Left-wing grandee John McDonnell has been blasted after he likened Nigel Farage to Adolf Hitler and accused Reform UK of being a “fascist organisation”. Speaking at a fringe panel at Tuesday’s Trades Union Congress conference, the former Labour shadow chancellor claimed: “Reform are a protest fascist organisation. We’ve seen it in the ‘30s.”
“What they do, they have a demagogue speaking for them, they target a particular group, in the 30s in Germany it would have been the Jews, here it is asylum seekers. We’ve seen it all before.
“So what do you do? Well, you have to combat it. You have to combat the arguments. You have to mobilise against them.” The MP for Hayes and Harlington also launched a tirade against the Labour Government, accusing it of “dancing to Farage’s tune” by “attacking asylum seekers”.
While Mr McDonnell later denied he was comparing Mr Farage to the Nazi dictator, Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice condemned his remarks as “disgusting and indefensible”.
Mr Tice fumed: “The remarks from John McDonnell are both disgusting and indefensible, but sadly typical of someone so out of touch with reality.
“Our country is being overrun by an influx of unvetted, unchecked, fighting-age men. They are costing the taxpayer extraordinary sums and placing an enormous strain on public services.
“The overwhelming majority of the British public agree. By pledging to end the invasion of our borders and deport those who have no right to be here, we are simply upholding the wishes of the people.
“This is not an attack on asylum seekers. It is about putting the British people first.”
Mr McDonnell was elected as a Labour MP in 2024, but lost the whip last summer after voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
In May, the Government’s attorney general, Lord Hermer, was forced to apologise after also comparing Reform UK to the Nazis.
Sir Keir’s top legal adviser told the Royal United Services Institute that those calling to leave the European Convention on Human Rights echoed the 1933 far-Right.
“The claim that international law is fine as far as it goes, but can be put aside when conditions change, is a claim that was made in the early 1930s by ‘realist’ jurists in Germany, most notably Carl Schmitt, whose central thesis was in essence the claim that state power is all that counts, not law,” he argued.
“Because of the experience of what followed in 1933, far-sighted individuals rebuilt and transformed the institutions of international law, as well as internal constitutional law.”
He later apologised for “clumsy” language.