This week has seen Nigel Farage defend a Nazi salute and a homophobic joke, and U-turn on another policy pledge
1. Nigel Farage defends Nazi salute and homophobic joke
Reform leader Nigel Farage has defended a Reform candidate standing in the Welsh Parliament elections in May after he was pictured performing a Nazi salute. Asked by a journalist if he would kick Corey Edwards, the candidate in question, out of Reform, he said: “No, he’s a human being”, and suggested he was being “silly and funny” by impersonating Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers.
Farage also swept to the defence of Scottish Reform leader Malcolm Offord over a homophobic joke about George Michael’s ashes being cooked in a curry. He excused the joke, saying that Offord made it in 2018 at a “rugby club boozy dinner”.
2. Reform MPs stage walkout from PMQs
Farage asked the prime minister a question about small boats at PMQs on Wednesday, claiming that he could be ‘trusted’ to “stop them from coming” but that Keir Starmer had failed to do so.
The PM’s response was: “Mr Speaker, this is from the man and the party that voted against giving law enforcement counter-terrorism style powers to tackle it.
“So he wants the grievance, he doesn’t want it sorted.”
Starmer then tore into Farage, pointing out that Reform had pledged to lower people’s taxes, but had instead increased council tax across all of 13 councils. The eight Reform MPs then stormed out of PMQs, with Farage later claiming that his reason for doing so was because Starmer had ‘ignored’ his question.
3. Temporary ban on crypto donations imposed in blow to Reform
Farage proudly declared that Reform would become the first political party to accept cryptocurrency donations at a bitcoin conference in Las Vegas last May. Reform is believed to have received its first crypto donation in October, but it has yet to declare any crypto donations to the Electoral Commission.
According to a report in the Observer, Reform UK has been converting cryptocurrency donations into cash before they reach the party’s accounts, thereby obscuring the original source of the funding.
In a major blow to Farage, crypto donations to political parties have now been temporarily banned with immediate effect following the publication of the Rycroft Review of foreign interference in politics.
4. Reform U-turns on nationalisation pledge
Reform has made a number of U-turns. It pledged to remove the two-child benefit limit, but then backtracked and said it would fully reinstate it. It abandoned its promise to cut council tax. It dropped a pledge to cut taxes by £90 billion. Farage has now said that a Reform government would not nationalise water and energy companies, in the party’s latest policy U-turn.
Just last summer, Farage said he was determined to bring half of the water industry back into public ownership, as it would cost “a lot less” money. Now, Reform has dropped the policy citing the UK’s economic difficulties.
5. Farage says council tax ‘has to go up’
Reform UK plastered their leaflets with promises to ‘cut your taxes’ in the run-up to the local elections last year, yet Farage has now conceded that council tax “has to rise” as councils are in “massive debt”. Not only that, but Farage continues to distance himself from Reform’s council leaflets, and claims that the party did not pledge to cut council tax, despite their leaflets saying otherwise.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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