Richard Tice entered GB News on Thursday expecting to attack Labour over the resignation of Defence Secretary John Healey. Instead he found himself on the receiving end of a dressing-down from the network’s own political editor, Christopher Hope, who labelled Reform “an unserious party” and told Tice he was “insulting our viewers” after Tice suggested that Nigel Farage “could do” the job of Reform’s defence spokesman. “He’s meant to be your Prime Minister,” Hope said. “That says everything about the seriousness of your party.” It was, as political ambushes go, particularly comprehensive – not least because it came in what is generally regarded as Reform’s safest broadcast territory.
The day that made it possible
As we reported in our Healey resignation piece, John Healey quit as Defence Secretary on Thursday with a blistering letter accusing Starmer and Reeves of being “unable and unwilling” to commit the resources needed to defend the UK. The Defence Investment Plan, he revealed, would raise spending by just 0.08 of a percentage point of GDP by 2030. He had argued for 3%. He got 2.68%. He resigned.
Hours later, Armed Forces Minister Al Cairns followed him out. His resignation statement captured the mood: “We owe those who serve the UK the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it’s done. We are failing on both. I’ve spent my whole time in government making that case. Number 10 will not listen, so I am resigning as Minister for the Armed Forces.”
Cairns chose a specific phrase for the failure at the heart of the defence budget: “a failure of seriousness.” Within hours, that phrase was about to acquire an ironic second application.
The ambush
Tice arrived on GB News primed to attack Labour’s credibility on national security. Hope opened with a simple preliminary question: who is Reform’s defence spokesman?
Tice did not have a name. After a moment, he offered Farage as a possibility. “Nigel Farage could do it.”
Hope’s response was immediate and unsparing. “You haven’t got a defence spokesperson. How can you possibly accuse Labour of anything? How is Nigel Farage your nominee for defence spokesperson – he’s meant to be your Prime Minister! That says everything about the seriousness of your party.”
He pressed further. “I’ll ask again, can you name your defence spokesperson? It’s not an MP, is it? Your party isn’t serious without a defence spokesperson – you can’t come onto GB News and insult our viewers! This is important.”
The spectacle of GB News – the network Reform has treated as its most reliable broadcast platform, the network that has given Tice, Farage, Braverman and Yusuf more airtime than any other – publicly calling Reform unserious and accusing Tice of insulting its viewers is one of the more striking moments of the week.
Why the Farage suggestion is specifically absurd
Setting aside the question of whether Reform should have a defence spokesman at all – and the answer to that, for a party presenting itself as the government-in-waiting, is clearly yes – the suggestion that Farage “could do it” deserves examination on its own terms.
Farage is currently under active parliamentary investigation for failing to declare a £5 million gift. He has missed 77 consecutive parliamentary votes, as we reported in our Farage attendance piece – the worst record of any Reform MP, ranked in the bottom 8% of all parliamentarians. He was not at PMQs when Tice asked Starmer to resign over Belfast – Tice had to go himself.
The suggestion that this man should simultaneously be the party’s candidate for Prime Minister, its public face on national security, its de facto Prime Minister-in-waiting and its defence spokesman is not, on reflection, a sign of an organisation that has thought carefully about its approach to government.
As we reported in our Corbyn Reform councillors piece, Jeremy Corbyn observed that Reform’s newly elected councillors “don’t have any clue what they’re doing” and think the job of running local government is “the flags you put up outside the town hall.” Seventeen Reform councillors have left the party or been removed in a single month. At local council level, at parliamentary level and now apparently at defence policy level, the same pattern appears: an organisation that campaigns effectively but has not built the infrastructure that governing requires.
Tice’s week in context
This is not Tice’s first difficult interview of the week. As we reported in our Starmer Tice PMQs piece, Tice went to PMQs on Wednesday to demand Starmer resign over Belfast and the boats, and was reminded by the Prime Minister that his companies had avoided nearly £600,000 in corporation tax through what experts described as “highly aggressive tax planning” – and that the savings were then donated to Reform. “If he paid his tax we’d have more money to deal with these issues,” Starmer said. Tice posted about the exchange. Then deleted it.
On Thursday, the GB News interview. When your own safe space calls you unserious, you are having a very bad week.
Al Cairns – and the phrase that keeps returning
Cairns’s “failure of seriousness” was directed at the Labour government’s approach to defence spending. But the phrase is doing double and triple duty this week. Two defence ministers resigned citing a failure of seriousness. Reform’s deputy leader suggested the man who is supposed to be their future Prime Minister could squeeze in the role of defence spokesman on top of everything else. The GB News political editor used a variation of the same phrase to describe Reform to their own face.
And some of the reactions were on point..
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