Reform MP Robert Jenrick has now said that the Reform member who attacked a woman with a crutch at Reform conference last week “should be given a medal”.

In an interview with LBC on Monday, Jenrick justified the Reform supporter attacking the woman and said he had “zero sympathy” for her. 

Speaking to TalkTV’s Peter Cardwell yesterday afternoon, a viewer asked Jenrick to apologise to the young female Climate Resistance protester who was hit over the head with a crutch by a pensioner at the conference.

The viewer also asked if the pensioner had had his Reform membership suspended.

Jenrick said: “I’m not going to apologise.”

He said it was “an occupational hazard if you’re a professional protester who goes into conferences, tries to disrupt the speech of the leader”.

Jenrick added: “Remember this is a leader whose life has been threatened in recent times. This was a speech that had been delayed because counter-terrorism police…”

The protesters did not threaten violence against Farage or attempt to attack him. However, the police has confirmed it is now investigating incidents in which five protesters were attacked by Reform conference attendees.

West Midlands Police has also said that counter terrorism police had no involvement in Reform conference and did not tell Reform to delay Farage’s speech due to a threat.

Cardwell said: “Did that person deserve to get walloped over the face with a crutch? Is that reasonable?”.

Jenrick responded: “Peter, Peter come on. A professional protester is moaning that an old age pensioner knocked her with a crutch. I mean come on. Honestly I just think it’s completely and utterly ridiculous.”

The TalkTV presenter added: “It wasn’t just that. They had their hair pulled. Have you not a smidgeon of sympathy Robert… none whatsoever?”.

Jenrick said: “I don’t have any sympathy for her, no. In fact I’m sorry for the OAP who’s had his picture plastered all over the papers, he should be given a medal for what he’s done.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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The West Midlands Police is continuing its investigation into assaults on five people at Reform conference last weekend. 

Video footage has been circulating on social media of protesters being assaulted on Friday at Reform’s conference.

The protesters were part of Climate Resistance, and disrupted Nigel Farage’s keynote speech on Friday afternoon. 

In response, Reform conference attendees are seen attacking the hecklers. 

In one video, an older man with a walking stick is seen hitting a female protester over the head, while another grabs her mouth and people push her.

Reacting to the assaults, Reform MP Robert Jenrick said he had “zero sympathy” for the protesters who were attacked. 

He also justified the violence carried out by members of the audience, saying: “What do you expect them to do?”.

Farage laughed at the disruption and said: “We’ve got a screamer. Oh dear.”

The Reform leader also said to the conference hall: “That poor young girl, she looked like she was going to do herself an injury”, before adding, “boring, boring, boring”.

The police have been urging the protesters who were attacked to come forward. 

In a statement, the West Midlands police force said: “To date, none of the victims involved have come forward. We continue to encourage them to do so.”

The statement added: “A number of suspects have been identified as the investigation progresses.”

LFF spoke with a Climate Resistance activist who attended Reform conference at the weekend, who said she was unsure if one of the women who was assaulted would report the incident to the police. 

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Reform MP Robert Jenrick has justified Reform members hitting a protester over the head with a cane at the party’s conference this weekend.

Speaking to LBC’s Lewis Goodall, Jenrick was shown footage of Reform members pulling a female protester by the hair and grabbing her mouth, while one man used a walking stick to hit her on the head.

Reform supporters also attacked several other protesters. 

Activists from Climate Resistance infiltrated Reform UK conference and disrupted Nigel Farage’s speech on Saturday. The group has said it is “horrified at the violence” directed at the activists. 

Goodall asked Jenrick whether the attacks were not “heavy handed literally” and “disproportionate”.

Justifying the violent attacks, the Conservative defector said: “What do you expect them to do?”. 

The LBC journalist put it to Jenrick that they could have led the protester out rather than attacking her.

He added: “[She] probably didn’t need to be clubbed with a crutch.”

Jenrick said: “I don’t know how sympathetic I am towards that person. Not at all.”

Goodall reminded Jenrick that “she got clubbed with a crutch”.

Jenrick then laughed and mocked the woman for “infiltrating” Reform conference and “screaming abuse at the leader of a party” and then “moaning that a pensioner knocked her on the head”.

“Come on! Get a life,” Jenrick said.

Speaking to LBC, the woman who was attacked said: “Nigel Farage himself, as well as members of the audience, are inciting this violence by celebrating assaults like the one I experienced. 

“In fact, this morning Lee Anderson joked, joked about it by offering to buy a new cane for the man who assaulted me, which I think is simply pathetic.”

“They say they work to protect women and girls, yet they assault us when we try to criticise them.”

Reform’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf said he condemned the assaults. 

He said: “On the question of whether I condemn people punching people, yes, I condemn people punching people.”

Farage refused to condemn the violence.  Speaking to journalists on Saturday, he said: “It’s all one way, isn’t it? I can have milkshakes chucked in my face, be bashed over the head with placards and that’s all fine. That’s absolutely fine.

“Yet, well, we have a big event that people have paid a lot of money to come to and we get people there trying to disrupt it and we remove them. Suddenly we’re in the wrong. Utter nonsense.”

Reacting to Jenrick’s comments, Independent MP Shockat Adam wrote on X: Reform UK: “The party of “free speech” and “protection of women” …”.

West Midlands Police has said it is aware of the video circulating online but that they haven’t received a complaint.

Police are calling on the woman to come forward so they can carry out enquiries.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Reform UK’s newly-appointed economic adviser, Mitchell Palmer, wants the NHS to be privatised and called for the state pension triple lock to be scrapped. 

Palmer also argued in favour of migration as a tool for “global poverty alleviation”. 

Robert Jenrick, Reform’s economic spokesperson appointed Palmer, a rightwing economist at the free-market Adam Smith Institute, as one of his chief aides. 

As reported by The Guardian, Palmer has previously said on a podcast hosted by former Tory MP Steve Baker that “it’s long past time” to privatise the NHS.

Palmer, who is originally from New Zealand, said: “The reality is the NHS is a horrifically performing system. It establishes much lower cancer survival rates. 

“It has obvious rationing – we all know that when we try and get a GP appointment or a specialist appointment. It has a pretty bad safety record – that’s not for lack of spending.”

Reform’s new chief economic adviser also called for an end to the triple lock, arguing it was an “expensive” and “unsustainable” way to protect pensioners. 

Palmer told GB News in April that he disagreed with Jenrick’s decision to back the triple lock. 

Last year, Reform had not committed to keeping the triple lock and said it was “up for debate”. 

In April, the party said it would cut the welfare bill by “billions of pounds” to keep the triple lock, which guarantees that the state pension will rise by the highest of earnings, inflation and 2.5% every year.

The Guardian also found that in 2020 when he worked in the New Zealand Parliament, he argued online for allowing people to migrate to alleviate global poverty.

Palmer wrote: “Hot take: Allowing people in from abroad who choose to come to NZ and earn *significantly* more than they would at home is not slavery. In fact, it is one of the best contributions we can make to global poverty alleviation.”

He has also backed imposing a land-value tax and removing VAT-exemptions, which are at odds with party policy.

Reacting to Palmer’s appointment, a Labour source said: “Reform have long talked up selling off the NHS to the highest bidder and going after ordinary people’s rights. It’s no surprise they’re hiring a brainchild of those types of damaging policies. Nigel Farage’s party have already shown the public who they are. It’s time to believe them.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Amnesty International has warned that Reform’s plan to cut benefits for disabled people and ban foreign nationals, including EU citizens with settled status, from accessing most benefits would breach the UK’s human rights commitments.

Reform’s finance spokesperson, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals in an article for the Telegraph yesterday.

Reform has said that if it won power it would scrap Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and the health element of Universal Credit, and replace it with a “health security allowance”, a single, regularly reviewed payment.

Jenrick also said that Reform will ban foreign-born households from claiming universal credit, housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit, free childcare, free school meals or disability benefits.

Jenrick claimed paying benefits to non-British people was “plain immoral”, even though many would have paid into the tax system through working.

He also wrote in the Telegraph over the weekend that the amount spent on disability benefits was “not generosity … it is suicidal empathy”.

Amnesty said that it was “grotesque” to call providing disabled people with benefits “suicidal empathy”.

Reform has claimed that the cuts to PIP would save £21 billion a year, while barring foreign nationals from claiming benefits would save £20 billion a year. The party has said its wider package of cuts will save £50 billion.

Responding to Reform UK’s £50 billion proposed cuts to benefits, Jen Clark, Amnesty International UK’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Director, said: “Cutting support for people with disabilities and people out of work isn’t welfare reform – it’s a rollback of rights the UK has committed to protecting.

“Calling that ‘suicidal empathy’ is grotesque. Pip isn’t generosity, it’s what lets people eat, pay for the equipment they need to stay alive, live with dignity and take part in society – and taking it away doesn’t save money, it shifts the cost onto people’s health, sometimes their lives.

“The same goes for people permitted to make this country their home. The minority who claim social security do so on the same basis as other taxpayers. Stripping their benefits isn’t fairness, it’s scapegoating – and it’s built on the same premise: that some people’s rights matter less than others.

“That premise is wrong, and it’s not just wrong, it’s a breach of the UK’s human rights commitments. The right to an adequate standard of living isn’t a policy choice, it’s a legal obligation – and Reform’s plans would put the UK in breach of it.

“You don’t fix a welfare system by punishing the people who need it most.”

Pro-EU campaign group Best for Britain has told The Guardian that denying benefits to those with indefinite leave to remain would tear up Britain’s EU withdrawal agreement.

Jenrick has confirmed that Reform’s proposal would require renegotiating the UK’s Brexit deal with the EU, potentially meaning that British people living in the EU could lose equivalent rights.

Commenting on Reform’s plans, Mothin Ali, Green Party Deputy Leader, said: “Once again, the establishment parties are all trying to outdo each other when it comes to who can be the most xenophobic, who can punch down the hardest to the most vulnerable in our country, and who can cut the most support from disabled people.

“It is cowardly to take from the most defenceless when we should be taxing the super wealthy including those who are in the privileged position of accepting £5m donations.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Reform has called for a general election based on an unsubstantiated claim that Labour is poised to introduce a “death tax” to fund social care.

Andy Burnham made a speech about fixing social care yesterday and held cross-party talks with the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and the Conservative shadow health secretary Stuart Andrew about the issue.

Burnham has not explicitly ruled out tax rises, but has not yet set out how any reforms to social care will be funded either. 

However, newspapers including The Telegraph and The Daily Mail have reported that in the past Burnham has supported a flat 10% tax on everyone’s inheritance.

Reform is now claiming that Burnham wants to bring in “a death tax”. 

Deputy political editor at The Guardian, Jessica Elgot, wrote on X that Jenrick had told a Reform press conference this morning that “an official will come to your dying mother’s bedroom to tot up her jewellery, brooches and coats under Andy Burnham’s new “death tax” which – let’s remember – doesn’t actually exist”.

Reform shared a video clip from the press conference on their X account with the caption: “The British people did not vote for the death tax. We need a general election now.”

The only funding model mentioned in reporting so far, and reportedly one of several options under consideration, would see workers pay into a privately managed fund to cover the cost of their care in old age.

Yesterday, Burnham asked the media: “Please can we have a factual debate? Can we allow people to weigh up the different options… and then just come to a considered view based on those facts?

“I don’t think it should be too much to ask, because I think the public will give us their view.”

He added: “We won’t get to that point if there’s all of this stuff swirling around, and everyone frightened about everything. That just won’t get us there.”

Reform has not explained how it would deal with the issues in the care sector, other than it would block “a death tax”.

In its 2024 general election manifesto, Reform said it would exempt two million health and social care workers from paying the basic rate of income tax for three years to retain staff. 

As one X user commented: “What death tax? We ‘need’ a general election based on a tax that doesn’t exist? Have you considered working based on actual facts rather than speculation and what you think?”.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Reform MP Robert Jenrick has tried to whip up further outrage about immigration by doctoring a voice recording, to suggest that Labour’s new immigration minister said she “didn’t care” about stopping small boats.

Jenrick shared a recording that he has now deleted in which Jo White, the new immigration minister, talks about small boats.

In the post, he claimed that White said “I don’t care if we stop the boats”. 

In the caption, Jenrick wrote: “Meet the new Immigration Minister. Burnham clearly doesn’t give a stuff about stopping the boats. We need a general election.”

Commenting on Jenrick’s post, White said: “This is an edited audio clip which deliberately and fraudulently misquotes me speaking at a meeting with local residents last year.”

White published the full audio from the constituency meeting in which she said: “I don’t care who will stop the boats, but my number one priority is to stop those boats”. 

Despite sharing a recording that White says spreads “a false account” of her words, Jenrick said that her position was “very confused”, adding “she appeared to say with one breath she wants to stop the boats, then with the next breath I don’t care about stopping the boats”.

White has demanded an apology from Reform and called on them to withdraw their false claim. In an interview with TalkTV this morning, Jenrick refused to apologise. 

As one poster online wrote: “He’s the first one to cry about “fake news” but can’t even apologise when it’s him spreading misinformation.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Reform’s Robert Jenrick embarrassed himself in an awkward hot mic moment, after his comments criticising an interview were pick up on a mic he thought was switched off.

Jenrick, who is Reform’s Treasury spokesperson, appeared on Good Morning Britain earlier today to discuss the ongoing furore around Nigel Farage’s alleged £5million gift from Thai-based billionaire Christopher Harborne, which he failed to properly declare.

While Farage was undergoing a Standards Committee investigation on the matter, he decided to jump before he was pushed, quitting as an MP and announcing he would re-stand in the subsequent by-election so that the ‘people can be his judge’.

Farage has changed his story on why he accepted the money, at first stating it was for his security to then saying it was a reward for Brexit. However, the Guardian is now citing Reform sources claiming that Farage told senior figures in the party he would need “a million a year” to cover lost earnings if he stood for parliament in the 2024 general election.

It reports: “Sources say the discussion took place in March 2024 – shortly before the undeclared gift was made by Christopher Harborne on 5 April, according to the Thailand-based crypto billionaire’s lawyers.

Jenrick appeared on Good Morning Britain to defend Farage, but was clearly irritated at the way the interview went, and after it concluded as the presenters attempted to move on to other headlines, Jenrick could be heard saying: “That was a waste of time.”

Ed Balls then jumped in to defend the interview, claiming: ‘I think it wasn’t a waste of time.

“‘Robert Jenrick gave us very clear answers on the police investigation; it’s not a waste of time for him to make clear that he believes there’s no police investigation. It was good he came on the programme.”

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