Reform’s leading lights have been sent out to tour the broadcast studios and explain why Nigel Farage is proving he hadn’t broken parliamentary rules by calling a by-election against a man with a bin on his head – with varying results.
While Farage performs his usual submarine routine in the face of difficult questions, loyal foot soldiers have been the ones dispatched to answer them.
Robert Jenrick went on Channel 4 News to defend his leader and managed to perform so badly that even the Daily Express, the party’s in-house organ, ran with the headline “Robert Jenrick has ‘meltdown’ live on TV after Farage resignation”.
After insisting that Farage had done nothing wrong and being told by political editor Gary Gibbon that the Reform leader didn’t sit in judgement on that, Jenrick repeated “The people sit in judgement”. When Gibson insisted that, actually, there were rules in place about how such things were policed, the former Tory insisted: “Actually, we’re a democracy. Or at least we in Reform believe it.
“You might not think that if you look at the other parties… look what the Labour Party is doing. They’ve announced that they’re gonna change the law so that British citizens cannot give donations to Reform.” (The Labour Party has not announced that it is going to change the law so that British citizens cannot give donations to Reform.)
Warming to his theme of talking about anything except what he had been booked to answer questions about, he went on: “You’ve got the leader of the Conservative Party likening Nigel Farage to Jeremy Thorpe, a man who stood trial for incitement for murder.” (Badenoch’s comments were in October 2025, when Jenrick was still in the Conservative Party, and she was comparing Farage to Thorpe’s inability to displace the Tories, rather than suggesting he had a dog shot.)
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“The establishment are trying to play judge and jury and executor,” concluded Jenrick. “Well, enough of that.” Attaboy, Bobby J, and we’re sure your loyalty, no matter how crazed, will be rewarded!
Over on LBC, meanwhile, London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham was being quizzed on Farage’s unexplained riches, gamely explaining that Farage had not been politically active at the time he trousered a £5 million donation from a Thai-based crypto billionaire, despite being the chair of Reform UK at the time.
“He wasn’t an MP and he didn’t need to declare it,” she insisted. “I mean, being the chair of a political party is, like, an honorary role. He was not politically active. He was a social media influencer and he was a GB News presenter.”
Pointed out to her by presenter Tom Swarbrick that Farage was still in charge of the party, she said: “Yeah, but he was not politically active. You know, you could have… there are loads of people that are staffed at Reform. I wouldn’t call them all politically active.
“We have people working here in the back office who work for a political party but there is no way anyone would deem them to be politically active. You know, they’re doing accounts… er, it’s just that there’s a separation.”
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“He was not publicly agitating for people to vote for Reform whilst the chair of that organisation?,” asked a quizzical Swarbrick.
“I haven’t seen all his social media posts, I don’t… you know,” said Cunningham. “I don’t know the exact term of being politically active and it seems to be quite subjective depending on who you’re talking to.” Lucky Londoners, getting such a high-calibre candidate to vote for mayor in 2028!
Still, at least Swarbrick gets to speak to such LBC luminaries. His colleague, the star presenter Nick Ferrari, appears to have been blacklisted by the party following a car-crash interview with Farage in which he told the host what he’d done with Christopher Harborne’s moolah was “none of your business” and then boasted he might spend it on “Ferraris or betting on horses”.
“I can tell you this by the way,” Ferrari told listeners this morning. “Reform UK are refusing to speak to me today. So take from that what you will.
“So I apologise to all my listeners, but Reform UK, I’m afraid… war has broken out between the two of us, they will not speak to me. I think it might be down, as the Times newspaper points out, that question I asked when he said it was none of my business and he could buy a fleet of Ferraris if he so chooses. I don’t think that helped relations between us.”
Mocked by the Express, at loggerheads with Nick Ferrari… will the only person left who Reform will speak to be Farage himself on his evening GB News show?
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