“NEW: Tower Hamlets Council is holding an ‘Islamophobia Conference’ at 11 am on the 11th November,” posted an indignant Robert Jenrick, Reform’s self-styled ‘shadow chancellor’ on Facebook at the weekend.
“At the very moment the country falls silent to remember the fallen. It’s shameful and offensive,” he fumed. As indeed it might be considered to be… were it true. Alas the post – which at the time of writing has attracted more than 13,000 likes, almost 600 shares and nearly 3,000 comments – isn’t.
The east London council had announced the conference on November 11 in an X post, albeit once which was swiftly deleted (after attracting predictable online opprobrium from the likes of Lee Anderson, Matt Goodwin and Rupert Lowe). But the ticket site for the event and other sources, including the council’s Facebook post that day and a listing by the Council of Mosques a full two weeks previously, all gave a date of November 10. On Sunday the council posted a correction and apology on X saying that the wrong date had been given in their earlier post.
Veteran trade unionist Kevin Courtney, one of the speakers at the conference, tells Rats in a Sack he was approached on September 30 to take part, and the date given to him was November 10, not the 11th. So it would seem that the conference was always planned for the day before Armistice Day and it was only a single errant social media post which said anything different.
Meanwhile Jenrick’s post objecting to a non-event on November 11 is still up, despite the fact that numerous comments reacting to it are correcting Jenrick on his error. Does the former Tory agree that it is “shameless and offensive” to spread lies online as a result of over-eagerly trying to exploit Remembrance Day to score points?
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Meanwhile, one might have thought a ‘shadow chancellor’ might have better things to do ahead of this year’s Budget, due to be delivered on Wednesday. Happily, Reform is sharing the load – a pre-Budget interview on Reform’s alternative plans, for Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, was given to deputy leader Richard Tice not, as might normally be expected, the party’s Treasury spokesperson.
Happily Jenrick is a team player with no eyes on the top job, so he’ll be glad to take a step back!
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