‘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.
“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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