Seventies band Boney M is understood to be in talks to appear at Reform UK conference in several weeks (Alamy)

2 min read12 min

The band, which rose to fame in the 1970s with songs like Rasputin and Daddy Cool, is being lined up to appear at the afterparty in Birmingham, set to be held on the Friday evening of the conference. 

A Reform spokesman told PoliticsHome: “Several exciting acts are under consideration for our conference after-party. This will be confirmed and announced in due course.”

Reform’s annual conference will take place in just under a fortnight from 3 September to 5 September.

Last year, Marlon and Jackie from The Jacksons made a surprise appearance at the Reform conference, performing songs including Blame it on the Boogie and Can You Feel it for around an hour. 

At the same event, Reform supporter Andrea Jenkyns, formerly a Conservative MP, performed self-written song Insomniac.

Attendees of this year’s Reform conference can purchase a ticket to the afterparty for £25. The party is marketed on the Reform UK website as an opportunity to “join Nigel Farage and special guests for an unforgettable evening”.

Boney M, formed in what was then West Germany, still performs today with changing lineups and is set to tour the country later this year, in cities including Liverpool and London. 

Original lead singer Liz Mitchell and dancer Maizie Williams have both taken part in recent performances. However, it is not clear what Boney M lineup is in talks to perform at Reform conference next month.

Reform figures will hope that the conference helps the party regain momentum after a tricky few months which have seen the polling of both the party and leader Farage dip. 

Last month, Farage comfortably won a by-election in his Clacton constituency, a contest he triggered after standing down as an MP amid growing pressure over a £5m donation he received from crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne.

No other major party contested the by-election, arguing that it was a waste of time and resources.

 

Award-winning chef Tom Kerridge has called on the government to create a new ministry for hospitality (Alamy)

3 min read3 min

Speaking on the latest episode of PoliticsHome podcast The Rundown, the Michelin-starred restaurant owner said a “ministry of hospitality” would help recognise the industry’s importance to the wider economy at a time when it is under significant financial pressure.

”The biggest problem that we have is that a ministry of hospitality does not exist,” said Kerridge.

He argued that, as things stand, various parts of government “give an opinion on what should happen” to the industry but, as one of the country’s biggest employers, it needs a dedicated Whitehall department.

“There should be a civil service building somewhere around here where there are people who absolutely know what they’re talking about, that can sit there and represent the industry to government,” he added.

Kerridge said having a department responsible for hospitality could help ministers draft policy to prevent situations like the recent licensing row over so-called “vertical drinking” in the London borough of Westminster. The chef described the council’s contentious draft proposal to discourage people from drinking standing up as “nonsense”.

“It [the department] doesn’t need to be massive. It just needs to sit there within a building because it ties so many different things together, and governments would stop having ludicrous stories like that,” he added.

Kerridge is also campaigning for VAT to be reduced from 20 per cent to 10 per cent, and additional steps on business rates to reverse the trend of hospitality businesses closing.

Since entering No 10 a month ago, the Prime Minister has announced a 20 per cent cut to business rates from next April for pubs, social clubs and live music venues, while Housing Secretary Angela Rayner is changing planning policy to protect hospitality venues from being turned into offices or housing.

Kerridge said the steps were “positive” but “nowhere near close enough” to what the hospitality industry needs.

On VAT, he told the podcast: “Whether it’s 10 per cent straight away, whether it starts as 15 and then a year later it goes to 12.5 per cent, and then a year later it goes to 10 per cent, just something that shows we know, we care, we understand,” he said.

Kerridge added that the business rate system is “not fit for purpose” in its current form and something Chancellor John Healey should look to improve at the late-October Budget.

According to recent research by NIQ’s Hospitality Market Monitor, between 3 and 4 pubs and restaurants are closing every day in the UK due to rising costs.

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, and is produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for Podot

• Click here to listen to the latest episode of The Rundown, or search for ‘PoliticsHome’ wherever you get your podcasts.

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said there was a movement on the right “away from liberal progress” (Alamy)

3 min read10 min

Former Cambridge University professor Arday was found dead in south London last Friday after being at the centre of allegations of plagiarism and falsified achievements. 

Arday had resigned as a professor of sociology of education at Cambridge the previous week and admitted errors in his work, but denied claims of plagiarism.

In a statement, his family said: “The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.”

Describing Arday’s death as an “absolute tragedy”, Davey told PoliticsHome that parts of the media had seemed to “focus in on it and attack him in a way which seems awfully disproportionate, unfair, mean, and nasty”.

“What it shows is that we have to push back against this Trump-like attack on liberal values where we embrace everybody equally and respect everybody.

“There seems to be a movement, particularly on the right, to move away from the liberal progress I thought we made, where we respect people, we judge them on their merit, and we celebrate the contribution that everybody made.”

However, the Lib Dem leader said it was “very difficult” to hold any one person or organisation to account for the treatment of Arday. 

“There are different parts of the media jumping on that shameful bandwagon, but I think we’ve got to see the problem facing our country on a broad level,” he said. 

PoliticsHome reported on Wednesday that over 50 MPs and peers had written to the Independent Press Standards Organisation asking for an investigation into media coverage of Arday before his death.

The cross-party letter, organised by Labour MP Afzal Khan, said reporting on Arday “reached far beyond what can reasonably be perceived as conducive to the public interest in relation to his alleged plagiarism”. 

It also argued that it is “not unreasonable to suggest that the colour of Professor Arday’s skin was a contributing factor in garnering the level of media scrutiny he faced”, and that “Arday’s white counterparts at the University of Cambridge alone faced allegations that did not result in the same level of attention or affect.”

Signatories include Labour MPs Tulip Siddiq, Kerry McCarthy, Paula Barker and Tan Dhesi; Green MPs Sian Berry and Hannah Spencer; Plaid’s Westminster leader Liz Saville-Roberts; and former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said Arday’s death “was a tragedy, on so many levels”, and called for a “moment of reflection” to reflect on “how things came to this”. 

The Lib Dems’ Black Lives Action Committee (BLAC) this week published an open letter in Liberal Democrat Voice saying there is a “growing anti-inclusion movement in Britain”.

Group members said they themselves had “failed” to take action when the Arday case was being reported.

“Four of us discussed the situation online,” the letter said. 

“We talked about what we should do, but we never reached a firm decision to act. One person repeatedly suggested that we should reach out to Professor Arday himself. We became caught in the web of inaction.”