Nigel Farage faced a battering from the BBC Question Time audience over racism, immigration, the NHS and Brexit.
The Reform UK leader was asked why his party attracts "racists and extremists" at the start of the half-hour grilling - and things only got worse for him from there. Audience members lined up to challenge him over his stance on immigration and candidates who the party has been forced to drop for making offensive remarks.
It comes after undercover footage recorded by Channel 4 News showed Reform UK activist Andrew Parker saying the party should “kick Muslims out of mosques and turn them into Wetherspoons". He also used a racial slur to describe Rishi Sunak and said that army recruits should use asylum seekers crossing the Channel as "target practice".
Nigel Farage was grilled repeatedly on accusations of racism levelled at his party (PA)Mr Farage said he was “dismayed” by the comments and called some of the language “reprehensible.” But he later said it was a stitch up and claimed Mr Parker was an actor.
Here are all the times he was confronted on Question Time tonight.
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'Why do you attract racists?'
The first audience member to ask Mr Farage a question said: "Hello. I'd like to know, what is it about you and your party that attracts racists and extremists, whether you say you want them or not?"
In response, he insisted that he has "done more to drive the far right out of British politics than anybody else alive". "I took on the BNP just over a decade ago. I said to their voters, if this is a protest vote, but you don't support their racist agenda, don't vote for them. Vote for me. We destroyed them."
Referring to the comments made by one of his canvassers in Clacton, Mr Farage added: "What happened over that last weekend was truly astonishing. A tirade of invective abuse directed at the Prime Minister. I think the whole thing was unbelievable. It didn't ring true. So I checked it out. It turns out the man who did this is an actor."
But the audience member hit back: "Well, I mean, that's one example from today, but what about the multiple examples from throughout your career?"
A man asked Nigel Farage why he attracts racists'Massive racists'
After a series of stories have been published about offensive things his party's candidates have said, Mr Farage suggested he’d had difficulty vetting candidates as Reform UK is a “start-up”.
The audience laughed and applauded after one man told Mr Farage: “Some of my friends have start-up companies, but none of them employ a whole slew of massive racists like you.”
Pushing back on Mr Farage's claims that the racist in Clacton had been an actor, he added: "I credited you with more intelligence than to say it's an actor. I'm not an actor myself, but I want to defend actors. Not all actors are racists. Probably the only actors who are racist, are the actors in your party."
Nigel Farage was mocked by a man for blaming Reform UK's problems on it being a 'start-up''Take responsibility'
A woman in the audience appeared exasperated as Mr Farage blamed the problems with his candidates on a vetting company letting him down.
"I just want to know when are you actually going to take responsibility for your actions and say sorry and stop making excuses?" she asked him.
In response he said: "I’m not going to apologise. We will find out the full truth. I promise you what happened over the weekend was a set up. A deliberate attempt to smear us."
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'This country would be nothing without immigration'
A young woman in the audience noted how Mr Farage gets paid to make personalised videos for people on the website Cameo.
"I was just wondering, the cheapest ones you do are £70. If I paid you £70 now, would you admit that this country would be nothing without a rich history of immigration?" she asked.
But Mr Farage said: "Now it is so totally out of control. Just think about this. 2.5 million people have come in the last two years. You wonder why you can't get a house. You wonder why your rents have gone up 25% in four years."
A young woman told Nigel Farage our country would be nothing without immigration'Is my wife not welcome in this country?'
A man in the audience asked Mr Farage: "My wife is a non-UK national… she came to the UK within the last two years. Are you saying people like her are not welcome anymore?"
In response he said: "What I'm saying is we cannot have limitless numbers of people coming into Britain. It is making us poorer. It is diminishing our quality of life."
'It's like D-Day in reverse'
A woman called Dee Williams mocked Mr Farage over his small boats plan. She asked: "Your core pledge concerning illegal migration states that migrants in small boats could be returned to France. How will you achieve this?"
The Reform UK leader said he would stop people coming to this country . "No more boats will come, if they do we get the Royal Marines to take them back to the beaches from where they took off," he added. "I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, that's what we have to do."
But asked if he'd answered her questions, the woman said: "Not exactly, no. I've just got this vision of like the the D-Day landings in reverse."
Nigel Farage was questioned on his small boats plan'You remind me of Trump'
A man told Mr Farage: "A lot of the language you use about political smear campaigns and the biggest rallies is quite reminiscent to me of Trump in America. Would you say that your like minded characters?"
He replied: "No, we're incredibly different people, incredibly different people. "I happen to support him for one big reason - I think the world is in a much more dangerous point than it's been at any time in the lifetimes probably of any of us in this room... I'm very fearful for where we might be and I think peace comes through strength and not through weakness... I want someone strong, but somebody who's a peacemaker."
He continued: "That's why I support him."
'I'm unhappy about Brexit'
A voter who backed Leave in the EU referendum told Mr Farage he was "unhappy" about how it had turned out. "You claimed that Brexit would help Britain prosper? Why hasn't it?" he asked.
Mr Farage admitted he had some “massive disappointments with Brexit” as he complained there was still too much red tape for small businesses.
"The opportunity to free up those small businesses, to get rid of rules and regulations... the Conservative government have done none of it. And that is a huge regret. It's not a failure of Brexit. It's a failure to deliver what people voted for."
'We cannot get medicines'
A woman who is an NHS doctor told Mr Farage: "My parents and myself were migrants to this country, and you've said that the reason that there's waiting lists for the NHS, there is not enough houses, the cost of living is too high, is because of migrants... But since Brexit, there's been shortages of critical medications in the NHS., from what I understand, because of supply chain issues."
She added: "As someone that we have to thank for Brexit, what would you propose that we should do about this?"
Mr Farage insisted: "I wasn't blaming migrants, I was blaming the population explosion." He added: "We now are free, free from the European Medicines Agency to run our own procurement policy, which means we can buy whichever drugs we need from anywhere in the world without having to get them registered."
An NHS doctor raised concerns about medication shortagesThe audience member, shaking her head, replied: "It's not working, it's not working."
Mr Farage went on: "We are now in charge, we can buy drugs from anywhere in the world. If the NHS is failing to do that, that's on them - not Brexit."
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