Nigel Farage responded. He said sarcastically that he \u201cloved\u201d the FT; the day after the Mandelson story broke, its front page carried a story about a Reform councillor in Kent, he said. He said there was no point addressing Gross\u2019s question. \u201cJust write some silly story,\u201d he told Gross.<\/p>\n
Farage has got form for patronising and insulting female journalists in this way<\/a>.<\/p>\n (As well as patronising, Farage\u2019s response was unfair. The FT pursued the story about Mandelson\u2019s links with Jeffrey Epstein more aggressively than almost any other UK news organisation.)<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a011.50 EST<\/p>\n Key events<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 37m ago<\/p>\n Diane Abbott says Jesse Jackson was ‘an inspiration’ – and showed why Labour should not stop talking about racism<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 1h ago<\/p>\n Steep rise in universal credit claims in recent years mostly driven by people switching from older benefits, report says<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 2h ago<\/p>\n How Reform UK MPs are almost twice as likely to be privately educated as Tory MPs<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 3h ago<\/p>\n Labour says Reform UK now led by ‘Farage’s top team of failed Tories’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 4h ago<\/p>\n Miliband says UK fuel bills would ‘skyrocket’ if Tice ever became energy secretary due to his ‘dangerous’ views<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 4h ago<\/p>\n TUC says Reform UK would make discrimination legal by getting rid of Equality Act<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 4h ago<\/p>\n Ex-Tories in Reform UK just as ‘unfit to govern’ as Tories still in party, Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper says<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 4h ago<\/p>\n Farage says he ‘100%’ supports MMR vaccine – but claims were made about Covid vaccines that weren’t true<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 4h ago<\/p>\n ‘Just write some silly story’ – Farage insults female FT reporter after she asks difficult questions<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 5h ago<\/p>\n Farage says there’s ‘nothing socialist’ about Reform UK wanting state involvement in industries<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 5h ago<\/p>\n Braverman says she wants to scrap Equality Act to get rid of ‘divisive notion of protected characteristics’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 5h ago<\/p>\n Farage rules out pact with Tories, saying they are ‘utterly dishonourable’ and he wouldn’t trust them<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 5h ago<\/p>\n Farage says Rupert Lowe’s claim his new party at 10% in polls ‘utter rot’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 5h ago<\/p>\n Farage claims there are now ‘very few’ frontline Tories he would want to let join Reform UK<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 5h ago<\/p>\n Tories say new Reform UK line-up looks like ‘tribute act to old Conservative party’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 5h ago<\/p>\n Farage says, if he were ‘hit by a bus tomorrow’, Reform UK would still succeed because it now has stand-alone brand<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Braverman says Reform UK would abolish ‘equalities department’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Braverman says she wants fewer young people going to university, and 50% going into trade jobs<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Suella Braverman appointed Reform UK’s spokesperson for education, skills and equalities, Farage says<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Farage confirms Zia Yusuf will be Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Robert Jenrick says as Reform UK’s Treasury spokesperson he will develop policies for ‘alarm-clock Britain’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Tice says Reform would set up sovereign wealth fund to help with reindustrialisation of UK<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Richard Tice would run Reform UK’s new Department of Business, Trade and Energy, and be deputy PM, Farage says<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Farge holds press conference<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 6h ago<\/p>\n Commons business committee may investigate Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s work as trade envoy, its chair says<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 7h ago<\/p>\n 150,000 working-age disabled adults to gain at least \u00a3400 per year as government raises minimum income guarantee by 7%<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 7h ago<\/p>\n Labour and Tories both braced for bigger losses after U-turn allows 30 local council elections to go ahead<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 8h ago<\/p>\n UK unemployment rate hits five-year high of 5.2% as wage growth cools<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 8h ago<\/p>\n Most people in a future Reform UK cabinet would not be career politicians, Zia Yusuf claims<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 8h ago<\/p>\n Reform UK no longer \u2018one-man band\u2019, Farage says as he prepares to announce \u2018shadow cabinet\u2019 appointments<\/p>\n <\/a>Show key events only<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature<\/p>\n The broadcaster Michael Crick says Channel 4 News will tonight be broadcasting a story based on material contained in his biography of Nigel Farage published some time ago. He says<\/a>:<\/p>\n When Nigel Farage tried to become a Tory MP. On C4News tonight, Gary Gibbon tells the story – based on my biography – of how in 2004, while a Ukip MEP, Farage secretly met a senior Cons MP & a Surrey councillor, seeking their help to defect & get picked for a safe Tory seat.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Uplift, a group campaigning to support the transition to renewable energy, has accused Richard Tice<\/a>, named today as Reform UK\u2019s business and energy spokesperson, of promoting a Trumpian fantasy.<\/p>\n Commenting on Tice\u2019s attack on net zero politicies, Uplift\u2019s deputy director Robert Palmer said:<\/p>\n Tice is peddling a Trumpian fantasy. The geological reality is that after 50 years of drilling the UK has now burned most of its gas. Government projections show our reliance on imported gas is set to rise from 55% today to more than two-thirds by 2030, and over 90% by 2050. More drilling won\u2019t make a dent in that. What will is, accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels.<\/p>\n Reform continues to mimic Trump. Like the US president they are enthralled to the oil and gas lobby. The party is stuck in the last century – actively trying to block cheap renewable energy and denying that climate change is happening despite the evidence all around us.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Diane Abbott says Jesse Jackson was ‘an inspiration’ – and showed why Labour should not stop talking about racism Chris Osuh is a Guardian community affairs correspondent.<\/p>\n Labour risks losing loyal Black voters for \u201cnot talking\u201d about racial equality, Diane Abbott has said, paying tribute to the late civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.<\/p>\n Abbott, the country\u2019s first Black woman MP, told the Guardian that Jesse Jackson\u2019s message of racial equality was still relevant to today, and yet the \u201cLabour party and Keir Starmer don\u2019t talk about racial equality at all.\u201d<\/p>\n She added:<\/p>\n Jesse wasn\u2019t afraid to talk about racism, and I think if we don\u2019t talk about racism, if we don\u2019t challenge it, then the danger is something like Reform, it will just get stronger and stronger.<\/p>\n Abbott said former Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney \u201cwas very much of the opinion we had to chase the Reform vote\u201d and that she hoped that his departure marked a turning point for the Labour party, at a time when it risks losing votes to the left.<\/p>\n Asked if she feared Labour risked losing Black voters, who were most likely to vote Labour in 2024, she said:<\/p>\n I think so \u2026 If people can\u2019t see the Labour party speaking up for them, they\u2019re going to sort of move away from the Labour party. It depends where you are, but certainly in London, to the Greens.<\/p>\n Speaking of Jackson, she added:<\/p>\n He really is an inspiration to Black activists and politicians in the UK, certainly my generation of Black activists. What he taught us was to be brave \u2013 he had to be brave seeing his mentor, Martin Luther King, slaughtered in front of him. And to speak your mind \u2013 I\u2019ve always spoken my mind, even when it gets me in trouble.<\/p>\n Here is our story about the death of Jesse Jackson by Melissa Hellmann and Martin Pengelly.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n At his press conference this morning Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said that a poll out later would show that Rupert Lowe, the former Reform UK MP who has now set up a new party, Restore Britain, has very low name recognition. (See 12.24pm<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Farage was probably referring to the figures in this story<\/a> just published by GB News. The report by Jack Walters says:<\/p>\n Fewer than one-in-10 British voters can identify Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe, a new poll conducted exclusively for GB News has revealed.<\/p>\n Polling firm JL Partners found Mr Lowe\u2019s visibility has dropped from 14 per cent to just eight per cent in the 10 months after his expulsion from Reform UK in March 2025.<\/p>\n Reform UK voters also struggled to correctly identify Mr Lowe when shown a picture of the former Brexit Party MEP, with the proportion jumping from 71 per cent last March to 86 per cent.<\/p>\n GB News employs Farage as a presenter.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Steep rise in universal credit claims in recent years mostly driven by people switching from older benefits, report says<\/p>\n The steep rise in universal credit (UC) claimants in recent years has been driven mainly by people moving from older benefits rather than brand new claims, figures show. The Press Association says:<\/p>\n The Department for Work and Pensions has for the first time published a breakdown of the proportion of claimants who have been switched to UC from so-called \u201clegacy\u201d benefits, such as income support and jobseeker\u2019s allowance.<\/p>\n The total number of UC claimants in Britain stood at 8.34 million in December 2025, up by almost a million from 7.36 million 12 months earlier.<\/p>\n Data published today<\/a> shows that more than three-quarters of this increase (775,790) was due not to new claims, but instead were people who moved onto UC from other benefits.<\/p>\n The government has said the roll-out of UC across Britain should be completed this year, with any claimants still on legacy benefits due to be moved to UC by March.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Sam Freedman, the political commentator who worked as a policy adviser in the Department for Education when Michael Gove was secretary of state, is not impressed by the decision to make Suella Braverman Reform UK\u2019s education spokesperson. He says<\/a>:<\/p>\n Giving Braverman the education brief is quite a choice for Reform. I was on an education commission with her once before she went completely mad and she knew absolutely nothing at all.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Keir Starmer has paid to keep a personalised pair of cufflinks given to him by Donald Trump during the US president\u2019s state visit last year, the Press Association reports. PA says:<\/p>\n The prime minister purchased the gift, which would otherwise have been held by Downing Street, for his teenage son, the Press Association understands.<\/p>\n Details released by the Cabinet Office show Starmer received the cufflinks along with a personalised necklace and a golf club from the president, while his wife was given a pair of cowboy boots.<\/p>\n He initially paid to keep the necklace while the other presents were listed as retained by No 10, but an updated register of ministers\u2019 interests on Tuesday showed he had bought both items of jewellery.<\/p>\n Starmer and his wife, Victoria, hosted Trump and his wife, Melania, at Chequers, the prime minister\u2019s country retreat, in September following the president\u2019s stay with the King and Queen at Windsor Castle.<\/p>\n They presented the president with a ministerial red box and gave the first lady a silk scarf.<\/p>\n Ministers must declare any gift they receive worth more than \u00a3140 and either hand it to their department, or pay the difference between the value and the \u00a3140 threshold to keep it.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>How Reform UK MPs are almost twice as likely to be privately educated as Tory MPs<\/p>\n It is not hard to see why Nigel Farage reacted so badly when confronted with the question from Anna Gross from the Financial Times. (See 1.07pm<\/a>.) She asked if British voters really wanted to see US Ice-style deportation units operating in this country. But her main question, addressed to Suella Braverman, the new Reform UK education spokesperson, was what her message would be to people worried about the party\u2019s commitment to state education given that all five people on the platform today \u2013 now the party\u2019s core leadership team \u2013 were educated at private schools.<\/p>\n Gross was highlighting the fact that, although Reform UK<\/a> is now a party getting much of its support from working-class voters, in parliament its MPs are far posher than those from the other parties, if educational background is taken as a key class metric.<\/p>\n This is confirmed by statistics set out in the recently published The British General Election of 2024<\/a>, the definitive guide to what happened in the summer before last and the latest in a series of academic election studies going back to 1945.<\/p>\n The 2024 volume is written by Robert Ford, Tim Bale, Will Jennings and Paula Surridge, and this is what the say about the education background of the 2024 intake.<\/p>\n Close to two-thirds of MPs elected in 2024 attended a comprehensive state school \u2013 the highest ever recorded, though still well below the 90% figure among the electorate at large.<\/p>\n Fewer than a quarter of MPs from the three largest Britain-wide parties were privately educated, a record low and down from over a third in 2015.<\/p>\n And the school often seen as the pinnacle of privilege \u2013 Eton, alma mater of David Cameron and Boris Johnson \u2013 has never been less present in the corridors of power. The current parliament contains just four Old Etonians, down from 11 in 2019, 19 in 2015 and 53 in 1979.<\/p>\n That said, the educational experiences of different parties\u2019 MPs remain distinctive \u2013 and predictably so.<\/p>\n While a narrow majority of Conservative MPs attended state schools for the third parliament in a row, the share of privately educated Tories actually rose in 2024 and continues to be much higher than for the other main parties.<\/p>\n Labour MPs have been overwhelmingly state-educated since at least the 1970s, and Lib Dem MPs since the 2000s.<\/p>\n By contrast, three out of the five Reform UK MPs were privately educated, making the populist rightwingers fond of railing against an out-of-touch establishment the only party with a majority of privately educated MPs.<\/p>\n With little shift in the mix of educational backgrounds within each party, the overall jump in state-educated MPs has been driven by the turning of the political tides, as state educated Labour and Lib Dem challengers replaced privately educated Conservatives.<\/p>\n Five Reform UK MPs were elected in 2024, and 60% of them were privately educated. Since then two of them have left the party: Rupert Lowe<\/a>, who was privately educated, and James McMurdock, who wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n But the party has gained five MPs: Sarah Pochin, Danny Kruger, Robert Jenrick<\/a> and Suella Braverman (all privately educated), and Andrew Rosindell (who was state-educated). Kruger went to Eton. That means six out of eight Reform UK MPs \u2013 or 75% \u2013 are now privately educated. (The other two who are privately educated are Farage himself and Richard Tice; Lee Anderson was state-educated.)<\/p>\n As this chart from The British General Election of 2024 shows, for the Conservative party the figure is 46%.<\/p>\n Photograph: British General Election of 2024<\/p>\n The book is invaluable, as well as being a good read; it is the one election book that will stay on my desk for good.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a010.03 EST<\/p>\n Labour says Reform UK now led by ‘Farage’s top team of failed Tories’<\/p>\n Labour has described Reform UK<\/a> as a \u201ctop team of failed Tories\u201d.<\/p>\n In a statement released after the Reform UK press conference, Anna Turley, the Labour<\/a> chair, said:<\/p>\n Farage\u2019s top team of failed Tories spent over 3,000 days inflicting untold damage on our country in government, trashing our economy, hammering families\u2019 mortgages, and leaving our borders open.<\/p>\n They failed Britain before \u2013 they\u2019d do the same again under Reform.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s appointments clearly reveal that neither keeping our nation safe nor tackling NHS waiting lists are priorities for Farage or Reform UK.<\/p>\n Left to right: Zia Yusuf, Robert Jenrick, Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and Suella Braverman at the Reform UK press conference. Photograph: Sean Smith\/The GuardianShare<\/a>Miliband says UK fuel bills would ‘skyrocket’ if Tice ever became energy secretary due to his ‘dangerous’ views<\/p>\n Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has said that Richard Tice\u2019s \u201cextreme and dangerous\u201d views mean that he is not fit to be in charge of business and energy in a Reform UK government. And, if Tice did get the job, his policies mean bills would \u201cskyrocket\u201d, Miliband says<\/a>:<\/p>\n 1\/ Reform\u2019s energy surrender plan would sell out our energy security to fossil fuel interests, trash the countryside with fracking, cost hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs and cause bills to skyrocket.<\/p>\n 2\/ Richard Tice is an avowed climate sceptic who wants to \u201cwage war\u201d on good British jobs.<\/p>\n Someone with such extreme and dangerous views should never be put in charge of Britain\u2019s energy security.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n A reader asks:<\/p>\n In today\u2019s Q and A, Nigel Farage has claimed the government made untrue claims about the Covid vaccine. [See 1.12pm<\/a>] Would you be able to remind us who the minister in charge of Covid 19 vaccine deployment was? And what they are up to these days?<\/p>\n Great question. It was, of course, Nadhim Zahawi.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a008.44 EST<\/p>\n TUC says Reform UK would make discrimination legal by getting rid of Equality Act<\/p>\n The TUC has accused Reform UK<\/a> of wanting go make workplace discrimination legal.<\/p>\n Responding to Suella Braverman saying that Reform UK would repeal the Equality Act (see 11.43am<\/a> and 12.42pm<\/a>), Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said:<\/p>\n It\u2019s official \u2013 Reform UK think discrimination should be legal.<\/p>\n Scrapping the Equality Act would be a sledgehammer to hard-won rights working people fought for over generations.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re discriminated against because you\u2019re a woman, black, disabled, pregnant or gay \u2013 that\u2019s fine with them.<\/p>\n This is a blank cheque for bad employers to mistreat their staff.<\/p>\n And it wouldn\u2019t stop there. Scrapping the Equality Act would just be the start.<\/p>\n From ripping up equality protections, to backing fire-and-rehire, to opposing a ban on zero-hours contracts, Reform UK have made it clear whose side they\u2019re on \u2013 and it\u2019s not working people.<\/p>\n![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Chris_Osuh.png\")
Chris Osuh<\/p>\n