So much for Reform’s tolerance of free speech.
You couldn’t make it up! Nigel Farage is once more being accused of breathtaking hypocrisy, after he jetted off to the U.S. once again, missing the opening of Parliament, to complain about a ‘lack of free speech’ in the UK, while his own party bans journalists at home.
As well as speaking alongside Trump loyalists, Farage will also attend a Congress inquiry into freedom of speech, where he will falsely claim that freedom of speech is under attack in the UK. He is expected to raise the case of Lucy Connolly, the Tory councillor jailed for a tweet calling for asylum hotels to be set on fire, as an example of how free speech is being hampered in the UK.
Of course, it doesn’t matter to Farage that Connolly was jailed after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred.
As part of evidence given to the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Farage said: “On the question of civil liberties, Britain has, unfortunately, now lost her way.
“I will do my part, as a participant in UK democracy, to help our country find its way back to the traditional freedoms which have long bound together our two countries in friendship.”
However, Farage’s hypocrisy really is quite something, especially since Reform’s own politicians in the UK are banning journalists from speaking to them.
Last week, a Reform UK council leader’s decision to ban his councillors from engaging with a prominent local newspaper just because he didn’t like what was reported was slammed as a “massive attack on local democracy”.
Nottinghamshire county council, which is run by Reform, said it would no longer deal with the Nottingham Post, its online edition and a team of BBC-funded local democracy journalists that it manages, after they didn’t like a story about plans for a local government restructure.
So much for Reform’s tolerance of free speech.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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