Last August, Isabel Oakeshott – partner of Reform’s multi-millionaire deputy leader and major backer Richard Tice – used her Telegraph column to rail against Keir Starmer for “going on a terrifying crusade against free speech” because in her view “the prime minister is desperate to shut down uncomfortable debate”.
Yet the pundit and former Apprentice candidate Bushra Shaikh has now received legal papers from Oakeshott’s solicitors over a social media video in which she discusses what she says is the hypocrisy involved in the controversial journalist’s decision to become a migrant to Dubai, where Islam is the official religion. Oakeshott, who insists she has taken her three children to live in the UAE because 20% VAT on their school fees would push her annual payments to £150,000, says the video is defamatory.
Now Tice, MP for Boston and Skegness and whose worth has been estimated at up to £40million, has also entered the fray in several tweets, accusing Shaikh of having made a “big error” and claiming she is “wasting police time and taxpayer resources” over her decision to report him to the Met Police and the House of Commons standards committee. Last August, around the same time as Oakeshott’s attack on Starmer, he was moaning on X about “extreme Islamists [who] want to silence music the way they have free speech”.
PS: Tice, who regularly tweets the dismissive nickname “Rachel from accounts” when referring to the chancellor, is now known on social media as Dubai Dick.
