Did Reform’s rising star cause Ant’s race rant?

What could have caused Ant Middleton, still officially holding out hopes of standing for Reform in the 2028 London mayor election, to torpedo any remaining chance he had with a racist post calling for the descendants of immigrants to be banned from holding political power in the UK?

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 being groomed for the role and even attended Donald Trump’s inauguration last January as part of a Reform group including Nigel Farage and the party’s under-fire treasurer Nick Candy.

Now those hopes look to be over after Middleton 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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Middleton had already come under pressure within the party over his increasingly far right views and frequent public embarrassments like being his recent four-year ban from becoming a company director over an unpaid £1m tax bill. Some have decoded Middleton’s latest foul rant 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 Middleton is more likely to be kicking back at fresh rumours that the media-friendly Laila Cunningham, the ‘vigilante mum’ Westminster City councillor who defected to Reform last month, will be Farage’s mayoral pick instead. Like Yusuf, she is a Muslim and therefore lacks Middleton’s “generational Christian values.”