Given the troubles engulfing Reform-run Durham Council, one might think its deputy leader, former GB News presenter Darren Grimes, would have a lot on his plate.
Facing a £72 million budget gap over the next four years, last month it revealed proposals for £10 million of new savings proposals, including potential job cuts and parking charge rises. Earlier this month, the cash-strapped council agreed to remove 100% council tax reductions for low-earners, meaning most residents will have to pay at least 10% of their bills from April.
Two days ago it proposed cutting the entirety of the £1m grant it currently gives out each year to some of its town and parish councils. And today it emerged the annual brass festival in the village of Trimdon – just the sort of traditionally British event one might have expected Reform to be fully behind – could be scrapped next year due to the local authority’s proposed funding cuts.
So what’s Grimes been doing? Making an absurd video for his social media channels attacking immigration via the proxy of squirrels.
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“We import millions of grey squirrels, right?,” Grimes says to his viewers. “A small percentage of those grey squirrels happen to be rabid. They wanna tear your face off, effectively.
“And we’re all red squirrels, right? We’re red squirrels. Any sane parks department, right, that had control over a public park would do two things. One, it would hunt out the rabid squirrels that are seeking to eat the faces of the red ones and two, it would stop the vans or the aeroplanes until they could screen the grey ones coming here to cause murder and all the rest of it.
“But, my friends, our elites don’t do that, do they? And why is that? Well, it’s because they’ve spent 20 years lecturing you, as this red squirrel does here, that all squirrels are equal, diversity is strength.”
And all this is accompanied by an AI video Grimes has created, showing a red squirrel waving a ‘diversity is strength’ placard while being surrounded by angry grey squirrels, emerging from a plane they have apparently piloted and curiously all wearing green bandanas.
If you’re a Durham council employee, council tax payer, user of its services or just a lover of brass bands, you must be delighted Grimes is getting his priorities in order!
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