On a May 2018 Sky News panel, Ferrari reacted to Afua Hirsch's questioning of statues of Horatio Nelson, Cecil Rhodes and Winston Churchill by saying: "Why do you stay in this country, if you take such offence when you see Nelson's column, if you take such offence when you hear Winston Churchill's name? … If it offends you so much, how do you manage to stay here?" Hirsch, who argued that it was because she loved her country that she questioned it, was born in Norway, to a British father and Ghanaian mother, but raised in Wimbledon. A controversy erupted on social media when Afua Hirsch tweeted an excerpt of the exchange in June 2020. Critics questioned whether Ferrari would have equally suggested that a white British person might wish to leave the UK.