A senior Labour minister has been accused of making politics 'more dangerous' after she strongly implied that a future government led by Nigel Farage's Reform UK would be fascist.
Nandy's 'Duck' Comparison Sparks Fury
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy was branded irresponsible after she refused to deny reports that she had made the incendiary claim about Mr Farage's party to her Labour colleagues in a Cabinet meeting last week.
When asked directly by Sky News if she had warned of the prospect of a fascist government led by Mr Farage, Ms Nandy pointed to her personal history. The minister, whose father is Indian, said she grew up in 1980s Manchester witnessing a 'playbook' where 'people try to scapegoat and demonise other people' when they lack solutions to national problems.
'It takes this country to some very dark and dangerous places and I think we should have no truck with it at all,' she stated.
Pressed on whether she would use the word 'fascist', Ms Nandy replied: 'I've got a lot of experience of living with the consequences of othering and people who are trying to divide us from one another.' She then added the pointed analogy: 'I guess I would just say that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, in my experience, it usually is a duck.'
Reform Hits Back Over 'Lazy, Baseless Smears'
The response from Reform UK was swift and severe. The party's head of policy, Zia Yusuf, turned the tables by highlighting actions of the current Labour government.
He pointed out that Labour has cancelled council elections for millions and is curtailing the right to jury trial. 'Those things sound far, far more worrying than anything Nigel Farage has ever said or done,' Mr Yusuf told Sky News.
However, when asked if he was therefore calling Labour fascist, he declined to use the label. 'I'm not, because I think that if you overuse those words and you throw around these sorts of labels... you cheapen that language,' he explained.
He issued a stark warning about the impact of such rhetoric: 'You diminish the memories of the people who suffered under people who were those things. And you make politics in this country even more dangerous than it is. I think it's deeply irresponsible to do that.'
A Reform UK spokesman added: 'Lisa Nandy's attack on the most popular party in Britain is an insult to millions of people who support Reform UK. Labour should stop hurling lazy, baseless smears and focus on fixing the broken country they helped create.' The spokesman concluded with a sharp retort: 'Fascists cancel elections and that's exactly what this Government is doing.'
A Heated Clash Over the Boundaries of Political Debate
This exchange marks a significant escalation in the war of words between the new Labour government and the official opposition, Reform UK. The core of the dispute centres on two conflicting narratives:
- Labour's accusation that Reform is employing divisive, scapegoating tactics against migrants and minorities.
- Reform's counter-accusation that Labour is itself undermining democratic norms while deploying inflammatory language that risks coarsening and endangering public discourse.
The controversy puts a spotlight on the intense and highly personal nature of the current political battle, where historical parallels and extreme terminology are being weaponised by both sides. Ms Nandy's personal reflections on her upbringing and Mr Yusuf's appeal to the memory of historical victims illustrate how deeply felt the disagreements are, raising tensions in Westminster at the start of the new parliamentary term.
