No-one stunned as Reform councillors turn out to have racist views

Alan Feeney, the deputy mayor of Solihull, and, at least until this week, a custodial manager at HMP Birmingham, was filmed calling Asian homeowners “parasites” and saying no more than 1% of the UK population should be non-white. He has now resigned from the party and been suspended from his job with the prison service.

Not suspended from the party, though, is the deputy leader of the Reform group on Solihull Council, Jamie Campbell, who came up with an ingenious tactic to prevent the planned construction of a mosque: “Go and buy some pork chops, mate, we’ll bury it in the ground. Take some photos.” Feeney responded: “Unfortunately this is a pig cemetery, mate.”

Another Reform candidate, Chris Whelan, was filmed saying that he would have sexually assaulted a female candidate in Birmingham “if she’d have given me a hug”.

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Rats in a Sack

And George Madgwick, Reform’s leader on Hampshire County Council and a senior campaign manager for the party, told ITV’s undercover reporter the far right Portsmouth Patriots group were working with Reform to get candidates elected.

“Four of the Portsmouth Patriots literally come out flyering with us, as in the organisers of the Portsmouth Patriots literally flyer with us,” said Madgwick. He is now wondering on, inevitably, X whether ITV committed a criminal offence by broadcasting his comments (spoiler alert: they haven’t).

Farage, inevitably, was given a soft-soap interview in the safe space of the Daily Telegraph’s podcast studio where Allison Pearson – a Reform supporter who has spoken at their conferences – and Liam Halligan allowed him to play the usual woe-is-me card.

Claiming that Reform are to take legal action against ITV (although their threatened action against Channel 4 News is yet to emerge) he said: “They’re behaving like criminals, they need to be prosecuted, we will prosecute them for what they’ve done, but, yeah… what they’re basically doing is saying to the world that I’m fair game, we’re fair game. I mean it’s just… it’s incredible to think that our democracy has sunk to these depths, but it’s where we are.” Good luck with that, Nigel!

Meanwhile, Farage might have problems closer to home after one of his own MPs, Sarah Pochin, was filmed evidently delighting in being introduced to what she thought was a female Reform press officer but was in fact another undercover reporter.

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Rats in a Sack

“Oh thank fuck for that!” she said. “They are so fucking chauvinistic. I go out on all the shows and go ‘Oh no, it’s lovely, oh they’re all so welcoming’ … they just exclude you if you’re a woman. There’s a bit of a male issue going on.”

Pochin was said to be already on defection watch at Reform. Having previously sat as a Conservative councillor, she was rumoured to be flirting with Rupert Lowe’s Restore – something which she has described as “complete and utter rubbish”.

She is known to be close to fellow Reform MP and chief whip Lee Anderson – to the extent that last year she was shown on social media ironing his shirt.

Anderson posted a video on X of him preparing for prime minister’s questions in his office with Pochin removing the wrinkles from his shirt. “Reform women getting stuck in for Lee Anderson!,” she cheered, while her boss explained that “I normally do my own shirts but this woman’s come in this morning interfering with my office. Look at her, she’s took [sic] it off me.”

They really are so fucking chauvinistic!