Reform UK has said it will be lodging a complaint against TikTok after the video sharing app shut down a livestream of its campaign rally.
Richard Tice, the Reform president, accused the platform of an “outrageous biased attack” on his party and claimed it is “in hoc to ridiculous wokery” after Sunday’s stream was suspended during a speech by candidate Ann Widdecombe.
He speculated that the decision to cut the feed was down to Ms Widdecombe pointing out that “there are only two genders” and has complained to the video sharing app.
Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, made a quip about the incident in his own speech later on.
TikTok confirmed the stream was suspended but put this down to a moderation error, insisting that access was restored within 30 minutes.
Ms Widdecome, a former Tory minister, said she had “absolutely no idea” why the feed was shut down, adding: “I was pronouncing party policy and not saying anything that Nigel or Richard haven’t said before.”
Isabel Oakeshott, the political commentator, claimed the content had been branded “hate speech” by the platform.
She tweeted: “Breaking: TikTok suspend @reformparty_uk rally live steam (sic.) while Ann Widdecombe speaking, declaring it ‘hate speech’?! Widders? WTF?!”
Mr Tice told The Telegraph: “This is an outrageous biased attack on a major political party because we pointed out that there are only two genders.”
“Evidently TikTok is in hoc to ridiculous wokery. They lost out as more than 300,000 people watched the livestream across multiple other platforms – quite astonishing numbers for a political party rally,” said Mr Tice.
The interruption came during Reform’s rally to 5,000 supporters in Birmingham on Sunday. Paul Oakden, the party’s chief executive, spoke first, followed by Ms Widdecome, Zia Yusuf, one of Reform’s biggest financial backers, Mr Tice and Mr Farage.
Elsewhere in his speech, Mr Farage claimed that footage of a Reform canvasser using a racial slur against Rishi Sunak had been used as a “smear campaign” against his party.
The party’s leader said: “Look, Reform is a new organisation. It’s a start-up and there were requests put out for candidates to stand.”
“Have we had a few bad apples? We have, although to my knowledge nobody involved in an organised betting ring is standing for us, which is something,” said Mr Farage.
He added: “I have to say, the bad apples are gone. We’ll never have them back.”
