Domestic abuse campaigners have said they are “appalled” after Richard Tice appeared on Sky News to question the court records documenting how a Reform MP had physically assaulted a former girlfriend – and suggested that the court itself may have got the wrong end of it.
The intervention drew swift condemnation from Women’s Aid, a Conservative shadow minister and even a commentator who had just joined Reform himself – uniting critics across the political spectrum in their dismay at how the party’s deputy leader had chosen to handle one of the most sensitive stories to hit the party since the general election.
What the court records showed
James McMurdock, the Reform MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, was jailed for 21 days in a young offenders’ institution in 2006 after admitting to assaulting his then girlfriend outside a nightclub while drunk. The magistrate’s sentencing remarks were clear: the sentence was not suspended “in light of the serious nature of the offence.” Court records obtained by The Times stated he had kicked the victim “around four times.”
McMurdock’s own version of events described something considerably less serious. He said the pair had argued and that he had pushed her. That gap between his account and what the court had documented was significant – and it was the gap that Tice was asked about on Sky News.
The story had first surfaced a week after McMurdock’s election victory, when his victim’s mother came forward publicly to describe what had happened. She said McMurdock “left marks on her body” and that “it took two security guards to pull him off her.” McMurdock, responding at the time, called the incident “the biggest regret of my life” while denying “the horrific details.” He said: “A generous person might call it a teenage indiscretion but I do not expect everyone to be so kind.”
Tice’s response
Challenged by Sophy Ridge on Sky News’s Politics Hub over what she described as a “major discrepancy” between McMurdock’s account and the court records, Tice’s defence of his colleague was striking.
“He was there. The court wasn’t there. The Times weren’t there,” he said. “I’m trusting James. He’s bang on the money and I think that what he says is right.”
Pressed directly on whether he believed there had been a discrepancy, Tice replied: “It actually doesn’t matter.”
He went further, arguing that as a “Christian nation” people should not condemn McMurdock “as a sinner forever” – a framing that left many observers wondering whether the argument was that McMurdock deserved forgiveness, or that the court’s own findings should simply be set aside in his favour. Tice appeared to be suggesting both simultaneously. The law, he acknowledged, had ruled that McMurdock had “transgressed” and he had “served his punishment.” But whether that punishment reflected what actually happened was, in Tice’s view, apparently open to question – because James had told him otherwise.
The reaction
Women’s Aid did not hold back. “We are appalled by the interview that MP Richard Tice gave last night, in which he appeared to cast doubt over the court records that found his colleague had physically abused a former partner,” a spokesperson said. “His statements showed a complete disregard for the role of justice in dealing with domestic abuse and a failure to recognise the positive example that policymakers should set in the context of tackling domestic abuse and violence against women and girls.”
The statement continued: “Political figures should take action to end violence against women and girls and the misogyny that underpins it, not enshrine it further by discrediting the voices of victims and survivors.”
Conservative shadow minister Alicia Kearns, then serving as shadow minister for national security, safeguarding and preventing violence against women and girls, was equally direct. On X, she wrote: “‘It doesn’t matter’, Reform says. It does to every survivor of domestic abuse. It does to every person currently living with male violence. Diminishing your actions is an attack on the victim. Diminishing doesn’t demonstrate accountability.”
Even a new Reform recruit drew the line
Perhaps the most damaging intervention came not from an opponent but from Tim Montgomerie – a commentator who had only just joined Reform at the time of the interview. Speaking to Kay Burley on Sky Breakfast, he declined to offer the party the straightforward defence it might have hoped for from a new arrival.
“I’m not going to be someone who’s going to defend Reform at every point,” he said. “If you kick a woman on the ground, it’s unacceptable.” He added: “If that is what happened, that for me is disqualifying.”
It was a telling moment. When someone who has just signed up to a party will not defend it on a question like this, the optics are difficult to manage.
The broader question
The episode also raised a question that went beyond the specific incident: the rules governing who can stand for parliament. Under current legislation, MPs are not required to disclose previous convictions when standing for election. The only bar is being in prison at the time of the election, serving a sentence of more than a year. McMurdock’s 21-day sentence, served in a young offenders’ institution nearly two decades ago, fell well outside that threshold.
Whether voters would have made the same choice had they known about the conviction is, of course, unknowable. What is clear is that the story broke a week after his victory rather than before it – and that when it did, the response from his own party’s deputy leader was to tell a national television audience that the court records did not really matter, because James had given him a different account.
Women’s Aid’s verdict on that approach was unambiguous. So was the reaction from across the political spectrum. Whether it prompted any internal reflection inside Reform at the time was less clear.
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