The Sun’s war on political lies does not stretch to Farage

The Sun’s political correspondent Noa Hoffman appeared on Newsnight last week, accusing Rachel Reeves of “at best wilfully misleading the public and at worst outright lying” about the budget. “It comes back to the fundamental values that we see in politicians, specifically the value of being honest,” she said.

In September, Hoffman landed a good story about a politician at best wilfully misleading the public and at worst outright lying. The man in question was Reform leader Nigel Farage, who had claimed migrants were killing and eating swans stolen from London’s eight Royal Parks – except the Royal Parks themselves insisted this was untrue, telling Hoffman, “We’ve not had any incidents reported to us of people killing or eating swans.”

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How did she report this apparent Farage fabrication, which followed a long line of his lies about migrants? Under the headline “SWAN BAKE: Migrants are eating SWANS and carp stolen from UK parks, Nigel Farage claims”, Hoffman included several paragraphs of his inflammatory migrant-baiting claims, including that he held “migrants from Romania and Eastern Europe” responsible. The Royal Parks spokesperson saying the whole thing was nonsense appeared only in the final two paragraphs.

On November 10, Hoffman had a chance to confront Farage about politicians and the truth at a Reform press conference, televised by Sky News. Did the bold defender of Westminster ethics let him have it about the swan story? Er no.

Instead, she pitched softball questions about two of his his favourite talking points, saying: “Thank you, Mr Farage, I was wondering if you could outline what role small businesses could play in tackling Britain’s bloated welfare bill and getting youngsters out of the bedroom and into the workplace, and secondly, if I may, what your plans are to make high streets beautiful again, and not just covered in illegal migrant vape shops?”