Reform UK’s Laila Cunningham was fact-checked live on air after claiming “very few” journalists were banned from the party’s conference.
Last month, Reform decided to ban a number of journalists from its conference in Birmingham. Coincidentally, a number of these journalists had written stories in the past that had put Reform or Nigel Farage under scrutiny.
For example, the Guardian’s City editor Anna Isaac was one of those to be denied press access to the conference. Isaac was the journalist who broke the story about Farage’s undeclared £5m from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
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Like with plenty of things, it wasn’t difficult to see the parallels between Reform’s actions and those of Donald Trump and his administration in America.
This week, Trump has found himself in conflict with the media and press after he announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.
During an appearance on Robert Peston’s ITV show this week, Reform’s London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham was asked what she made of Trump’s ban, given that her party has a history of journalist bans.
Immediately, Cunningham dismissed Reform’s journalist bans, telling Peston “very few” media figures had been banned.
“We had the Guardian, we had the Mirror, we had a lot of press that doesn’t really agree with us, and I don’t think politicians get to decide which journalism is legitimate or not,” she said.
It was at this point that the Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crerar, who was also a guest on the programme, reminded Cunningham that some of her colleagues had been banned from the Reform conference.
When Cunningham said there had been other Guardian reporters at the conference, Crerar hit back: “I went, but one of my colleagues Anna Isaac, who had written stories about Nigel Farage finances, was banned.”