Arena MK tight-lipped over accepting booking for Reform UK rally featuring speech from Nigel Farage
Arena MK has remained tight-lipped over accepting a booking for a Reform UK rally on Tuesday March 17, which includes a speech from the party’s leader Nigel Farage.
The party has been posting a countdown to the event on its Milton Keynes branch Facebook page, and has been putting leaflets through residents’ doors in the run-up to the rally, due to include a keynote speech from Farage.
The MK Citizen has repeatedly contacted Arena MK to give them the opportunity to comment on accepting the booking, which has divided opinion, but at the time of writing they have not responded.
Arena MK, also known as the Marshall Arena, is part of the Stadium MK Group, which was acquired in August 2024 by a Kuwaiti consortium led by Fahad Al Ghanim.
The venue is part of the wider stadium:mk complex, featuring a 3,420 metres squared space, and is managed alongside the MK Dons football team.
Milton Keynes Dons had been scheduled to play a home league game against Colchester United on March 17, however the match was moved back 24 hours for live television coverage.
This was announced last month before the Reform UK rally at the venue was first publicised.
According to the event’s ticket platform, resident and member tickets for the rally are priced at £5.
Sales of tickets for ‘local residents who support Reform UK and would like to attend the event’ end on March 14 according to the platform.
There is no such restriction on member tickets, although the website adds ‘the rally is only for residents living in Milton Keynes or the surrounding area’.
Doors open for the event at 5.30pm, with proceedings starting at 7pm and due to last for 90 minutes.
Reform UK’s website describes the rally as ‘a high-energy, broadcast-style event’ and claims ‘thousands are expected in attendance’.
There were mixed views on the Citizen’s Facebook page in response to our previous article about the story, with Julie Golding commenting: ‘I can see a lot of people attending just to hear what he has to say’, while Amber Anderson wrote: ‘Is there a counter protest happening? If not, does anyone want to organise one with me?’
Another comment read: ‘There must be some way of stopping this from happening, Milton Keynes is better than hosting this’, while another read: ‘There are Reform voters in Milton Keynes as there is all over the county. To stop this would be an infringement on freedom of speech.’