Recent news stories about Nigel Farage’s racist behaviour in his youth have prompted a familiar public response. Some rush to minimise it: “It was a different time.” “He was young.” “People are too offended now.” These reactions miss the point entirely. Racism is not something people are born with. It is learned. It is absorbed

Racism in the UK is not an occasional outburst or something that only happens “over there.” It is a pattern visible in statistics but lived as experience in boardrooms and classrooms, in council offices and hospital wards. To confront racism, we must see it where it already exists, understand how it harms people, and commit

Racism in the UK is not only the rare, headline-grabbing incident. For many people, it is a pattern: repeated barriers, coded messages, unequal outcomes, and the quiet fatigue of having to prove again and again that what they experienced was real. The most difficult truth is this: racism can exist even when nobody “means it.”

For decades, the UK has grappled with the consequences of racial disparity across policing, the criminal justice system, and the media. From the 1970s “mugging” narratives to the treatment of the Stephen Lawrence family, our country has repeatedly witnessed how racialised crime reporting fuels fear, reinforces stereotypes, and inflicts lasting harm on communities of colour.