Reform candidates lay into own colleagues... without knowing it

Reform council candidates have been filmed speaking out against local authorities and their members spending huge amounts of money on flags, banning other councillors from mentioning their names and hiring illegal immigrants… without knowing that they were all done by members of their own party.

The website Byline Times set up a fictional right wing TV news channel, filled it with pictures of flags and polemics about the “woke liberal bias” at the BBC, followed a bunch of enthusiastic Reform supporters and contacted them requesting an interview.

And a number, apparently flattered by the interest from the previously unknown Patriot News, agreed to talk about their campaign – only to find themselves condemning their colleagues’ misbehaviour when they believed it was carried out by their political rivals.

Suggested Reading

The Reform candidate who says Brexit reduced the UK to a “state of disarray”

Matt Withers

The site’s Chris Atkins – confessing to wearing “a cheap suit and a £10 tie from Oxfam” and employing the catchphrase “Your country, your news!” – spoke to a number of Reform candidates on camera, putting to them the rogue actions of their colleagues in Nigel Farage’s mob but telling them they had been committed by rival parties. The results were predictable but telling.

Bailey Nash-Gardner, a young former Tory who now runs the Politics UK social media accounts, was told: “There’s a Lib Dem council that spent nearly £100,000 on rainbow flags for Pride Week.” His response was scathing: “This shows where councils are going absolutely wrong. We’re spending more time on the woke agenda… than we do on fixing potholes, cleaning up fly tipping and getting rid of graffiti.” Except this was about Reform in Nottinghamshire, who have blown £75,000 on hanging Union flags from lampposts and have since hiked council tax by 3.99%, having run for office with a pledge to reduce it.

Another interview was with Sophie Preston-Hall, tipped as a “rising star” of the party and running in Rochford, Essex. She was told: “A Tory councillor has issued another councillor with a ‘cease and desist’ letter, banning them from saying their name in public. There’s another one who’s banned local newspaper journalists from asking questions. This sounds like censorship, doesn’t it?”

Suggested Reading

Meet Reform’s heavyweight new business backer

Rats in a Sack

“Absolutely,” she replied. “I do believe in freedom of speech. So I might not agree with what you have to say, but I believe in your right to say it.” She did not know these were actually the actions of Reform council leaders in Worcestershire and Nottinghamshire respectively.

And another, Mark Hall in Harlow, Essex, who was asked about a Labour councillor fined for hiring an illegal immigrant? “They deserve to be caught like every other member of the general public and dealt with probably more severely,” said Hall. The transgression was actually by businessman Andrew Harrison, a Durham Reform councillor, who was fined £40,000 for employing an illegal worker.

“Their responses all indicate that these Reform candidates are, at best, clueless about their own party’s dismal record in local government over the last year, or at worst, are only happy to condemn political misdeeds when they are the responsibility of rivals,” wrote the website. All three, and Reform UK nationally, declined to comment.