Reform's new signing from Newcastle sees things in black and white

When former Newcastle United chairman Sir John Hall was named as Reform’s North East life president this week, its chairman Zia Yusuf was sent out for the photo opportunity rather than Nigel Farage. Perhaps this was to compensate for the 92-year-old’s somewhat unreconstructed views.

Hall told the Sun: “I’m an old Englishman, and suddenly I find myself being a stranger in my own land.” The language was less coded on Hall’s last visit to the public eye, when he popped up on Richard Keys and Andy Gray’s Talksport show in 2013 to reminisce about having Newcastle players round to his home for dinner. “I couldn’t see Les Ferdinand because he was stood next to my black Aga,” Sir John said.

Hall, a long-time Tory donor, actually switched his support to Reform in the summer before switching back to support refugee-basher Robert Jenrick in the Conservative leadership contest. Now he has switched back again.

Announcing his first defection, he said: Sir John said: “I don’t want to leave an England and a UK for my great-grandchildren where all our ways have gone, where we have enclaves everywhere and nobody is prepared to stand up and fight for my Englishness.

“And we are, at the end of the day, English people. I’m white, I am proud of it and I am not going to go away from it. I want to see my culture kept in this country and not destroyed.

“That is why I am voting for Nigel – there is nobody else. The Labour Party will give religious people anything they want for the votes.”