Nigel Farage has revoked the party membership of a Reform UK council leader accused of racially abusing Sadiq Khan, David Lammy and other public figures online.<\/p>\n
Ian Cooper, the leader of Staffordshire<\/a> county council, allegedly called the London mayor a \u201cnarcissistic Pakistani\u201d and said migrants were \u201cintent on colonising the UK, destroying all that has gone before\u201d.<\/p>\n In a post this year attacking Lammy, the justice secretary, Cooper allegedly wrote: \u201cNo foreign national or first generation migrant should be allowed to sit in parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n He also allegedly abused the British-born lawyer and women\u2019s rights activist Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, calling her \u201cDr Shaga Bing-Bong\u201d and saying it was \u201ctime she F\u2019d off back to Nigeria. She\u2019d feel more at home there.\u201d<\/p>\n After days of pressure, Reform UK<\/a> said on Friday it had revoked Cooper\u2019s party membership. He is also no longer the leader of Staffordshire county council, a local authority responsible for more than a million people.<\/p>\n A Reform UK spokesperson said: \u201cFollowing an investigation into the failure to declare social media accounts during the candidate vetting process, Cllr Ian Cooper has had his membership of Reform UK revoked.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooper, who has not responded to the allegations, was Reform\u2019s parliamentary candidate for Tamworth in a byelection in 2023 and again in last year\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n He was elected as leader of Staffordshire county council in May as Reform won swathes of local authority seats across England<\/a> and he is listed as the interim chair of the party\u2019s Tamworth branch.<\/p>\n Nine Labour MPs from across the region called for Cooper to resign over the posts, which were first revealed by the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate and shared with the Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cooper and Staffordshire county council have not responded to repeated requests for comment.<\/p>\n In posts shared with the Guardian this week, Cooper allegedly told the broadcaster Sangita Myska this year that she was English \u201conly in your dreams\u201d, adding: \u201cYou are neither ethnically, culturally or historically English. Your diaspora isn\u2019t NW European. All you have is a piece of paper entitling you to British citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n In another post a year ago, he allegedly said it was \u201ca lie\u201d that diversity was Britain\u2019s strength and claimed that migrants from the \u201cglobal majority south\u201d were \u201cintent on colonising the UK, destroying all that has gone before\u201d.<\/p>\n He is also alleged to have said diversity, equity and inclusion schemes were disguising \u201coppression\u201d and enabling a situation \u201cwhere indigenous people are actively removed or excluded and not allowed to complain\u201d.<\/p>\n Two other Reform UK<\/a> politicians were suspended last month over offensive messages. Laura Anne Jones, the sole Reform UK member of the Senedd, had used a racial slur<\/a> in a discussion about the potential threat of China using TikTok for espionage.<\/p>\n