Reform’s hypocrisy over Brand and Walliams knows no bounds

Tice was, of course, seeking to accuse Labour of taking the moral high ground when it criticises Reform for their woeful vetting of candidates – the sort of vetting that has led 122, or 5.17%, of all Reform councillors to have been elected in May this year to have been kicked out, suspended, left or defected from the party since being elected to town halls across England just six short months ago.

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But beyond the fact the Russell Brand and David Walliams are definitely not Labour’s highest-profile celebrity supporters over the last decade, is Tice sure that all of his colleagues have kept their distance from Brand – jailed this week for rape and three sexual assaults – and Walliams – accused of abusing his celebrity to groom teenage girls for sex – over the years?

It has now emerged that Tice’s boss, leader Nigel Farage, appeared on Brand’s US podcast nine months after the former comedian was first investigated by police over allegations of sexual assault. During the episode, according to the Guardian, Farage laughed with Brand about their shared interests in taking on the establishment and suggested that the west had provoked Russian president Vladimir Putin into the Ukraine war because “what you don’t do with a Russian bear is deliberately poke it with a stick”.

Farage would have been aware of the allegations against Brand at the time because he had commented on them on GB News the previous year, yet they were not mentioned in the podcast. He has said he was not a big fan of Brand but would not prejudge him and said the right wing influencer had “upset big government” and powerful men such as Bill Gates (an apparent reference to Brand’s anti-vaccine views).

Meanwhile, Walliams was a long-time associate of Nick Candy, the businessman who acts as Reform’s honorary treasurer and chief fundraiser, and whose former charity The Candy Foundation Walliams was a director and trustee of. Walliams was removed from those positions earlier this year, and the foundation appears to have since been wound down.

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But a biography of him on the charity’s now-defunct website showed a moody black-and-white photograph of him with a biography saying “David Walliams is one of Britain’s best-loved comedians,” before noting his OBE (“for services to charity and the arts”) and the 37 million children’s books he has sold.

Tatler’s report of Candy’s 40th birthday party at One Mayfair in 2013 reported how guests included “Jimmy Carr and David Walliams, both of whom had an already glowing Lara Stone (she’s pregnant you see) in fits of giggles with their jokes”. The invitation was reciprocated when Candy and then wife Holly Valance, the Australian former actor, attended Walliams’s 50th birthday party at Claridge’s hotel in Mayfair in September 2021.

To quote Richard Tice, when will Reform apologise for such misjudgements?