Richard Tice blasts standards probe – ‘the establishment is trying literally to politically kill us’
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice has slammed a parliamentary standards probe into an alleged failure to declare a visit to Israel, claiming that “the establishment is trying literally to politically kill us.”
He told GB News: “This complaint was submitted by an anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli, anti-Reform lobby group. That’s the bottom line. And your good viewers and listeners need to know what is going on in our establishment. They hate us so much.
“All of a sudden, the BBC they put this out as a push notification that I was being investigated without knowing what I was being investigated for. They’ve now had to, with some embarrassment, had to basically remove my article from the top of their website. I was a more important story than our stop the boats policy, which is what tens of millions of British people want to do, which is to stop the boats.
“We’ve got a great policy for that. That’s what we should be talking about. Instead, no, no, I’m being investigated for standing up against anti-Semitism. It’s an absolute disgrace.”
Asked if it would have been easier to declare this visit, he said: “No, because it was a debate about UK democracy. I went to Israel nine months ago when there were still hostages in Gaza, to understand about October the seventh, to go to the location of some of the horrors of that horrific massacre. That’s why I went to Israel. It’s nothing to do with UK democracy. Nothing at all. No declaration was required.
“This is an establishment stitch-up, full on. And your viewers and your listeners need to understand the extent to which the establishment is trying literally to politically kill us and kill me and kill Nigel.”
He insisted Reform UK’s plan to stop small boat Channel crossings would be effective: “This could stop the boats, and this will stop the boats. We know that because it’s happened elsewhere, and this is the humane, correct thing to do.
“People forget, tragically, hundreds of people, we don’t know exactly how many, but hundreds of people have died in the Channel under the current policy that’s been going on for years. This policy of rescue and return – it’s not turn back; it’s rescue and return. Pick people up into Border Force vessels, Royal Navy vessels, and turn towards Dunkirk and Calais, not towards Dover.
“That’s the simplicity of this policy, and frankly, it will help the French. It’ll help the whole of the northern coastline of France, where you know life now is intolerable for so many French people. People are literally being murdered and mugged and raped on the French coastline, and so it’ll help the French.
“And by the way, what everybody seems to forget is, under international law, the French have a legal obligation to pick these boats up and to return them to French shores, and they are failing. They are in breach of that legal obligation. That’s the bottom line.”
