Just a day before voters in parts of Yorkshire go to the polls in local elections in which Reform hopes to make big gains, the party’s deputy leader has chosen to get involved in an unseemly online spat with the editor of the White Rose County’s self-styled “national newspaper”.
Terminally online Richard Tice took umbrage with the Yorkshire Post’s coverage of one of his candidates for Sheffield City Council. Nathaniel Menday made it to the heady heights to 14th in the New World’s list of the 40 worst Reform candidates after posting a photo of Berlin’s Nazi-era Olympiastadion with the comment “Whichever group of people built this must have been real visionaries!” He has also described himself as an “ethno-nationalist”.
In an interview with the Post, Tice defended Menday, who has faced calls from opposition parties to be sacked. “If people are elected, they’ll all be looked at by the team, and decisions will be made. We do that, as do the other parties, and that’s just the facts of life if you’ve got 4,900 candidates. We’re all human. Many of these people are standing for the first time,” he said.
“They’re passionate about trying to improve things. Have many people in their private lives occasionally sworn, thought something dark, said something dark? Yes, we’re all human.”
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Following the publication of the article by Westminster correspondent Ralph Blackburn, which appeared under the headline ‘“We’re all human”: Richard Tice responds to Reform Sheffield candidate accused of praising Nazis’, Tice took to, inevitably, X to object to the verbatim reporting of his views as “libellous”.
“Pathetic misleading twaddle from journalist Blackburn who has deliberately held back our interview from last Tuesday to try to cause political damage to Reform ahead of local elections on Thursday,” he wrote.
“He and rest [sic] of Establishment media will be given short shrift by voters this week who will vote Reform in their millions. Voters are sick of this smearing sneering libellous nonsense.”
That earned a rebuke from the paper’s editor, James Mitchinson, who wrote in response: “Mr Tice. The Yorkshire Post is far more trusted than you are. Not least because it has told the truth since 1754. Please don’t pull the Trump card on us. It’s pathetic. It’s pointless. It’s weak. My team is giving you a fair audience with DSA [Disabled Students’ Allowance]. You should do better with this one.”
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“Mr Mitchinson,” replied Tice. “Your journalist has behaved very poorly on this and well you know it.
“He has mixed and matched words to make a fake news story. Effectively doing a BBC Trump on me. He has then held the false story to try to do electoral harm. It does your longstanding newspaper no credit to behave in this way.”
If so, then the Post can expect a libel suit from Tice in the post very soon. Or perhaps not – lawyers at the Sunday Times are still awaiting the one he has very loudly threatened against them after three separate reports about his failure to pay taxes relating to his business interests.
Another Taco – Tice Always Chickens Out – possibly?
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