In a shocking TalkTV interview, Reform MP Sarah Pochin enthusiastically admitted that she’s ‘driven mad’ by the sight of Black and Asian people in adverts. While this sort of talk is sadly becoming more common, it has drawn widespread condemnation, thankfully:
Reform MP: Seeing black and brown people in adverts makes me angry.
There’s a word for that. https://t.co/hylLu2V85N
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 25, 2025
What’s that word again?
In the video above, a caller asks:
A bit left field this one, but I think it’s creepingly important. Would Reform do anything to look at the representation of the demographics of TV and public advertising? Because we’re getting to the point now where adverts don’t represent what this country looks like.
So what does this country look like, exactly?
It really depends where you live, doesn’t it.
Some areas of the UK are majority white, admittedly, but then most people live in ‘urban areas‘, and the UK’s largest cities all have a mixture of different ethnic groups. Given that TV studios tend to exist in cities, the people who make adverts are very much reflecting the Britain they live in.
While that may not be the Britain everyone lives in, we’re at a point at which there is no way for a single advert to encompass the broad mix of ethnic groups in the UK — not without it running to feature length anyway.
The caller continued, claiming there’s “demonisation of white people”; that white people are portrayed as “inadequate”, and that white people aren’t “portrayed anywhere else”.
If you’re reading this in a panic because you’ve not watched TV in a while, don’t worry; we can assure you there are still white people on the television. Many of them are portrayed as being perfectly adequate too, with only some of them depicted as demons:
Lucifer has been revived by Netflix for season 4.https://t.co/ywEBBSrV7z pic.twitter.com/lVuNofrofA
— LADbible (@ladbible) June 16, 2018
To confirm this, we clicked over to BBC iPlayer, and can confirm that out of the 18 celebrities pictured for an upcoming episode of Traitors, 12 were unambiguously white (i.e. the show is 66% non rage-inducing if you’re Sarah Pochin).
Finishing up, the caller said:
Now, the reason why this is important, we’ve got a case of art imitates life, because we’re getting to the point where a number of my friends think that we’re being discriminated, like in employment markets because white men are seen as useless and whatever and just invisible.
The caller is describing an actual problem here; namely that the UK’s job market is cooling down with falling vacancies. This means there are many more applicants for every position, which in turn means employers are less likely to get back to you.
When diversity sends racists into meltdown
Why is this happening?
In part, because countries all over the world are facing a global slow down, with the OECD noting the capitalist perspective on this:
Global economic prospects are weakening, with substantial barriers to trade, tighter financial conditions, diminishing confidence and heightened policy uncertainty projected to have adverse impacts on growth
Someone on the left, meanwhile, might tell you:
Marx was right about capitalism inherently leading to crisis. Short term cost-cutting through wage reduction benefits companies, but over a long period it shrinks the economy by reducing the spending power of workers. The post-WW2 boom masked this for a while, but no more. https://t.co/eM5q3eh3yn
— David, Historian Martial Artist🥊 (@DavidLeftyMA) July 15, 2023
The US was under the illusion it had escaped this trap for a while. Many thought after WW2 we’d entered a “post-class” society. But that shared wealth has been gradually stolen back by those at the top. We’re trending back toward the Gilded Age.
— David, Historian Martial Artist🥊 (@DavidLeftyMA) July 15, 2023
Our caller, meanwhile, thinks he can’t get a job because Samuel L. Jackson advertised T-Mobile and now the UK’s employers are done considering white people.
It would be laughable if dopes like this weren’t driving the national discourse.
Demonstrating this sad state of affairs, Pochin responded:
I think Stuart’s absolutely right. It drives me mad when I see adverts full of Black people, full of Asian people, full of, you know, people that basically are anything other than white.
It drives her mad, she says – simply the sight of these people.
In response, the host asked:
What’s wrong with that, Sarah?
She responded:
Well, it doesn’t reflect our society.
We’re not sure that Pochin is best placed to talk about ‘representing society’ given the response she got:
They’re beginning to say the quiet bit out loud.
Knocking on doors today in my patch I found door after door after door of people who do not want Reform anywhere near power. https://t.co/qyZ1lbyatv
— Tom Rutland MP (@Tom4EWAS) October 25, 2025
Both Reform and the Tories have made it clear it’s not just about illegal migrants, it’s about all black and brown people. They’re bold enough now to say things like this… https://t.co/UCJh84Um5z
— Devutopia (@D_Raval) October 25, 2025
Some pointed out the right have gone from crying that non-white people aren’t integrated enough to crying that non-white people are too integrated:
Come off it. The mere sight of Black and Asian families in ads offends you?! What is this, the 1950s?!
You’re either in favour of integration or you’re not. Ethnic minority families eating breakfast cereal on telly *is* integration https://t.co/m0Gjkos81z
— Antonia Bance MP (@antoniabance) October 25, 2025
Others highlighted that by promising to be Reform-lite, Starmer has only emboldened these goons:
This is fucking insane. Reform UK are a racist party. Will Keir Starmer call them for what they are or will he carry on pandering to them like a coward. https://t.co/uwXBH1A21s
— 🔴 (@_20251892) October 25, 2025
Why?
The big question you need to ask people is why they’re driven mad by the sight of Black and Asian people in any context.
Pochin claims it’s because it’s not representative of UK demographics. When it was pointed out to her that there are plenty of white people on the TV, she said:
We’re talking about adverts, and how many times do you look at a TV advert and you think there’s not a single white person on it? And actually it is. It’s something that’s happened because, I believe, of the woke liberality that goes on inside this sort of like in the arty-farty world. And, you know, when it comes to, you know, northern towns like Runcorn that I represent, you know, I mean, it’s just not representative of the rest of the country.
It might be fine inside the M25, but it’s definitely not representative of the rest of the country. Actually, you know what, people, I’m hearing this more and more, people notice and people will switch off.
If you had an advert which represented Runcorn, it wouldn’t represent London. An advert which represented London, it wouldn’t represent Manchester. And an advert which represented Manchester, it wouldn’t represent the Isle of Mann.
Do you see where we’re going with this?
Going further, actors are generally better looking than the broader population; do we need to mandate acceptable percentages of homeliness within the dramatic arts? Increasingly, actors are also more likely to be middle class because working class kids can’t afford to break into the profession; do we need to do something about wealth distribution to fix that problem?
And while we’re on the topic, why stop at adverts? Only 9% of UK journalists are working class; do we need to sort that out? And don’t get us started on the right-wing bias on shows like Question Time, where it’s Tory lite guests week after week.
Reform don’t want to solve issues like class representation. If we did, people’s conditions would actually improve, and you couldn’t convince them to shit and piss every time Idris Elba advertised Booking.com.
Reform want to rewind the clock back to the 1930s. But thankfully — as we just saw in the Caerphilly by-election — there are enough people in the UK, who don’t want that, to keep them out of power.
Featured image via TalkTV
