When Nigel Farage told a journalist this week she should “write some silly story … and we won’t bother to read it”, it provoked an instant – and divided – reaction. For some it was a “masterclass” in dealing with mainstream media, but for others it was “rude, dismissive, misogynistic, arrogant”.

Behind the scenes, Farage’s treatment of the Financial Times’s Anna Gross – which was met with mirth and applause among Reform diehards in the room – provoked disquiet and anger among lobby journalists across the political spectrum.

As the Reform UK leader was leaving the event, a Guardian political reporter suggested he had been rude and had upset the journalist. “Good,” Farage responded.

It is not the first time Farage has been accused of patronising a female journalist. When the former BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Mishal Husain asked him about the potential consequences of shooting down Russian planes last October, Farage responded: “Listen love, you’re trying ever so hard.” A month later he accused the Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey of playing a “silly little game” when she asked who his chancellor would be.

Amid a busy news cycle, his most recent condescension could have been easily forgotten. But in a week where Farage hired a hardline anti-abortion theologian as his head of policy and promised to repeal the Equality Act on his party’s first day in government, it has sparked the question: does Reform UK, and its leader in particular, have a women problem?

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