The Times of London has quietly removed the central allegation from a report on Conservative Party leader Olukemi Badenoch’s meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome. The story, which led The Times website on Tuesday, and featured prominently in the physical newspaper, claimed the Italian PM urged Badenoch not to make a deal with Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

After an investigation by The National Pulse, however, The Times – owned by Rupert Murdoch – was forced to materially change its story, leaving only around 30 percent of the original content intact. The paper included no correction, no editor’s note, and no further explanation to readers. The drastically altered article still bears a poll relevant to their original headline: “Meloni warns friend Badenoch against deal with Farage,” and most of the comments relate to that story, even though all reference to the “deal,” as well as Reform or Farage have now been removed from the story.

The National Pulse spoke with sources close to Meloni on Tuesday morning, who confirmed that no such conversation had taken place. The sources explained that the lie had been exposed to the Italian press immediately, and then to The Times, whose Political Editor, Steve Swinford, appears to have filed verbatim from the Conservative Party leader’s press team, without fact-checking with Meloni’s office, or even double-sourcing the story.

The report initially presented this as a significant intervention from one conservative leader to another. Badenoch, it said, was resisting pressure to cooperate with Farage’s Reform, with Meloni supposedly advising her to hold the line. It was precisely the sort of foreign endorsement the Tory leader’s camp would like to have: Meloni, Europe’s most electorally successful right-wing prime minister, apparently backing Badenoch against the insurgent party threatening to consume the Conservatives.

But Meloni’s Brothers of Italy has now flatly denied the conversation took place.

In a clarification now reported by both Italian and European outlets, sources close to Meloni said she had never advised Badenoch against an alliance with Farage or Reform UK. They stressed that Meloni had “no reason for hostility” towards Farage’s movement, and said she neither had entered nor wished to enter the domestic political dynamics between British parties.

The original article, originally 756 words, became a 477-word piece with a new, innocuous headline: “I want to revive economy like Giorgia Meloni did, says Kemi Badenoch.”

What remained was a substantially less dramatic account of two friendly politicians discussing the economy, wealthy people leaving their countries, Ukraine, and Meloni’s political path.

The Times has erased the central claims of their own story without so much as a note at the top or bottom – a fundamentally dishonest response never seen before in UK media.

The episode leaves serious questions for Steve Swinford, Badenoch, and Conservative Party headquarters.

1. Who briefed the purported conversation?
2. Did Badenoch’s team supply the anti-Reform framing?
3. Was the story double-sourced with anyone close to Meloni before publication?
4. Why did The Times apparently accept a claim so politically convenient to the Tory leader without obtaining meaningful confirmation from the Italian side?

Until those questions are answered, the reasonable inference is that the Conservatives appear to have fabricated a private exchange with Meloni in order to weaponise her prestige against Reform, while The Times bought it hook, line, and sinker.

The paper of record and the establishment party have once again demonstrated that they are two cheeks of the same arse: one supplying the spin, the other laundering it into fact, and nothing but excrement coming out.