Sarah Wood peddled conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic and Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat on social media. She is now leader of Kirklees Council.
It’s no secret that Reform UK isn’t great at vetting. Indeed, anyone who watched last week’s ITV documentary, Undercover: A Year In Reform, will be aware of just how rife extreme and outlandish views are throughout the party’s rank and file.
As such, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a Reform Council leader has a history of spreading bizarre and dangerous conspiracy theories online.
Back in July, Reform’s Sarah Wood became leader of Kirklees Council, on which the party had won a plurality in the May local elections.
We can reveal that a few years earlier she was busy promulgating misinformation about the 2020 US presidential election, the January 6 US Capitol attack, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Using a since-deleted Twitter account, in November 2020 – when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the US presidential election – Wood responded, “Fraudulent,” to a post asking: “Describe the ‘election results’ in one word.”
She continued spouting conspiracy theories on 6 January 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol Building in Washington DC.
That day, Wood claimed that those who “stormed the Capitol were Antifa not Trump supporters”; suggested that police opened the gates and let “the Antifa protestors dressed up as Trump supporters in”; and wrote: “Democrats using the breach of congress by antifa to attempt to expel the republicans who objected to the electoral college vote #corruption plain and simple”.
As well as peddling nonsense about the 2020 election and the 6 January Capitol attack, Wood propagated Covid-19 conspiracy theories on social media around the same time.
On 5 December 2020, for instance, she told her Twitter followers: “Abuse by control and coercion. It’s against the law. This [is] what the Government is doing to us! #CovidLies”. Later that month, she wrote: “Long Covid Is not a thing. It was made up by the media. Get a grip.”
In January, she said lockdown was “NOT about a virus”; posted that “Whatever this is it’s NOT about the virus AND it’s global”; and responded, “This would be a good way out of tyranny,” to a post which said: “We need a full on National strike. Everything to stop. People seem too afraid to march in vast numbers, but may not object to staying off work, refusing to pay bills, energy, council tax, mortgages, TV licences etc. Let’s get it on.”
Meanwhile, in YouTube comments she expressed support for the conspiracy theorist politician Andrew Bridgen after he was expelled from the Conservative Party in April 2023 for comparing the Covid vaccine rollout to the Holocaust.
Underneath a video by Tommy Robinson ally Mahyar Tousi about Bridgen’s expulsion, for instance, Wood said: “This is what happens when you speak truth to power. He is just one. But WATCH more an[d] more are standing and speaking. He is one of the courageous who have set off a landslide. No stopping it now!!!”
She also wrote, “Yes I’m ready to fight,” below a 2022 video which asked: “The Covid tyranny is here… Will you raise your voice against the tyrants? Will you fight?”
Wood is certainly not the first Reform Kirklees councillor to make headlines for the wrong reasons.
Stephan Dransfield described a video of an Asian man being punched aggressively in the face as “very satisfying”; Tracy Clayton promoted a slew of hateful anti-Muslim posts online; Eric Butterworth reposted an image calling for England to be made “ISLAM-FREE”; David Rowan called for former House of Commons Speaker John Bercow to be hanged; and Gill Floyd appears to be a fan of the anti-Muslim extremist Tommy Robinson.
Wood and Reform were offered the opportunity to comment, but didn’t respond.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button to hear the audio version. Harry Shukman Reform UK is staffed by oddballs and enigmas, but none odder…
