How do you spend your free time? Perhaps you partake in a sport of your choosing, or maybe you go out and feed the ducks on a weekend? There are a whole host of activities you can do to unwind and relax.
Personally, I’m one to plot the downfall of Reform UK. I sit there at my desk with a framed portrait of Dan Hodges hanging above me, eagerly concocting ways to bring down the team in teal.
‘Mwahaha’ I laugh to myself, as I discover yet another councillor who has said some blatantly racist remark on some random, Russian-operated Facebook community page, ‘this will surely cause Farage to resign!’.
Or at least, this is what Reform UK want you to think that I do with my free time. They want you to believe that I hate every fiber of their being, and that I will stop at nothing to bring down their entire operation. Fortunately for them, I have a life. But, with the recent ITV sting operation having been released, it’s very easy to come to the conclusion that the mainstream media simply have it out for Reform.
The recording captures a year-long experience in Reform UK. Councillors are shown to be Islamophobic, sexist and racist, and senior figures, such as Sarah Pochin MP, are shown on camera to admit that Reform UK higher-ups are a tad “chauvinistic”. The whole ordeal is disgusting and vile. No other words can be used to describe the content of the documentary, and anyone who is defending any of the comments being made should really give their head a wobble and develop some level of critical thinking.
Before the recording had even been made public, however, Richard Tice sought to get ahead of the game. To jump before he was pushed. “ITV and Hardcash Productions have engaged in probable criminal activity against Reform UK,” he wrote on X. Others have followed suit, and sought to bash the reporters as being involved in some left-wing, mainstream media stitch up.
One is not particularly surprised at such a response. It is, after all, Reform’s modus operandi. For if every journalist in the UK is some matcha-drinking, gender-questioning, Heaven-attending, blue-haired leftie, then it’s impossible for Reform to do anything wrong. Can’t you see! The media despises Reform!
It’s an easy idea to sell, but when one looks behind the snake-oil-salesman-like rhetoric, it becomes difficult to agree with such a sentiment.
This is, after all, the same party that, not one year ago, were riding a high of more than 30 per cent in the polls. Their officials were swanning around TV studios, telling journalists where to stick it because they were going to form the next government, and Nigel Farage was going to be the next Prime Minister. They wanted to be treated as though they were a government in waiting.
And so, the media obliged. They began to treat Reform like they would any government in waiting. They began asking questions, and scrutinising their operation, and launching investigations. In fact, they did everything that one should do to any party that looked set to form a future government.
‘What horror!’ Reform cried out, as they realised the error of their ways. For what Reform failed to mention, was that they wanted the media coverage that comes with being a government in waiting, they just didn’t want the scrutiny that came with it. How dare the media raise perfectly legitimate questions over the party’s vetting practices. It’s a disgrace. Indeed, Reform want to have their cake and eat it. Sorry chaps, but that’s not how it works. If you want to sit at the grown-up table, then you play by the same rules as everyone else.
And this notion that somehow Reform are being cruelly targeted by the media is utter tosh as well. It was the Conservatives who were once the victim of an undercover sting operation by Channel 4, and it was Labour who suffered at the hands of Gabriel Pogrund and the Sunday Times’ investigation team over Lord Alli’s donations. Other parties face the same scrutiny, but Reform just cock-up a hell of a lot more. That’s not a media problem, it’s a Reform one.
As one journalist put it, if Reform are really so eager to stop themselves from being the target of investigations, then they shouldn’t “do illegal stuff.” It’s not a difficult ask. If you have a serious political operation, with an earnest leadership team and a proper vetting process, then this should all be fairly easy. Ah…
Let us be blunt for a moment. Reform are not the victims of some big, mainstream media stitch up. They are the victims of their own incompetence. They continue to prance around, begging to be taken seriously as a political party, boasting of how they will flood the green benches of House of Commons with their MPs come the next election, yet simultaneously despise anyone who dares ask how they intend to do that. Or what policies they will put forward. Or whether they have a serious operation at all.
They cannot have it both ways. Either they accept the level of scrutiny that comes from being a major party and gets their house in order, or they accept that they’re not a big player, and thus don’t deserve the same level of media coverage as the Tories and Labour.