Comments made by Richard Tice in 2018 have come back to haunt him as Reform UK eyes up a potentially huge donation from Elon Musk.
Nigel Farage and Nick Candy met with the Tesla billionaire at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida this week amid speculation that he could donate up to $100 million to the right-wing party.
The news has been welcomed by MP Tice, who said: “If Mr Musk can legally donate and he feels that’s the appropriate thing to do then obviously we would be delighted.
“It would be a fantastic endorsement of our policies to save Britain and get Britain growing again.”
But Tice’s views on non-UK citizens getting involved in British politics were very different in 2018.
Back then, Tice was co-chair of the Leave Means Leave group campaigning for the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum to be implemented.
At that time, Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros was helping to fund the anti-Brexit Best For Britain campaign.
In the six-year-old clip unearthed by Adam Schwarz, Tice said: “He doesn’t live here, he doesn’t pay taxes here. What right has he got to interfere with our democracy and try and overthrow the government? He has no right at all.”
Watch the clip in full below:
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