Has Reform's newest MP already gone off message?
Has Sarah Pochin, Reform's newest MP, gone off-piste already? It certainly seemed so from a first-ever appearance at Prime Minister's Questions which was unlikely to have been signed off by Nigel Farage's office.
'Given the prime minister's desire to strengthen strategic alignment with our European neighbours, will he, in the interests of public safety, follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and others and ban the burqa?'.
Farage's face, which was staring towards the chamber's ornate ceiling, was not caught by cameras. For, for all his many, many faults, overt Islamophobia is one rabbit hole he has studiously avoided getting sucked down – less, perhaps, for ideological reasons than for seeing how an obsession with it once he stepped down as UKIP leader damaged that party's standing (when, in 2017, the party's general election manifesto included a ban on face coverings, leader Paul Nuttall endured the best part of week fielding questions as to whether it would apply to beekeepers' outfits).
Pochin already looked a slightly troublesome choice, being a former councillor with the dubious distinction of having been kicked out of both the Conservative and independent groupings on Cheshire East council since being first elected in 2015.
Keir Starmer, for his part, had some fun with Parliament's newest MP, asking whether she would tell her new leader that 'his latest plan to bet £80 billion of unfunded tax cuts with no idea of how he is going to pay for it is Liz Truss all over again – although considering I think she was a Conservative member when Liz Truss was leader, she probably won't'.
But might Pochin be a bet Farage is already having gambler's remorse about?
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