A Reform council leader banned councillors from engaging with the Nottingham Post, its online edition and a team of BBC-funded local democracy journalists. The ban followed coverage of plans to restructure local government and reportedly came from Mick Barton, the county council leader. Local MPs accused Reform of hypocrisy over prior claims to support free speech and transparency and urged party intervention. Lee Anderson, the Reform MP for Ashfield, joined the boycott. The action was widely viewed as an attack on press freedom and a warning that elected officials must remain answerable to voters. Opposition parties including the Lib Dems pressed Nigel Farage to intervene.
I've been a journalist for 20 years. We have had our ups and downs with all kinds of councils. We managed to get along fine, because most elected officials accept this is par for the course. You are going to get some negative press. What you don't do is shut the shop up. This is a worrying sign of potentially things to come if Reform wins the next election.
What you're seeing here in Nottinghamshire is probably a microcosm of how it will be across the whole of the UK if Nigel Farage becomes prime minister. You are just going to see this kind of shutting down of questioning. They need to be answerable to the people who elected them. We don't take a political stance. We're not anti-Reform. We're just trying to find out what's going on.
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