Ant Middleton misses out on chance to be Reform mayor of London

Last August, Ant Middleton – the former special forces soldier, star of TV’s SAS: Who Dares Wins and convicted thug who served a prison sentence for beating up two police officers – was still widely seen as Reform’s presumptive candidate for mayor of London at the next election in 2028. That was until he managed to be too right wing for even his party colleagues with a racist post calling for the descendants of immigrants to be banned from holding political power in the UK.

Middleton had been groomed for the role for months, even attending Donald Trump’s inauguration last January as part of a Reform group including Nigel Farage and the party’s under-fire treasurer Nick Candy. But in August he posted on X: “1st, 2nd & 3rd generation immigrants SHOULD NOT hold top tier government positions! Our great nation, our culture and our great people are not naturally at the forefront of their hearts & minds! It’s just not in their nature or DNA! Patriotism can not be taught or bought… Our Capital City of our Christian country needs to be run by a native Brit with generational Christian values.”

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This was widely seen as an attack on Zia Yusuf, the hokey-cokeying former Reform chairman who is widely disliked among the party’s membership but is still close to Farage. But as Rats in a Sack said at the time, he was more likely to be kicking back at rumours that the media-friendly Laila Cunningham, the ‘vigilante mum’ Westminster City councillor who defected to Reform from the Tories last summer, would be Farage’s mayoral pick instead. Like Yusuf, she is a Muslim and therefore lacks Middleton’s “generational Christian values”.

Now the candidate has been announced… and it is Cunningham. The 48-year-old mother-of-seven and former criminal prosecutor, born in London to Egyptian parents, was announced as the party’s pick – following, as is the Reform way, no internal democracy whatsoever – at a press conference today.

Middleton, who was continuing to post on X about his plans for London once he was Reform’s mayor up until just three days ago, has yet to respond. In classic Reform style, can we expect a defection to Advance UK or UKIP very soon?