Reform Watch 12: Reform promise cuts and deliver tax rises

Back in May, after his party won control of ten local councils, Reform’s then-chairman Zia Yusuf was invited onto the BBC. He spoke about what voters expect from their local authorities — they want bins collected, potholes fixed, and council waste cut. “They don’t want their council tax going up,” he said. “And Reform will deliver on those things.”

Six months on, has Reform made good on these promises?

Take a look at Kent County Council, described by the party as the “shop window” for its potential government. Here, Reform’s leaders have announced they are going to raise council tax amid the failure of its attempt to find any unnecessary services to cut.

“Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren’t,” a Reform cabinet member told the Financial Times. Another said services were already down to the “bare bones”. Kent is now bracing for a council tax rise of 5% — the maximum allowed.

“Slash Government Waste” is a key part of Reform’s policy agenda. It’s the second manifesto pledge after reducing immigration. The party wants you to believe that councils are concealing the existence of all these expensive yet pointless services that their common-sense approach can easily remove. The reality seems very different.

“We will cut waste, you can hold us to that,” Yusuf told his BBC interviewer in May. Does anyone else think this sounds a lot like a broken promise?

In other news… 

🚶The Tories held their conference this week, but the attention went to Reform. Twenty Conservative councillors announced their defection to Nigel Farage’s party yesterday. Most of them are based in Kent, with others coming from the south coast, the home counties, and Yorkshire. One of them is Robbie Lammas, now deputy leader of Reform Medway. According to a report in the Express, the former Tory aide was found by a parliamentary investigation to have bullied and harassed a colleague. Lammas is said to have “abused his position of authority” and left a junior staff member “vulnerable, upset, undermined, humiliated and threatened”. He denies wrongdoing.

🚨 One of Reform’s defectors is Chris Hespe, a politician in Elham Valley in Kent. Unfortunately, he has an X account which has been prolifically sharing racist material. Hespe has posted extreme images by Paul Golding, leader of Britain First, and Keith Woods, the Irish white nationalist. He has called for Tommy Robinson to be knighted and shared a meme of Adolf Hitler. Hespe, whose posts were uncovered by Reform Exposed, didn’t answer our request for comment.

💸 Something is rotten in the county of Durham. The Reform-led council is set to cut funding for leisure centres. It’s also likely to announce the slashing of a scheme that helps the poorest residents afford their council tax bills. Any good news? Councillor pay is not “a fair reflection” of their work, according to Andrew Husband, leader of Durham Council, who called for increases. The basic allowance is £13,300 — which is indeed low — but calling for cuts to public services in one breath and a fatter pay packet in the next is a dreadful look.

🤔What’s going on in Northumberland? Two of Reform’s councillors have been suspended pending an investigation into their conduct. Nicole Brooke and Patrick Lambert are accused of breaching Reform’s group rules “in a manner that could be detrimental to the party’s interests”, according to a statement. It’s unclear what exactly has happened — although Councillor Brooke says “it has nothing to do with DBS checks (mine cleared weeks ago), Registered Interests (not me), done something Criminal (not me) or me having said anything stupid online”. That last detail might refer to our story about James Allen, a Reform councillor suspended after we found his comments about wanting to shoot Keir Starmer. Any ideas about Brooke and Lambert, do get in touch.

🛁 As these cold nights draw in, there’s nothing like a hot bath. That’s what James Petter must have thought — he is the deputy leader of West Northamptonshire Council, controlled by Reform. Only instead of waiting till the end of the day, he got into the tub during an online training course on treasury management. The 35-odd other councillors were shocked last week when, live on camera, they saw his nude body slide into a foamy bubble bath. Ian McCord, an independent councillor, tells us: “He took his iPad or iPhone in with him, his camera was still on. He stepped into the bath and left nothing to the imagination.” Councillor Petter — or Pecker, as he has now been nick-named — has been the subject of jokes about cock-ups and honourable council members. Training videos like these are meant to be taped and posted online, however when McCord asked staffers about the footage, he was told there was “a technical issue” with the recording. How convenient!