Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has strongly criticised British politician Nigel Farage, after Farage suggested that immigrants from Eastern Europe were catching and eating swans from London’s Royal Parks.
“If I said to you that swans were being eaten in Royal Parks in this country, that carp were being taken out of ponds and eaten in this country, by people who come from cultures that have a different [way of doing things]… Would you agree it is happening here?”—Farage said in an interview, as quoted by The Independent. When asked whether he was referring to Eastern European
citizens, he replied, “I believe so.”
Nigel Farage, a right-wing British politician, played a key role in Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. He led the Brexit Party, now known as Reform UK.
The Royal Parks charity, which manages and protects the eight Royal Parks in London, swiftly rejected the claims. “We have not received any reports of swans being killed or eaten in the eight Royal Parks in London,” the organisation said.
Responding on X, Sikorski wrote: “If a German politician had said this, our nationalists would be furious. But when an anti-Polish stereotype is amplified by a fellow Eurosceptic, there is complete silence. The honorary guest of the Solidarna Polska congress is allowed to incite hatred against migrants from Eastern Europe.”
Responding to the controversy, Poland’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Piotr Wilczek, offered a more ironic take in The Spectator: “(…), since Farage alluded to Eastern Europe, perhaps we might consider what it could offer Britain’s birdlife in reality rather than rumour. The answer,
surely, is the white stork. In Poland, they are everywhere — nesting on chimneys, clattering on church towers, treated as signs of luck. In Britain, by contrast, the stork disappeared in the Middle Ages, when it was happily eaten. Unlike the mythical swan suppers of 2025, medieval stork suppers
were very real.”
https://x.com/LBC/status/1970767661547065356
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