Lena White

🚨#BREAKING The Crown Prosecution Service has charged Reform UK’s leader on Hampshire County Council, George Madgwick, with 12 counts of rape and one of distributing indecent images of a child. Madgwick faces 35 offences in total, relating to four complainants between 2008 and 2021. He was arrested in January and has been bailed to appear at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court on 25 November. Reform has suspended him. Madgwick has been a prominent voice in Portsmouth’s protests over small-boat arrivals. Last month, ITV’s Undercover: A Year In Reform filmed him voicing support for the Portsmouth Patriots, an anti-immigration group whose private Facebook group he belonged to. He is entitled to a fair trial, and nothing should be said or shared that could prejudice it. Madgwick has not always extended that courtesy to others. On 20 June 2025, nine days after an alleged rape behind Portsmouth’s court building, he posted a video to X: “EXCLUSIVE. Exposing the truth that a MIGRANT has been charged with RAPING a young women [sic] in Portsmouth. Please RT this video. This man entered via the boats and placed in Portsmouth by the HO.” It was viewed nearly 285,000 times. The man had been charged. He had not been tried. Madgwick knew that and published anyway. Five days later he went further. He claimed the council’s chief executive “knew, and tried to pressure me into silence”, called it “a potential cover-up”, and tagged the post #TwoTierJustice and #Resign. Protests followed outside the Royal Beach Hotel, and GB News gave him a platform to explain how he had “defied orders” to speak. What he described as pressure was the ordinary rule on active cases. Once someone is charged, nothing should be published that could prejudice a jury. The Portsmouth News was attacked at the time for printing no more than it legally could. The council later said it had stayed silent for exactly that reason, and warned of “considerable misinformation”. In February 2026, a jury at Portsmouth Crown Court found the man not guilty of rape and voyeurism. Madgwick now has every protection he once treated as a cover-up: a council that will decline to comment, a press bound by reporting restrictions, and a jury that should hear only the evidence. Those protections are right, and they should be his in full. Nobody should do to him what he did to a man a jury went on to acquit. Some questions can be asked now. Police say they began investigating Madgwick in July 2025 and arrested him in January 2026. On 15 May, Reform named him its first leader on Hampshire County Council, and Suella Braverman said: “I have known of George’s record and political success for years.” Did Reform know about the investigation or the arrest when it chose him? If it did, why did it go ahead? If it didn’t, what does its vetting actually check? And to GB News and every account that shared his videos: the man you helped him put on trial by social media was acquitted. The presumption of innocence was never a cover-up. And it still isn’t.