Ex-Reform leader in Wales Nathan Gill sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for taking Russian bribes. UK media: nothing to report on here.
Nathan Gill who was a UKIP and then Brexit Party MEP was briefly the leader of the Reform Ltd in Wales in 2021. He then stood down and has not been replaced. Reform will go into the 2026 Senedd Elections without a leader in Wales it seems.
On Friday 21st November Gill who had pleaded guilty to taking bribes from an Ukrainian pro-Russian politician while an MEP (The politician was sanctioned as a Russian agent by the US in 2022) was sentenced to ten and half years in prison at the Old Bailey
Given the perpetual talk of Farage being pro Putin one might think this story would be front page news. The BBC news site and the Guardian led with the story correctly labelling Gill as an ex-Reform UK leader.
By Friday evening the story had disappeared off the front of the BBC new site. The print editions of the Guardian and the Mirror led with the story and none of the other front pages mentioned it at all….
Farage has posted nothing on his Twitter account or, as far as I can see, said anything about Gill’s sentence. I scrutinised the entire 36 page main section of the Sunday Times (23rd November) for what it might and should mean for Reform UK. No comment at all.
Those who have been around a while may recall perpetual speculation in the 1960s that Harold Wilson was a Russian spy and more recently that Michael Foot was (sued and won a case against the Times) and even more recently Jeremy Corbyn.
All those stories suited the news agendas of the largely right-wing UK media. Gill’s case does not so it has simply disappeared into the ether without further comment.
Farage who was a UKIP MEP with Gill has previously claimed that the Gill who took bribes was not the politician he knew. Given that reports indicate that Farage and Gill’s offices at the European Parliament were adjacent one wonders if it was simply that Farage was rarely there that led to his lack of knowledge about what his colleague was up to.
Guardian report
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