Reform UK has said it has begun investigations and suspended "in some cases" councillors and activists filmed making racist and violent remarks, after ITV News published clips from a year-long undercover investigation on Wednesday evening.
The footage, gathered by ITV Exposure and Hardcash Productions during the May local elections and four by-election campaigns in 2025 and 2026, shows elected Reform councillors and party candidates in England and Wales using racist, Islamophobic and sexist language. Three of those filmed have resigned from the party. Two others, according to ITV, are still in post.
The revelations test a pledge Nigel Farage made in September 2024 to professionalise the party and tighten its vetting. The full 90-minute documentary, Undercover: A Year in Reform, has not yet been broadcast and is scheduled for ITV1 and ITVX at 10.20pm on Sunday 18 October.
In a statement on Wednesday night, Reform said: "Where members, activists and councillors have clearly behaved inappropriately, investigations have commenced. In some cases, there have been suspensions and due process must be followed." It added: "Reform UK has improved and prioritised its vetting procedures, but from time to time, a handful of individuals who do not share our values will initially make it through vetting. This is the same for all organisations."
The party also said: "Not all individuals covertly recorded by ITV are members of Reform UK." It has not named those suspended or said when any suspension took effect.
Among those filmed was Alan Feeney, a Reform councillor and deputy mayor of Solihull, who ITV says defected from the Conservatives in 2025. He was recorded describing the area as "infested" with Asian families, whom he called "absolute parasites", and saying the party should "drag them out of their homes, stick them on planes and f*** them off to Pakistan."
Feeney was filmed with two fellow Solihull councillors, Jamie Campbell and Chris Whelan, all three elected as Reform councillors in May, discussing a rumoured mosque in Castle Bromwich. ITV says Campbell described burying pork in the ground to stop a mosque being built, and that Whelan discussed sexually assaulting a female Reform candidate in Birmingham.
Dean Miller, a Reform councillor in Bromley, south London, was filmed while campaigning in the Makerfield by-election calling for King Charles to be decapitated because he "is a Muslim", ITV says. Raymond Dunning, a Reform councillor in Tameside, Greater Manchester, said politicians should be "shot against the wall".
Feeney announced on Monday that he had "mutually agreed" to resign from Reform, citing "personal reasons", and continues as an independent councillor. Whelan resigned the same day on "personal and health grounds". Miller has also resigned from the party and told ITV he was disabled and heavily medicated at the time. ITV says Campbell and Dunning remain in post and that Feeney, Campbell, Whelan and Dunning did not respond to its requests for comment.
Reform has accused ITV and Hardcash of "extreme methods of deception" and alleged that an undercover journalist used altered identification documents and false credentials to gain access to its London headquarters. The party said it had been "on notice since March this year". Richard Tice, the deputy leader, said in a video on X that ITV had used a "Tory plant" to make the party "look bad". Neither claim has been supported by published evidence, and ITV and Hardcash had not publicly responded to them at the time of writing.
Bridget Phillipson, the Labour Party chair, said: "The extreme racism and appalling behaviour exposed by this investigation is truly sickening. Nigel Farage can't shrug these latest revelations off as being a few bad apples."
Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, said he would report the councillors to the Monitoring Officers at Solihull and Birmingham councils. Nick Lowles, chief executive of HOPE not hate, said of Farage: "He promised to root out supposed bad apples. Yet time and time again, we have seen him fail."
Farage has not commented publicly on the footage. The Guardian reported that he has postponed a major announcement planned for Thursday in Essex.
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