Author: Miles Donavan

Farage insists he is not to blame for vetting failures, claiming he inherited the issue from Richard Tice Nigel Farage has admitted that Reform did ‘no due diligence’ on suspended MP James McMurdock before the 2024 general election.  The Reform UK leader, who took over from Richard Tice in June 2024, claimed he “inherited a situation” where hundreds of general election candidates had not been vetted. McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock gave up the whip on Saturday amid a Times investigation into government covid support scheme loans he took out during the pandemic.  Shortly after the…

“Inviting failed candidates to try again under lax rules suggests that they are either struggling to recruit candidates, or something more sinister.” Reform UK has told its members in Kent it will relax vetting rules, and is ‘strongly’ encouraging prospective candidates who previously failed vetting to reapply. A post on Reform UK East Thanet Constituency Facebook page states that “It is important that all branches have prospective candidates lined up ready to go” for elections and by-elections. It also said: “With plans to contest every seat at every level we need credible candidates to step forward.” The message explains that…

Maybe Tice has forgotten that Farage’s xenophobic campaigns against the EU haven’t gone down well with EU leaders. Reform UK are having a meltdown because they’re not being taken seriously enough after French President Emmanuel Macron decided to snub Nigel Farage during this week’s state visit to the UK. Macron will be meeting Prime Minister Starmer, as well as leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats but has not arranged to meet Farage. In a furious statement last night, Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice said: “This is an outrageous and deliberate snub. “Reform is…

‘Apart from looking for a photo opportunity, the honest answer is he’s done nothing.’ Clacton residents have slammed their MP Nigel Farage for going missing and failing to deal with local issues, as they reflect on a year of the Reform UK leader representing them in Parliament. Farage, who became an MP after seven successive failed attempts, has barely spent any time in his constituency and has been criticised for making repeated trips to the U.S. since being elected in order to meet with Conservatives and also express support for Donald Trump. Meanwhile, he has neglected his constituency duties, a…

‘It shows just how out of touch the Tories are that they believe they have said sorry for their 14 years of failure in government.’ The Tories are being mocked after Kemi Badenoch’s closest aide said that the party is done apologising for the mistakes made during the Conservatives’ 14 years in power.  Badenoch’s director of strategy Baroness Rachel Maclean said in a leaked recording that the Tories have “done the mea culpas, we’ve done the apologies, we’ve done all that”.  Maclean, who lost her seat at the 2024 election but was given a life peerage last December, also said…

So much for being a man of the people, it’s been a bad year for Farage. Just over a year ago, Nigel Farage was elected as an MP, after seven successive failed attempts. The arch Brexiteer was elected as Reform’s Member of Parliament for Clacton, despite repeatedly insisting beforehand that he no longer harboured ambitions for elected office. It quickly became apparent after his election however, that the interests of Clacton’s residents wouldn’t be a priority for him as he repeatedly jetted off to the U.S. In total, he has made at least eight trips to the US – but…

‘London is better than the hate filled Leader of Kent Council’ The Reform UK leader of Kent County Council has been condemned for sending ‘a message of division’ on the 20th anniversary of the 7 July London bombings. Linden Kemkaran, a former BBC journalist and Conservative parliamentary candidate, posted an anti-immigration and anti-Muslim message to mark the anniversary. She wrote: “On the eve of the anniversary of #7/7 if someone had told me 20 years ago that our borders would be utterly broken, Islamism would be on the rise, sectarianism in Parliament would be accepted & blasphemy laws on the…

The number of Reform MPs has gone down from five to four, again Reform UK MP James McMurdock resigned the whip over the weekend, after The Sunday Times revealed details of thousands in business loans he took out under a Covid-19 support scheme.  According to the Times investigation, the Reform MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock took out Covid Bounce Back loans for two businesses in 2020. McMurdock allegedly borrowed £50,000 for one business, JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and under £5,000 in assets until the pandemic.  To qualify for a loan, the company would have been…

‘The reality is and everybody knows it, a division in the anti-Conservative, anti-right-wing vote can only assist the parties of the right.’ Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has said that any new political party set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana would only serve to benefit Nigel Farage, as he warned against a splintering of the left. On Thursday evening, former-Labour MP Sultana announced plans to set up a new left-wing political party alongside Corbyn, as she accused the Labour Party of having ‘failed to improve people’s lives’. It appears that Corbyn was blindsided by Sultana’s announcement at the…

“We cannot ever hope to end rough sleeping if we are not even able to assess the scope of the problem to begin with.” A new study shows that the number of women sleeping rough in England is likely more than ten times higher than official government figures suggest, prompting urgent calls for improved data collection and increased investment in gender-sensitive support services. The Women’s Rough Sleeping Census 2024, conducted by Solace Women’s Aid and the Single Homeless Project, identified 1,014 women who had slept rough in the previous three months across 88 local authority areas during a survey carried…