poll that found 51% of Brits think he was personally responsible for the riots that spread across the UK this summer.
He told Nick Ferrari: ‘I’ll have a tenner with you that within the next month or so, we find some evidence of it. What the scale of it is, I have no idea.’
The appearance came shortly after the Reform leader announced on BBC Radio Kent that he was giving up his ownership of the party.
Reform UK was originally created as a private limited company with Farage holding most of the shares, but he said he was now ‘giving ownership of the party and the big decisions over to the members’.
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