‘It’s an outrage!’ frothed Farage’s deputy leader on KGBNews last night, after the £350 top-ticket event on a Purley Way industrial estate was called off.
WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, reports
Mr Angry: ‘It’s an outrage’, said Reform UK’s Richard Tice on the dodgy news channel
Far-right political party Reform UK’s Christmas fund-raiser at the Grand Sapphire Hotel that was due to take place tomorrow night has been cancelled, with the venue citing concerns for the safety of their staff.
Last week, Inside Croydon was the first to report publicly that Reform was planning to stage the event, which they had kept under wraps and determined only to sell tickets to their party members.
The decision to cancel the event drew the inevitable faux outrage response from Reform’s deputy leader, MP Richard Tice, who rushed into the studios of fake news TV channel GBNews (check out the upheld complaints at Ofcom) to issue typically knee-jerk threats of legal action against the hotel and the organisation Stand Up to Racism, which had objected to the staging of the event.
Inside Croydon has been unable to confirm whether one cause of the cancellation was that the hotel discovered that the deposit for the event had been paid in Russian Rubles.
Other sauces (bread and apple, mostly) suggested that the deal-breaker came when the hotel’s banqueting suite opted not to serve a main course of gammon.
The Grand Sapphire Hotel is located next to an industrial estate off the busy A23 dual carriageway.
It has a ballroom that can accommodate up to 1,200 seated guests for banquet-style dinners. In their on-screen bleatings last night, Reform claimed to have sold only 200 tickets for the event, where £350 would buy you a night rubbing shoulders with the likes of rent-a-gob MP Lee Anderson while listening to the delightful toons of the night’s “entertainment”, Bell and Spurling.
You can make up your own mind whether this Bernard Manning tribute act is “entertainment”…
Reform UK is a registered company run as a political party by antisemite grifter Nigel Farage and a few of his millionaire mates. It has fewer than 120 members in Croydon, where its local organisation is on its third chairman in barely six months.
Reform has yet to name who their replacement for Carby as their Croydon mayoral candidate will be. It has been suggested that a minimum qualification is that they should at least have a pulse.
Whoever gets picked, it’s likely that their campaign fund – and that of candidates in local elections in Bromley and Sutton in 2026, too – will be short of a bob or two as a result of the event’s cancellation. Farage’s party has claimed it is “too late” to find another venue.
On television, Tice claimed that the hotel owners had been “bullied” into cancelling the Reform gig.
“Well over £20,000 of revenues had been contracted and entered into,” Tice told KGBNews – thought to be a reference to the booking fees paid.
“This is an absolute outrage!” Tice fumed live on air. “This is just appalling! It’s an attack on free speech! It’s the thin end of the wedge!”
Tice, a regular visitor to Dubai, that bastion of free speech and liberal democracy, then mentioned something about “this isn’t North Korea”.
“We’ve got a contract with the venue owner. It’s the venue owner that basically has bottled it and allowed himself to be bullied, when the police said no problem at all, our own security said no problem at all.
‘Simply unacceptable’: who would pay £350 for this shite?
“It’s just simply unacceptable,” Tice said.
“I mean, it is Christmas, for heaven’s sake.”
The Grand Sapphire Hotel is owned by Pakistan-born millionaire Suleman Raza, the owner of the Spice Village chain of curry restaurants, who was awarded an MBE when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister.
A statement issued by the hotel today said that, “The decision has been taken in accordance with our lawful duty to safeguard our staff, hotel residents and attendees of the event…
“During discussions with the organisers, all reasonable options were considered, including the offer of postponement…
“The decision to cancel was based solely on our duty of care and the need to act responsibly despite incurring financial loss due to this cancellation.”
Read more: Muslim millionaire in row for hosting Reform’s Christmas party
Read more: Reform to investigate claims over conduct of ‘nasty’ Morgan
Read more: Worries over ‘nasty’ Peter Morgan’s part in Croydon Reform UK
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£350 a ticket? Even Labour doesn’t charge that.
Oh they do, and more, when providing “access”
Very amusing. I am sure some of your readers with left wing politics will not appreciate being sent up so well.
I bet the “special guests” like Tihs and 30p Lee are actually glad that they won’t have to turn up at the arse end of Croydon
Interesting that Reform are threatening to sue. . They seem to have forgotten that they put my up a dead candidate as a councillor recently.
However some may say that a dead councillor is far better than a useless one thats alive.
“I mean, it is Christmas, for heaven’s sake.”
lol
But Jesus is known for being woke and reform don’t like ‘woke’ so rather odd for them to be celebrating his birth.
“Farage’s party has claimed it is “too late” to find another venue.”
The Fairfield Halls’ “The Recreational” can cater for 250 people banqueting style with stage. The management’s penchant for ageing tribute acts would fit neatly with a party paying homage to Hitler and Mosley.
And they twice hosted Jimmy Carr, *after* he “joked” that “When people talk about the Holocaust they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.”
With it being panto season, what better way for Reform supporters to get into the festive spirit by shouting “he’s behind you” whenever the speakers talk about Putin.
Ho ho ho
I guess the West Midlands Police gave advice here….
I am sure the owners of The Grand Sapphire will be thrilled by your generous and elegant assessment of their establishment and its environs.
Indeed, it’s on an industrial estate rather than adjacent to.
Good decision by the owner, especially in light of the latest Racist revelation with regards to Staffordshire County Council’s leader – “No foreign national or first generation migrant should be allowed to sit in Parliament.”
Mr. Raza has won our respect and instead of a planned boycott of this venue next year for my daughter’s wedding, I will certainly be progressing with the original plans.
Thank you for taking note of our community’s concerns. Let Mr. Dubai Trice or 30 pence Halal Anderson bring on a legal challenge. Set up a gofundme page and you will be surprised how much you will end up fundraising. Not from the “lefties”, from the ordinary local folks who will not put up with the divisive and racist brand of Reform’s politics in our manor.
Celebrating people being banned from an event because they have different views to you, is the very definition of being divisive. The irony.
I subscribe to the. . . . I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It.
However, at £350/head, to seed the hatred in Croydon in a private venue bears no prejudice on hearing the opposite views. GB news and X are already doing an excellent job. What could they possibly say in private that cannot be aired in public? I have failed to decipher the maths involved. £20k was supposedly agreed with the venue owner. This means that Reform would have to gather over 57 members paying £350 (£20,000 / £350) just to break even. Remind me of the stats on local Reform members and especially those who can fork out £350? Where will the rest come from? The Reforms members are taken for a ride.
On balance, the right decision was taken considering Reforms/Tice/Anderson’s general views towards minorities. Top that up with Farage distaste for Jews. Why on earth would Reform target a venue that is owned by an immigrant, run by the majority of immigrants, serves halal food and is nested in a large immigrant community. Is this not a deliberate provocation? Should we not have the right to protest and stop this event? Should we not be relieved that this venue is spared? Is it wrong to celebrate?
With the same token, should his venue also host Tommy Robinson next? Will the outrage be equally justified or should we respect Tommy’s rights to stir up trouble in Croydon?
To assist with the arithmetic.
Reform claimed they sold more than 200 tickets. There may have been some comps in all tha.
Tickets were available from £100 (with some other discounts also available).
Tickets sales were to Reform members only.
Reform in Croydon has fewer than 120 members.
The event was advertised to Reform members in Bromley and Sutton.
200 x £100…
But with multi-million-pound donations from dodgy-sounding Far East crypto millionaires, who’s counting?
To clarify – £9m from a Thai based Brit (Christopher Harborne). After endorsement by Elon Musk, Candy Brothers, Paul Marshall (owner of GB News), Reform should instead hold its event on a yacht or at a Crypto bro conference. Funny how foreign money is bankrolling Reform.
Plenty of palatial Soviet era hotels in Moscow where they’d feel perfectly at home. I sure Nige’s friend Vlad could fix them up with a generous discount.
I thought Lee Anderson was a Bernard Manning tribute act.
Shame the new Spoons at Coombe Lodge opening has been delayed by a week to the 17th December since surely this is more a venue providing a christmas meal for their clientele and the cash in hand donations can be passed around in a brown envelope to George Cotterell to put in the spin cycle with the secluded side rooms avaliable there. At least then they can get back on with the business of finding the next corpse to be their next election candidate.
Mr. Trice’s naked warning and the ensuing altercation may bode well for this unforgettable slice of gritty Croydon on a cusp of gentrification. National media coverage may have inadvertently generated far more free publicity.
The ensuing behavioural prediction serves as a simple tale of psychopathic yuppie greed, a moniker apt for the upper echelons of Reform. Croydon stands united and the true mask is revealed of the nastiness, a coefficient of Reform.
Commendation to the owners of the establishment for rectifying their initial oversight. We cannot possibly extend a red carpet to profanity-laced opportunists, racists, anti-semites, islamophobes in Croydon.
Oh dear. What a shame.
RefUK was formed as a plc, so they are understandably upset at losing a source of revenue. But hey, who cares? That rancid rat farage and lice infested tice deserve to lose money – their racism for financial gain party deserves to be denied access to a location because the majority of the inhabitants in the vicinity kicked up a stink – and rightly so – at having such a group of visit their community and be denigrated by a bunch of pissed up twats.
The Grand Sapphire did the right thing.