Take it as a “badge of honour”, several friends have told me. Over the past two days the Reform UK press office seems to have been more chaotic than ever. First, on Tuesday evening I got an email telling me my request to attend the party’s annual conference, which starts in Birmingham today, had been rejected. They gave no reason.
But then, just after midday on Wednesday, I got a much friendlier message from Reform granting my accreditation, and even saying they were “looking forward” to “welcoming” me to Birmingham. That was nice.
It didn’t last. Two hours later came a third email again rejecting my application.
It soon emerged that the same thing had happened to at least three other journalists, including the author and blogger Peter Geoghegan, Imran Mulla of Middle East Eye, and Anna Isaac, City editor of The Guardian.
Perhaps I was barred because of my independent biography of Nigel Farage, One Party After Another, published four years ago, which exposed his alleged racism and antisemitism while a teenager at Dulwich College. Or perhaps Reform didn’t like my more recent criticism of Farage, much of it published by The i Paper.
