Nigel Farage has said Reform’s ex-chairman made “one little mistake” by liking an antisemitic social media post about senior Tory Robert Jenrick and his Jewish wife.
Asked to respond to Mr Jenrick calling for Zia Yusuf, who heads up Reform‘s ‘DOGE’ unit, to be sacked over the post, Mr Farage told Sky News: “Everyone makes mistakes.
“Robert Jenrick in government made a lot more mistakes than Zia making one little mistake for which he immediately apologised.”
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An anonymous X account posted a video appearing to show Mr Yusuf’s account had liked a post on Friday which said: “Reminder that Jenrick is a traitorous Zogbot with a Jewish wife and family.”
Nigel Farage speaking to Sky News on Sunday.
A Zogbot is slang for a conspiracy theory claiming that Jews secretly control Western governments.
Mr Yusuf, a multimillionaire businessman, said one of his team “accidentally pressed like on an awful antisemitic tweet” and said: “I apologise for this.”
He said the post is “equally racist against me” as it refers to “brown savages”.
“Clearly it was not intentional”, he said as he claimed the amount of antisemitism and racism on X is “spiralling out of control”.
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Robert Jenrick with his wife, Michal Berkner. Pic: PA
But Mr Jenrick said he calls “bulls***” on Mr Yusuf’s claim that it was a team member and a mistake.
“You’ve spent the last 48 hours calling me a ‘traitor’ for not drawing attention to a leaked spreadsheet with our special forces and MI6 officers’ names on,” the Conservative tweeted.
“But we’re meant to believe this tweet attacking me as a traitor for having a Jewish wife and family was liked “accidentally” by “one of the team.” You must think we’re all thick.
“No. The mask has slipped. Likes are private. You thought nobody would ever know. Unfortunately for you, the racist account who posted the tweet and could see the likes exposed you.
“Reform should give you the boot.”