Nigel Farage was not at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. Obviously. He has missed 77 consecutive parliamentary votes. So Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice took his place at the despatch box, used the Belfast knife attack to call on Starmer to resign, and accused the Prime Minister of failing on the boats, two-tier policing, Peter Mandelson and antisemitism. Starmer reminded him about his £600,000 in avoided corporation tax. Tice deleted the tweet. The video remains.
The specific charge Tice levelled was that Starmer was “in denial of the rising despair across the country over his failure to stop the boats,” in the wake of the attack on Monday night in which Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese man who was granted refugee status after arriving in the UK in 2023, has been charged with attempted murder, threats to kill an NHS radiographer and possession of a knife. After piling on the Mandelson and antisemitism charges for good measure, Tice concluded: “When will he do the right thing and resign?”
Starmer’s reply
Starmer’s response did two things. First, the familiar ground: hitting Reform for “whipping up fear and division” with their response to a horrific event – the same charge he made against Farage over Henry Nowak, which polled as the best-received response of any party leader as we reported in our Nowak polling piece.
Then he moved to the specifics.
“He talks about stopping the boats – to take those measures you need money, and he has still not properly addressed why his companies aggressively avoided tax. His investment company then gave huge donations to Reform. If he paid his tax we’d have more money to deal with these issues.”
The look on Tice’s face, by multiple accounts, was worth watching to the end of the clip.
What Starmer was referring to
The Sunday Times reported earlier this year that Tice had avoided nearly £600,000 in corporation tax through his property company, Quidnet Reit Ltd. The mechanism was specific: Tice used a complex corporate structure that allowed the company to avoid tax on more than £3 million in profits by registering it as a Real Estate Investment Trust despite failing to meet the typical eligibility rules. Tax experts described the arrangement as “highly aggressive tax planning.”
His company also failed to pay a £91,000 tax bill to HMRC – a story that broke in April and, as the source material notes, had largely faded from coverage until Starmer dragged it back into the chamber at Prime Minister’s Questions.
The specific sequence Starmer was setting out: Tice’s company aggressively avoided tax. That company then donated to Reform. Reform now calls for more money to be spent stopping the boats. If Tice had paid his tax, there would be more money available for the policies he is demanding.
It is the kind of argument that lands in a chamber because it requires no preparation from the audience – the steps are simple, the logic is clear and the target visibly had no answer.
The Reform pattern on tax
The irony sits within a broader context. As we reported in our Zucman wealth tax piece, Gabriel Zucman’s research shows that billionaires and wealthy individuals pay roughly half the effective tax rate of workers – a gap that exists precisely because of mechanisms like the one Tice used. Zucman’s specific example was that Jeff Bezos paid zero income tax in one year by engineering his income to zero while his wealth compounded. Tice is not in Bezos territory but the principle is the same: the wealthy use legal structures to reduce tax liability, then argue that the public sector lacks the money to do what they are demanding.
As we reported in our GMB Gary Smith piece, Smith argued that Reform wants to “bash unions and our members’ rights.” Mick Lynch told Laila Cunningham on Newsnight that Reform believes in “taking advantage of poverty to divide people and make your friends even richer” – as we reported in our Lynch Cunningham piece. Tice’s tax arrangement, and its connection to Reform donations, is that argument made concrete.
Farage’s absence – again
The subtext of every Reform PMQs intervention is the question of where Farage is. As we reported in our Farage attendance piece, he has missed 77 consecutive parliamentary votes, is ranked in the bottom 8% of all MPs, and has not held a press conference in over 40 days. He earns almost £100,000 a year. When Victoria Derbyshire asked Laila Cunningham where he was on Newsnight, Cunningham said he was “out there speaking to people” and compared him to JFK – as we reported in our Derbyshire Cunningham piece.
The Belfast attack is the most significant political moment of the week. Tice spoke at PMQs. Yusuf went on Kuenssberg’s show. Cunningham has been on Newsnight repeatedly. Farage has posted on X demanding the suspect’s immigration status be disclosed.
He has not been to the Commons to ask about it.
The deleted tweet
Tice tweeted about his PMQs exchange, presumably believing he had made his point effectively. Having watched Starmer’s reply circulate significantly more widely than his own question, he deleted it.
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