The Reform rising star who stands with ICE

With even Donald Trump himself promising to review ICE’s activities following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis at the weekend – also hinting he would eventually withdraw agents from the city – it would take a certain sort of politician to unquestioningly cheerlead for the trigger-happy MAGA militia. Step forward Reform!

Joseph Boam, a Leicestershire Reform councillor who briefly served as the council’s deputy leader last year before being sacked for being hopeless, this weekend marked the killing by posting a large ‘I STAND WITH ICE’ poster on his X account.

“Blimey… but at least it’s good of Reform folks to tell us where they stand,” reacted former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, now the party’s environment spokesman. “If you think totalitarianism and the summary execution of innocent people by the state are *bad* things, you now know not to vote for them.”

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Rather than an obscure outlier, Boam is considered a rising star in Nigel Farage’s party despite being summarily sacked as Leicestershire’s deputy leader and lead member for adult social care positions after just three months last year when it emerged he wasn’t up to the job.

“We reviewed and talked with the director and found that Joe accepted he wasn’t able to do the job, not the way it should have been done or whatever the spec was, and I’ve no idea because I haven’t been given a spec,” garbled council leader Dan Harrison. “He was struggling with the understanding of the role. It’s a tough, demanding role.”

And besides, considerably more senior Reform figures than Boam have held up Trump’s extreme attitude to undocumented immigrants as an example. Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy, told the Times last year that his party would adopt a ‘Trump 2.0’ approach to immigration, saying: “We are going to move at great speed. It’ll be much more like Trump mark two than Trump mark one.” When they tell you who they are, you better listen, as they say…