Reform UK asked students at Bangor University would they like to enjoy a question-and-answer session with Sarah Pochin – the Reform UK MP famous for saying it “drives me mad” to see TV adverts full of black people – and Jack Anderton, the 25-year-old influencer who helped send Nigel Farage’s TikTok account viral among teenagers? No, the university’s debating society decided, it would not as nt “in line with our values” declining Reform’s offer, expressing “zero tolerance for any form of racism, transphobia or homophobia”.
Reform’s Zia Yusuf thundered on X that Bangor got £30m from taxpayers and he was “sure they won’t mind losing every penny of (their) state funding under a Reform government”.
So Reform threatens to put universities out of business – with all that would mean for students halfway through their degrees, or towns reliant on a major employer – if they don’t fawningly accommodate any regime-backed Reform political nonentity who asks is the stuff of autocracy, not democracy. And the lesson from Donald Trump’s America, where pro-free speech Republicans have proved remarkably intolerant of people speaking against them, is that the pressure rarely stops there.
What would stop the financial intimidation of a BBC reliant on the licence fee? What about charities and cultural or civic institutions receiving public grants, or newspapers with owners anxious to protect their other business interests, or schools? Though a Reform spokesperson later insisted Yusuf’s comments were “not party policy”, Yusef's literal job title is head of policy, and Reform has previously advocated removing at least some funding from universities that don’t protect "free speech".
