Reform Watch 30: An incomplete list of gaffes made by Reform’s Manchester mayor candidate

Sian Astley, Reform’s candidate for the Greater Manchester mayoral election, has some big ideas up her sleeve. 

Among the policies she wants to enact is a register of brownfield sites across Greater Manchester. “I will ensure a comprehensive assessment of all Brownfield sites across GM,” she says. “I will listen to residents [sic] concerns and not force through developments on Greenbelt land.” She said something similar on a GB News interview last week, saying if elected she would ensure that brownfield sites would come first: “Work out where we can build and how we can build.”

She also wants a review into the cost of the clean air zone cameras and a register of loans held by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

Great ideas. Except that they all already exist! And have done for some time! 

Manchester City Council (and the combined authority) publish a list of brownfield sites, the cost of the clean air zone scheme, and a register of loans. Astley should know, considering she has been elected to, erm, Manchester City Council.

She also wants to triple the stop and search powers of Greater Manchester Police. I’m not sure this would be possible. “All operational matters such as investigating crimes and deploying officers remain the responsibility of chief officers of each police force,” says a government briefing. “Chief officers must make operational decisions free from political interference.”

We have seen this time and again: Reform candidates campaigning on issues that actually they know little about. They have simple solutions for complex problems that are totally unfeasible.

“Local government in Britain is broken and Reform is going to come in with a fresh agenda and fix it,” Nigel Farage said in 2025. Look how that’s gone. Last year, Reform-run councils promised to cut or freeze council tax, and it increased in every local authority under their control. Pledges to fix potholes and increase bin collections have also not been met.

“I’m going to run a really positive campaign,” Astley said last week, “and I feel that that will resonate with voters and I hope they will choose me to be the best person for the job.” We’ll find out in two weeks — the election is on 30th July.

And in other news…

🥴 A serious plan to reshape the way our country is run

Alex Phillips on her TalkTV show

Alex Phillips is one of Reform’s big boosters. Described as “the new female face” of the party, she can be relied on to big up Reform online and in her TalkTV appearances. One of her aims to help the party break through with policy ideas, so what might these be? Her Substack offers some bonkers insight:

• “Allow only British born citizens of sole nationality to hold public office”
• “Roll out a public health campaign promoting the nuclear family”
• “Ex-convicts could be forced to take jobs in agriculture”

Phillips wrote that the UK is about to see “the formation of Jihad militias”, whatever they are, asking in an inflammatory headline: “Is an Islamist Fifth Column now dictating our Global Affairs too?” (Which sounds a bit like that deranged conspiracy theory about members of another Abrahamic faith controlling world events). “The takeover isn’t coming,” she wrote of Islam in the UK, citing a public prayer event as evidence. “It’s here. And it’s accelerating. Fast.” 

💉 We’re all trying to find the guy who did this

Zia Yusuf, the home affairs spokesman, said he wants to prosecute former ministers for treason. “What Matt Hancock did during Covid I think met the threshold for prosecution,” he said on a recent podcast. “Not just him, but others too.” Who might those others be? Perhaps the old vaccines minister responsible for the development, manufacture and deployment of Covid jabs? That would be Nadhim Zahawi, the former Tory MP who earlier this year defected to… Reform UK!

We wonder how he feels joining a party that wants to hold an inquiry into the UK’s pandemic response. “This is a catastrophe inflicted on the British people that will be investigated without fear or favour,” Yusuf has written. “It is possible the CPS will then have sufficient evidence to prosecute Johnson and Hancock for Misconduct in Public Office and Gross Negligence Manslaughter.” Zahawi can’t like his new colleagues much.

😤 Had to grind for this view

A fence so white it looks like it’s come back from a dental clinic in Antalya

Tell you what, some of the Reform branch activists are really impressive. Genuinely! The party in Kent went to the village of Sarre, where according to two pics they uploaded on Facebook, they repainted a fence, trimmed the verge, planted grass seed, got it to grow, plus they redid the pavement and repaved the road. They managed to do this so quickly that no time whatsoever passed, as you can tell from the shadow of the road signs and the progress of the car in both photos. Surely they weren’t lying about their cleanup and using AI instead? The photograph was deleted, so we’ll never know the truth!