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News - 1 September 2025

Richard Tice crashes out in softball Sky News interview

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Willem Moore

@willem_moore


On Sunday 31 August, the Reform Party’s deputy leader Richard Tice sat down for an interview with Sky News‘s Trevor Phillips. It seemed like Sky News had set the stage for Tice to enjoy the softest of softball interviews, with the morning’s panel agreeing that Reform were the only party with a clear and appealing message on the issue of asylum seekers (although they did avoid offering unconditional support). Despite all this, Tice managed to lose his temper and come undone:

“Every leader seems to be unable to answer this question except Farage”

Leading up to the interview with Richard Tice, Phillips said to his panel:

At the heart of the political conflict is this simple question: who is the government for? Is it for these guys, who’ve just turned up? Or is it for us?

Phillips’ framing may betray how he views the issue, with his question suggesting that if conditions are worsening for the majority of Britons that must be because some portion of the budget is being directed towards asylum seekers. Others would argue that conditions are worsening in the country because more and more money is held by fewer and fewer people, and that this growing chasm of inequality is swallowing communities whole:

Other people might point out that the UK has consistently made political decisions which make foreign nations poorer and more desperate (the obvious example being our current support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people). People might also point out that we’ve consistently made political decisions which mean Britain is reliant on migratory workers. People might even highlight that Brexit has likely created a situation in which more people claim asylum in the UK than other European nations, as TLDR News highlighted in a recent video:

These facts might encourage a person to question Britain’s long-term political planning (the cause) rather than current events like growing numbers of boat crossings (the symptom). Obviously such a person wouldn’t be employed to host the Sunday show on Sky News. You can’t criticise the parasitic capitalism which engorges the bank accounts of our wealthy overlords in the mainstream media, and so instead we get an endless game of whack-a-mole in which presenters like Phillips bash the problem of the day.

Getting back to Phillips, he followed his question with the following:

Every leader seems to be unable to answer this question except Farage, who’s completely clear – it’s [Reform who can answer]

Phillips looked giddy as he gave this glowing appraisal, which won’t surprise some. In 2020, the Labour Party suspended Phillips following accusations of Islamophobia (they later lifted the suspension). In response to a Times’ article defending Phillips, the Muslim Council of Britain highlighted the instances which they considered to be Islamophobic:

Mr Trevor Phillips has made a number of offensive, unfounded and divisive claims about Muslims that are used by the far-right to in their hateful targeting against Muslims. These claims include:

  • Publicly stating that the placing of a Christian girl into Muslim foster care is “akin to child abuse” and not apologising for this statement. (The Sun, 31 Aug 2017)
  • In 2016 he presented a Channel 4 documentary titled ‘What do British Muslims really think?’ in which he misrepresented a number of statistics from his polling to claim Muslims are set apart from the rest of society. (ICM, 2016)
    • In this, he claimed Muslims do not report terrorism, when this poll actually showed that Muslims reported terrorism more than the general public.
    • He also claimed that Muslims have sympathy with terrorists, despite evidence showing there were notably higher levels of condemnation among Muslim communities for terrorism than for the population as a whole. (Ipsos, February 2018)
    • He extrapolated assertions from the raw numbers of survey responses (which were not representative of the population or the Muslim population as a whole) to claim 100,000 Muslims had sympathy for suicide bombing, though using the same survey this would mean more than 600,000 non-Muslim people would also feel the same, though this was not communicated. (Manchester Policy Blogs: Ethnicity, April 2018)
  • He repeatedly uses divisive language to claim “Muslims are not like us” which feeds into far-right, Islamophobic tropes. (The Times, 27 January 2016), claiming Muslims “see the world differently from the rest of us”. (Daily Mail, 26 January 2016). He has claimed Muslims are “resistant to the traditional process of integration”. (Race and Faith: The Deafening Silence, Civitas)

Given Phillips’ framing of Nigel Farage and his past commentary on a certain minority group, a person could easily come to the conclusion that he was somewhat favourable towards Reform and their agenda. Richard Tice, however, completely failed to pick up on this potential charitability.

Crashout

There was a moment in the interview in which a less than favourable viewer might suggest Phillips gave the game away. That exchange began with Phillips saying:

Can I just ask you to talk about one thing clearly? You want your councillors to object to presence of asylum hotels in their areas, and you said pursue legal means. Can you be clear with us that there is no encouragement from your party to the sort of person who wants to break into asylum hotels in masks and to intimidate asylum seekers?

Looking somewhat beleaguered, Richard Tice responded:

Of course. What a ridiculous suggestion, Trevor.

Perhaps taking offence at the phrasing, Phillips responded:

It’s not a ridiculous suggestion.

The Tice crashout began at this point, with the deputy leader shouting over Phillips:

It is a ridiculous suggestion!

The two spoke over one another, with Tice branding the accusation “outrageous”. A somewhat bemused Phillips responded by saying:

Whether it’s ridiculous or not, I want to give you the opportunity to say it’s ridiculous; that’s the point of this interview.

The emphasis reflects how Phillips made his point, but what was that point? Was he saying he was helping Tice to say the right thing to avoid criticism? Obviously we’ll let you be the judge of that.

Regardless of what Phillips’ intentions were, an emotional Richard Tice continued to respond as if he were under attack, repeating:

Of course, we’re not suggesting that. We’ve always suggested lawful, peaceful protest. Nothing else.

What a funny little man.

People online highlighted some other interesting exchanges in the interview:

Richard Tice and Reform: scrutiny needed

If Richard Tice responds this emotionally to Phillips, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next election. We imagine he’ll try to do a Boris Johnson and avoid any hard questions, but at some point he will have to answer for Reform’s policy platform, and at that point it’s clear he will crumble.

Featured image via Sky News





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