Sian Astley, Reform’s candidate for the Greater Manchester mayoralty vacated by Andy Burnham, has posted a professional-looking (if not sounding) video to social media on how she would tackle the region’s roads if elected next week.
Filmed walking down the street, she asks viewers: “Shall we play a little game? Shall we count the potholes?” before literally counting them out loud in the manner of Count von Count, Sesame Street’s enumerating-loving vampire.
“Honestly – potholes, potholes hell!” she complains. “As mayor, we’ll be buying some of them big JCB magnificent machines, pothole-fillers… I can’t remember what they’re called, but we need some of those in Greater Manchester to sort out our roads.” The accompanying post reads: “Greater Manchester needs a builder to fix our roads, not another career politician.”
The machines she means are presumably the JCB PotHole Pro, a machine which cuts out sections of road around potholes for neater repairs and which has been promoted repeatedly by Reform politicians in recent months. Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson, Robert Jenrick, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice, among others, have sung its praises publicly.
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At a rally last year in Birmingham, Farage entered the stage on one of the repair vehicles and said it would be used in Reform-run councils when the party had taken control at local elections.
Describing JCB as “one of the most incredible companies in the world”, he said: “This machine can mend potholes at half the cost that currently is being charged by other commercial operators, and aren’t potholes just the perfect symbol of broken Britain?”
After Farage lavished praise on the business, JCB gave a donation of £200,000 to Reform in November last year, and since then his colleagues have been queuing up to praise the PotHole Pro.
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In April, Anderson posted a video of one in Nottinghamshire, saying: “Have a look at this, you’ve got to be impressed.” Jenrick visited a JCB factory in February claiming the machine could fix potholes six times faster, while Yusuf accused councils of using “iron age technology” rather than “cutting edge tech like the JCB Pothole Pro”.
Alas for Astley, though, even if elected – increasingly unlikely as Reform redirects resources to Farage’s battle with a bin in Clacton – she will not be buying a single Pothole Pro. The mayor of Greater Manchester does not manage day-to-day highway maintenance on council roads.
Day-to-day road maintenance – such as fixing potholes, resurfacing streets, clearing drains and maintaining streetlights – is the responsibility of the 10 individual local councils that make up the region she wishes to run.
So no “magnificent machines” which she “can’t remember what they’re called” for her. Best to stick to the counting, Sian. One, ah-ah-ah…
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