Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader and MP for Boston and Skegness, forgot the names of two Glasgow councillors who recently defected to his party from the Conservatives. The scene occurred during a photo-op outside Val D’oro chip shop, a local institution.
John Gray (Renfrewshire) and Ross Lambie (South Lanarkshire) switched parties at a time when Reform UK is experiencing an uptick in polling projected to result in a 15-seat gain in next year’s Holyrood elections.
When asked who his party’s new members were, Mr Tice, 60, responded: “John and Ross. John and Ross.”
When pressed for their surnames and constituencies, the visibly irritated deputy leader responded: “Are you gonna [sic] ask a policy question?”
Mr Tice made his first visit to Scotland this year in the hopes of challenging Russell Findlay’s Scottish Tories are the only rightwing party in parliament; Reform UK currently has no MSPs.
When quizzed about his party’s Scotland policy, Mr Tice criticised ‘Net Stupid Zero’ and vowed to campaign to open up North Sea drilling rights, referencing President Donald Trump saying: “Drill, Scotland, drill.”
Meanwhile, First Minister John Swinney attacked Nigel Farage, Mr Tice’s boss, as “fundamentally racist” and proposed a summit of all parties at Holyrood to form a strategy to stave off the far right.
Mr Tice characterised such comments as “juvenile smears” and “pathetic.”
Reform UK’s line of attack in the run-up to next year’s poll seems to be focused more on the SNP than on Labour, and Mr Tice did not rule out future collaboration, saying: “We should work with anybody who wants to make people better off. That has to be the key objective of everybody.”
However, given that Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is on the record as saying “we will not work with a political party like Reform,” any such partnership appears unlikely.
“Richard Tice MP (Boston and Skegness, Reform UK)” by UK Parliament is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
