Nigel Farage has been called out for claiming the Labour government has stopped him from entering the Chagos Islands.

Labour is trying to give the archipelago to Mauritius, while paying the country £9 billion over the next 99 years so it can lease the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia.

But the move has sparked outrage from Donald Trump in recent days, even though the US president initially backed the deal.

On Friday, he called Keir Starmer’s plan a “big mistake”, predicting it would a “blight” on the UK.

Trump supporter Farage now appears to have flown to the Indian Ocean in a bid to access the overseas territory.

But, in a video posted on X from the Maldives, the Reform UK leader claimed he had been blocked from entering the Chagos Islands.

He claimed: “The British government are applying pressure on the president and the government of the Maldives to do everything within their power to stop me from getting on that boat and going to the islands.

“If I was an Isis fighter, crossing the Channel to Dover, they wouldn’t give a damn!”

But, as the gov.uk website explains, the territory has restricted access and anyone entering needs to have a permit.

“The British Indian Ocean Territory is not a tourist destination,” it says. “There are no commercial flights, access is restricted and you need a permit before you travel.”

This information was also added by fellow X users below the video in a community note in a humiliating moment for Farage.

Even so, Reform MP Robert Jenrick reposted Farage’s clip with the caption: “The one boat Starmer has stopped? The one taking Nigel Farage to the Chagos Islands.”

The Treasury spokesperson was alluding to the small boats crisis, which Reform claims they would be able to stop with detention and deportation.

But Jenrick’s former colleague, ex-Tory defence secretary Ben Wallace called him out, writing: “Robert you and i know both know this is a cheap stunt, There are strict rules and permits about who can visit.

“Pub bores like Farage need to fill in a form! And the island base is full of serious people doing serious things. So perhaps he should get back to Clacton.”

Wallace was not alone in condemning the post. Plenty of X users called out Farage for travelling well outside of his Clacton constituency…

The Green Party candidate for the Gorton and Denton by-election has rejected her Reform rival’s invitation for a head-to-head debate.

While both parties have described the crunch contest to win another seat in parliament as a case of “Green vs Reform”, Hannah Spencer hit back at Matt Goodwin by pointing out they had already debated in two public forums.

Meanwhile, Labour insisted the Reform move demonstrated they were picking up more support in the traditionally red seat that expected.

It comes as the contest in the Greater Manchester, expected to be a three-horse race between the Greens, Labour and Reform, heats up.

In a post on X, Goodwin wrote: “I am hereby challenging the Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer to a one-on-one debate about the future of Gorton & Denton.”

In his attached letter to Spencer, the GB News preseneter said previous platforms had only offered one-minute answers to multiple candidates, meaning there was “limited room for a serious discussion”.

“As you have said yourself, this by-election is now a two-horse race between Reform and the Green Party,” he said, claiming there had been plenty of “misinformation” about the run-up to polling day.

He offered for it to be hosted by a Green-friendly platform with a moderator of their choosing, with his “only condition” being that it is recorded and published in full afterwards.

But, in a message to HuffPost UK, Spencer hit back: “Hi Matt, we literally just debated in the BBC studio and last week at the Manchester Evening News hustings.

“It’s not a game of the best of three. It sounds like you’re concerned you didn’t come across very well and want another go.

“I’m not sure anyone wants any more of your hot air and I’m focusing my time now on knocking on doors to talk about what really matters to the people of Gorton and Denton.”

Labour told HuffPost UK this race was “Labour versus Reform” last week.

Following on from Goodwin’s offer, a Labour spokesperson said: “This is a cynical move from a campaign that knows its struggling, and that the Labour vote is holding.

“While Matthew and Hannah play student politics, Labour’s Angeliki Stogia is busy, out on the doors, listening to what matters to the people of Gorton and Denton.”

Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell also responded to Goodwin’s letter, saying: “Funny. Matt knows what we know – he’s not doing as well as he’d hoped so is trying to big up the Greens (again) as his only route to victory is to split and suppress the Labour vote (which he knows is holding).

“That, or he’s frit after Angeliki slayed him at the hustings.”

An almighty row broke out at the Manchester Evening News’ debate last week when Stogia told Goodwin that “women are scared to leave the house” due to the rise in far-right rhetoric.

He replied: “I’m not going to be lectured to by a Labour politician from a party that consistently failed to investigate the mass rape and sexual abuse of working-class kids in this country for 30 years.

“And the reason I have security is because I have very real threats to my life in an area where people assure me everything is fine, and clearly in some parts of this country integration is not working as it should be.”

These spats come after Labour have mocked the Greens for misspelling “Gorton” on some campaign posters, while Rayner previously joked Reform could not find the constituency “on a map”.

There are 11 candidates standing in the by-election in total, including Charlotte Anne Cadden for the Conservatives and Jackie Pearcey for the Liberal Democrats.

The Green Party has slammed Reform UK for letting the “cat out of the bag” after Zia Yusuf suggested poverty rates in Britain are misleading.

Reform’s head of policy got into a spat with Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday over his party’s plans to keep the two-child benefit cap while cutting business rates for pubs.

“Reform’s policy is to let children go hungry so their parents can get in an extra round?” Phillips asked.

Yusuf replied: “Nigel’s position always has been and still is that he would lift the two-child benefit cap only for British families who are in work.”

He then added: “When the term poverty is used, primarily by left-wing politicians, it’s a relative term which means you could literally – this is a mathematical fact – increase everyone’s incomes tenfold and the statistics would stay the same.”

Phillips asked if Yusuf was trying to say poverty levels are an “illusion”.

The Reform politician replied: “No, it’s worse than that because real poverty does exist in this country, Trevor.

“Absolute poverty does exist in small pockets, if you want to do the right thing in this country, you need to create social mobility.

“There will always be a percentage of the public who are ‘in poverty’, and what that does nothing for is to help the middle classes or indeed the people who live in absolute poverty.”

Yusuf then claimed there are “very, very small pockets” of poverty in Wales.

He said: “The measure of poverty which has been used for years in this country is an unhelpful thing because it is relative to the mean and the median, it means you are always going to have a percentage of people who are there and that is not in the interest of people who need it.”

More than 3.8 million people experienced destitution in 2022 including a million children, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

A Green Party spokesperson tore into Yusuf’s comments, telling HuffPost UK: “Reform have totally let the cat out of the bag this morning about what they really stand for.

“Zia Yusuf, a multi-millionaire, lecturing that poverty and people’s everyday struggles with rising bills and rent is exaggerated, shows what frauds Reform are.

“They are just another party of the failed status quo, funded by and representing big corporate interests.

“The Gorton and Denton by election is between the Greens and Reform.

“We are campaigning for lower bills and protecting public services by taxing millionaires and billionaires. Reform stand for the wealthy few.”

Reform, the Greens and Labour are all battling it out to win the crunch contest in Greater Manchester later this month, in the hope of securing another MP in the Commons.