REFORM UK lurched further towards overt racism yesterday with the appointment of a far-right academic and activist as head of its student organisation.

Matthew Goodwin, named president of Students4Reform, recently tweeted that British-born black people are not necessarily British.

After the Huntingdon train attack, for which a British-born black man has been charged, Mr Goodwin tweeted that “mass uncontrolled immigration” was responsible. 

When it was pointed out that the alleged assailant was born in Britain, he responded: “So were all of the 7/7 bombers. It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’.”

He later wrote that the stood by “every word” of his post, adding: “People who blow up British children at pop concerts, people who murder British commuters on the London Tube, people who murder British workers on the train home, people who behead our soldiers, people who mass rape our kids might have a British passport but they are not one of us, sorry.”

It is not clear from the exchange whether Mr Goodwin believes that white British-born people charged with or guilty of serious crimes are also “not British,” or merely black people.

It is the latest row over overt racism to rock Reform. One of its five MPs, Sarah Pochin, recently protested about black and Asian people being featured in television advertisements.

Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson said: “Matt Goodwin’s racist rhetoric is a disgrace. 

“It is both abhorrent and entirely predictable that Nigel Farage has chosen Goodwin to poison the minds of young people with his party’s vitriol.”