Nigel Farage ally Arron Banks has been accused of racism after complaining about the racial appearance of workers at Heathrow Airport.
The Brexit campaigner and former Reform UK mayoral candidate claimed he had not seen “one white face” among security and airport services staff during a journey through Heathrow.
He then linked the workers’ appearance to immigration, describing Home Office employees as:
“The type of people we are trying to keep out.”
Banks offered no evidence about the nationality, birthplace or immigration status of anybody he encountered. The post was subsequently deleted, according to The London Economic.
Banks complains about Heathrow workers
Banks wrote in the deleted post:
“Going through Heathrow today, there wasn’t one white face in security or airport services.”
He went on to complain about the Home Office and ask: “What hope?”
The remarks appeared to assume that non-white workers at the airport were immigrants whom Britain should be attempting to exclude.
However, ethnicity does not reveal whether somebody was born in Britain, holds British citizenship or has the right to live and work in the country.
Banks also appeared to combine several distinct groups of workers. Heathrow Airport employs security and operational staff, while airlines, shops, restaurants and private contractors employ thousands more. Border Force officers working at passport control are part of the Home Office.
There was no indication in his post that Banks had established which organisations employed the people he had seen.
Home Office figures undermine the claim
The latest official figures provide a very different picture from Banks’s description of the Home Office.
According to the department’s workforce diversity statistics, 75.3 per cent of Home Office employees who declared their ethnicity identified as white in March 2025.
Employees from ethnic minority backgrounds accounted for 24.7 per cent of the workforce.
The figures cover more than 50,650 employees, including staff working for Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and HM Passport Office.
They do not reveal anybody’s nationality or immigration status, nor would the presence of a diverse workforce demonstrate that the department was employing people Britain was attempting to keep out.
Heathrow is one of the world’s largest international transport hubs. It employs more than 90,000 people across the airport site and hosts around 90 airlines flying to more than 230 destinations, according to a Reuters profile of the airport.
A workforce reflecting the diversity of London and the passengers moving through an international airport would therefore be unsurprising.
Who is Arron Banks?
Banks is an insurance businessman who became one of the most prominent financial backers of the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.
He co-founded Leave.EU and has maintained a longstanding political relationship with Farage, having previously donated heavily to UKIP.
Banks stood for Reform UK in the 2025 West of England mayoral election. He finished second with 45,252 votes, behind Labour’s Helen Godwin, according to the official election result.
Although Banks does not hold elected office, his relationship with Farage and his involvement with Reform mean his political interventions continue to attract national attention.
Critics respond directly
The post prompted immediate condemnation from journalists, politicians and other social media users.
Mail on Sunday columnist @DPJHodges wrote:
“Eventually the mask slips. Not sure you could find a more blatant example of outright racism than this.”
HuffPost UK political editor @KevinASchofield said:
“When people show you what they are, believe them”
Political commentator @donmcgowan wrote:
“Pretty racist, even for Arron.”
Social media user @archer_rs added:
“I do hope the staff at Heathrow read this and lose his luggage.”
Conservative Party chairman @kevinhollinrake also responded:
“What does this say to every non-white adult or child in this country? Born here? Raised here? No matter.”
He described the comments as “shocking and disgraceful”.
A complaint based entirely on appearance
Banks’s post did not identify a problem with airport security, customer service or immigration control.
His complaint was that the workers he encountered did not appear white.
From that observation, he suggested that some were the type of people Britain was trying to prevent from entering the country. No supporting evidence was provided and the claim disregarded the millions of British citizens who are Black, Asian or from other ethnic minority backgrounds.
The official statistics also contradict the suggestion that the Home Office has somehow become overwhelmingly non-white. Three-quarters of its declared workforce identified as white in the most recent figures.
The controversy was therefore created not by an unusual feature of Heathrow’s staffing, but by Banks’s decision to treat skin colour as evidence that somebody did not belong in Britain.
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