- Reform UK’s London Christmas dinner and fundraiser at the Grand Sapphire Hotel in Croydon was cancelled days before the event.
- Richard Tice stating the party intends to pursue legal action over the breached £20,000+ contract.
The London Christmas dinner and fundraiser hosted by Reform UK was cancelled just days before it was due to take place, following protests from local Muslims and other community members in Croydon.
Inside Croydon reported that members of the Croydon Muslim community staged protests last week outside the Grand Sapphire Hotel, including in the days leading up to the event, which had been scheduled for December 4.
The local Muslim community said they were “deeply offended” that the hotel, owned by Pakistani-born millionaire Suleman Raza, would host the Reform UK event.
A post on a South London Facebook group read: “Grand Sapphire Croydon is scheduled for hosting Farage and his band of racist cronies on December 4. This needs to be stopped!”
Another comment stated: “Grand Sapphire, Spice Village and many more enterprises of the owner Suleman Raza need to be boycotted unless he cancels entertaining Nigel Farage and his ilk.”
Tickets for the Croydon Reform Christmas party cost up to £350 per head for VIP seating at a table with Lee Anderson MP, former Tory Assembly Member Keith Prince, and Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader.
The Grand Sapphire ballroom can accommodate up to 1,200 guests for banquet-style dinners. Many pointed out the irony that the anti-immigration Reform party chose a venue owned by a Muslim immigrant.
Calls to boycott Raza and his restaurant chain, Spice Village, prompted Grand Sapphire to release a statement on X, saying it had decided to cancel the event two days before. The statement added that the business had acted “responsibly despite incurring financial loss due to this cancellation.”
The contract for the party was reported to be well over £20,000, according to Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice on GB News.
Reform UK responded to the cancellation. Richard Tice claimed that Stand Up to Racism and others had “bullied the owner of this venue forcing him to renege on a signed contract with Reform worth well over £20,000.”
Tice described the cancellation as “appalling” and “an attack on free speech,” adding on GB News that Reform will be suing the venue owner along with “any other owner that reneges on a signed contract.”
“This is an absolute outrage. It’s not North Korea. Democracy requires debate and discussion, and political parties are allowed to have Christmas parties,” Tice said.
He also suggested that the cancellation may reflect “desperate people in desperate positions” because Reform is “leading in over 150 national polls.”
Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party have recently faced a string of controversies. These include the former party leader in Wales being jailed for 10 years for accepting money to lobby for Russian interests, and allegations of Farage’s own “antisemitic and racist behaviour” as a student at Dulwich College in the early 1980s, which he denies.
