Reform UK council leader bans councillors from speaking to local newspaper
A Reform UK council leader has prohibited his councillors from speaking to a local newspaper.
Mick Barton, the leader of Nottinghamshire county council, instructed his fellow representatives of Nigel Farage’s party not to engage with the Nottingham Post except in an emergency.
The directive also included Nottinghamshire Live, the online edition of the newspaper, and a team of BBC-funded local democracy reporters managed by the Nottingham Post.
The ban applied to all 41 of Reform’s representatives on the county council, one of 12 local authorities controlled by the party following its success at the local elections in May.
This decision was supported by Lee Anderson, one of Reform’s four MPs at Westminster, whose Ashfield constituency is in Nottinghamshire.
Mr Anderson stated, “There are some media outlets I will engage with but not you lot. Read the room, Nottinghamshire Live, we are going to win the next election.”
He then referred to a critic of the ban as “thick as two short planks,” before adding, “We are in support of free speech. Nottinghamshire Live can print whatever they like.”
The controversy arises a week after the Nottingham Post released an article on an apparent division among Reform’s councillors over whether to expand Nottingham city council.
The newspaper quoted a source claiming that two of Reform’s councillors had been told they risked suspension unless they supported the plan.
A decision on whether to merge Nottingham council with local authorities in Gedling and Broxtowe is not anticipated until September 2.
The news story noted that one Nottinghamshire Reform councillor had previously expressed dissatisfaction with the proposals.
‘Attack on democracy’
Natalie Fahy, the editor of the Nottingham Post, stated that Cllr Barton’s insistence on councillors not speaking to her team represented “a massive attack on local democracy.”
Ms Fahy told The Guardian, “I’ve been a journalist for 20 years. We have had our ups and downs with all kinds of councils.
“We managed to get along fine, because most elected officials accept this is par for the course. You are going to get some negative press. What you don’t do is shut the shop up.
“This is a worrying sign of potentially things to come if Reform wins the next election. What you’re seeing here in Nottinghamshire is probably a microcosm of how it will be across the whole of the UK if Nigel Farage becomes prime minister. You are just going to see this kind of shutting down of questioning.”
Ms Fahy insisted her publication was “not anti-Reform, we’re just trying to find out what’s going on.”
At a national level, Reform has made freedom of speech a cornerstone of its policy offering, and Mr Farage has repeatedly warned that it is under threat in the UK.
In August 2024, he claimed that Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, posed “the biggest threat to free speech we’ve seen in our history” following hundreds of arrests after the riots that followed the Southport murders.
Lucy Connolly, a former childminder, was released from jail last week after being given what was believed to be the longest prison sentence for a single social media post.
In the wake of the Southport attack, Mrs Connolly called for mass deportations and to “set fire to all the f------ hotels full of the b------ for all I care.”
She was sentenced to 31 months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of inciting racial hatred.
Cllr Barton was contacted for comment.
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