The real Reform priorities

While the debate as to what exactly Reform's policies are goes on, it is worth looking again as what exactly they are doing in areas where they control local government. The indications are that Reform are pretty much the sort of self-interested politicians we would expect, whose priorities are suspect to say the least.

The first indication of this trend was found in Scarborough where, as the BBC report, Reform UK Mayor Thomas Murray, will be given a £3,500 allowance, after the authority's annual budget was approved last week, a 600% increase:

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a group of charter trustees - councillors who represented the town's unparished areas on North Yorkshire Council - were previously responsible for maintaining civic traditions.

Maw said: "Under the former charter trustees, the mayor received £500 and the deputy mayor £100, which was considered sufficient for both their civic duties.

"I just respectfully ask the following: What is the justification for increasing the allowance to £3,500, please?"

Murray said the figure was based on how many engagements he might attend in a given year and how much each event had cost him.

When questioned about this increase, Reform leader, Nigel Farage said he had no idea, which is pretty much par for the course.

And then there is the 19-year-old leader of Warwickshire council, George Finch, who the Guardian says initiated a scheme to spend £150,000 on hiring political advisers at a county council despite pledging to cut waste and save money.

He put the plan forward after being narrowly elected as the leader of Warwickshire county council during a meeting on Tuesday, which was picketed by protesters:

The protest came after a row over an attempt by Finch, as interim leader, to have a Pride flag removed from council headquarters before the end of Pride month. The chief executive refused the request, telling him she was responsible for such decisions.

However, there was fresh controversy during a meeting of the council, one of several where Reform became the largest party in the recent local elections, as it narrowly pushed through plans to hire political advisers but lost a separate vote relating to the climate crisis.

Opposition councillors accused Reform of reneging on promises to voters over the political advisers, who would be publicly funded for it and the other two largest parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

“These proposals are all about spending some money so they can have a chum in their group and I think that is not particularly helpful given the financial state of this council,” said George Cowcher, councillor and deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. He added that it was almost a quarter of the way through the financial year and there had yet to be any proposals from Reform about managing the authority’s budget.

Sam Jones, a Green party councillor, said: “Reform have had a sniff of power, they’re making it so clear that they never cared a jot for the will of their supporters. No to overpaid, unelected bureaucrats before the election, but yes to up to £150,000 of unfunded spending on political assistants now the campaigning is over.”

Perhaps the new council leader would be better off securing the future of vital services by getting a budget in place.