Reform Chief Whip Lee Anderson wrote to the Times yesterday to demand an explanation for the curious incident of the disappearing claim that Giorgia Meloni advised Badenoch not to do a deal with Reform. Guido is told he wrote:
“Sir,
Further to your newspaper being forced to disown an entirely fictitious story which claimed that the Italian prime minister, Georgia Meloni, told the Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, during talks in Rome that Mrs Badenoch “should not do a deal with Nigel Farage” (24 August), I wonder if you would do your readers the courtesy of explaining the circumstances of this gaffe. Is Mrs Badenoch’s office guilty of giving a briefing to your political editor that was so over-enthusiastic it was in fact a lie (in which case why didn’t The Times check the veracity of the claim); or is the paper of record itself at fault for publishing what can only be described as fake news?
Yours etc
Lee Anderson, Chairman Reform UK”
Meloni aides continue to insist she did not make the claim, telling the Telegraph she “never suggested to Badenoch that she should not ally with Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party,” and adding: “Meloni, who has no reason to be hostile towards Farage and his movement, renewed her respect for and friendship with Badenoch and the Tories … but did not enter and does not want to enter into domestic political dynamics and relations between British parties.” Do recollections vary?
A Tory spokesman said: “The Conservatives have not made any false claims. Reform are just making things up and peddling conspiracy theories to distract from their fishy £5 million donation scandal and the police investigation into Robert Jenrick.” Language barrier?
Times journalist Gabrielle Sivia Weiniger tweeted the below image purporting to show Israeli president Isaac Herzog hobnobbing with convicted paeodophile Jeffrey Epstein:
The post remained online for a few hours before Weiniger realised the blindingly obvious, which is the photo is AI-generated. She has since deleted it and apologised for her “grave error in judgement for reposting the photo, and to the president for any harm this has caused“. A bad week for the Times, especially after that Mandelson cover…
The Mail, the Telegraph, and the Times all reported claims that Bell had splashed £900 of taxpayers’ cash on a fancy new desk for his office. Bell denied it. The articles have now mysteriously vanished…
Good to see @DailyMail @thetimes and @Telegraph all delete their articles – sad the lies went up in the first place https://t.co/zQhncYFUyR
— Torsten Bell (@TorstenBell) October 27, 2025
Credit where it’s due: it looks like Bell ended up forcing all three outlets to withdraw their stories. For all the latest real news on Budget Man Bell, click here…
Lucy Powell told Sky News that the Ed Miliband-Russell Brand interview happened in part because the ‘social media age’ had not begun by 2015:
“Look, I mean, he approached the Labour Party, he approached the campaign team, and we’re in very different times now. We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time. and as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time, then, of course, you know, no one would have done that. But as I say, he was a well known public figure. Lots of people from Hollywood to the BBC to many others gave this person a very, very powerful platform. And we didn’t know at the time, unfortunately. It was a different era.”
