Reform UK Repeatedly Refuses to Explain Why Nigel Farage Met and Posed with Man Criminally Convicted for Violent Attack on Anti-Racism Meeting at a Church

For 18 months, Byline Times has attempted to get to the bottom of a photograph showing the party’s leader with far-right activists. Now, this newspaper’s findings cast fresh doubts on Farage’s claim that he refuses to associate with extreme elements of the populist right. Josiah Mortimer reports

Reform UK has repeatedly refused to provide any explanation to Byline Times for why its leader, Nigel Farage, met and posed for a photograph with a group of far-right activists including a man who went on to be criminally convicted for violently storming an anti-racism meeting at a church – an offence that took place just two weeks before the picture was taken.

Byline Times first reported on the photograph, taken in mid-December 2024, last January.

Having been posted on Facebook by one of the people in the picture on 18 December 2024 with the caption “just been up to meet Nigel for a Christmas drink”, Reform did not reply to multiple requests for comment when Byline Times asked it to explain why Farage had met a group of people associated with racist activism.