Is Reform cooling on SAS man Middleton's bid for London mayor?

Are Reform cooling on the idea of fielding Ant Middleton – Special Forces soldier, TV presenter, convicted criminal and barred company director – as their candidate for London mayor in 2028?

The former SAS: Who Dares Wins star has long been touted as Nigel Farage’s man in the capital, not least by himself. Middleton claimed earlier this year it was “only a matter of time” until he was in the City Hall hotseat where he would “cleanse” the capital’s streets and make it “the most secure place on the planet”.

That he would do so under the Reform rosette was assumed after he gave the party his support last year and spoke at its national conference. Now it is rumoured that Farage may be looking for someone a little less problematic for the role.

Not only was Middleton banned by the Insolvency Service earlier this year from becoming a director for four years following the failure of his company to pay more than £1 million in tax, but his law ‘n’ order credentials are also stretched by his 2013 conviction for the unlawful wounding of a male police officer and the common assault of a female colleague in a nightclub in Essex.

But perhaps even more concerning for Reform bosses is Middleton’s increasingly intemperate Tommy Robinson-style language. Not only does “cleansing” the streets of Britain’s multicultural capital have unfortunate connotations, but Middleton’s policies are at best wacky, including “a Military Guard Unit (a newly formed security force)” on the streets.

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“It’s [sic] would not only be a reactive and deterrent force on the ground but also great for tourists to experience and more importantly feel safe with the best of Britain at their deposal [sic]… British applicants (British descendants) only as to up hold [sic] the values, principles and standards of what our great nation represents,” he wrote on, inevitably, X.

This week Middleton sought unsuccessfully to defuse the rumours, writing within the space of a single post that they were “incorrect” and the two parties were “still very much aligned and no such drifting away has happened”, but also that “I have always voiced an option to run independently which may have been a cause of certain rumours”.

Were Middleton to run independently it would please many of his online fans, who tend to think Reform is too left wing. Responses included that their hero was “too patriotic for Farage”, Reform were “going more liberal than the libcons” and that Middleton had “been making some rather authoritarian-leaning remarks that will have given the wokerati in Reform the shits”.

Still, there are other outdoors-loving TV personalities who could step into the breach. Spotted having dinner with Farage and his moneyman Nick Candy in London’s swanky Mayfair this week was Bear Grylls, the woggle-clad adventurer most recently seen helping to baptise Russell Brand in the Thames.