Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Reform's local difficulties
The Guardian reports that a Reform UK-run council where the party sought to pilot drastic cost-cutting plans is going to have to raise council tax after all.
The paper quotes Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care, Diane Morton, as saying that services at Kent county council were already “down to the bare bones”. It makes Kent the latest local authority controlled by Nigel Farage’s party to signal its intention to raise council tax:
“We’ve got more demand than ever before and it’s growing,” Morton told the Financial Times. “We just want more money.”
Morton said she believed the local authority would raise council tax by 5% – the maximum permitted – as councils try to honour their legal duty to make sure spending adds up before budgets are set for next year.
The Reform leaders of Northamptonshire Council, Durham Council, and Staffordshire Council are also looking at putting up council tax, their words reflecting every other council leader in the country, except that Reform were the ones who had promised something different.
As the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Daisy Cooper says, the admission of a looming council tax rise in Kent is a “spectacular failure” for which the party's head of policy, Zia Yusuf, must “personally apologise”:
“Reform’s pledge to slash millions from Kent council’s budget has turned out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors. Just like his idol Elon Musk, Zia Yusuf has spectacularly failed to deliver what ‘Doge’ promised,” she said.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Guardian we are told that the finances of one of Nigel Farage’s key confidants are being examined by the UK’s tax and revenue authorities amid questions over his income from wealth and business activities.
They say that the scoping exercise by HMRC is said to be focused on tax residency and the business affairs of George Cottrell, whom Reform UK’s leader Farage has described as “like a son to me”.
And, only a couple of weeks ago, Reform UK's former leader in Wales admitted taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia while being a Member of the European Parliament.
The BBC say that Nathan Gill pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery between 6 December 2018 and 18 July 2019:
The politician took money from Oleg Voloshyn - a man once described by the US government as a "pawn" of Russian secret services - and made speeches in the parliament, statements to a TV channel and arranged an event with a pro-Russian politician.
Gill was a close ally of Nigel Farage, while Llyr Powell, Reform UK's candidate for the Caerphilly Senedd by-election later this month, worked for him prior to the offences taking place. Neither were involved in the offences.
