In years to come, books, films and box sets will be written about the great Reform swindle, centring on the racists and xenophobes who used fear and loathing to terrify otherwise fair-minded, ordinary people into handing power in local councils to liars and incompetents, according to a columnist.
The article highlights how humble folk in Sunderland came to empower their Reform administrators to scrap the 30-year campaign to fight racism in football, and points to the disproportionate TV and radio platforming of a corporate lobby group with little in the way of actual substantive policy beyond targeting and expelling migrants and Black and Brown people from the UK.
Broadcasters criticised for platforming Reform
There were moments of clarity where some saw the light and took action, the piece notes, praising presenters Kate Garraway, Ranvir Singh and the production team at Good Morning Britain, who last week realised that even trying to have a sensible, xenophobia-free chat with Reform's Zia Yusuf is like trying to play Scrabble with a chicken. They faded out his microphone mid-sentence, providing a blueprint for what most broadcasters should be doing to the unelected, unpopular populist.
Such is the momentum of the Reform circus, however, that the horse is long gone with the barn door swinging in the wind, the article says, asking residents with buyers' remorse after the Reform-led Derbyshire County Council closed eight care homes – despite a long-running campaign by residents' families to keep them open. The facilities now sit completely empty.
Nursery closures spark emotional backlash
The piece also mentions mums, groomed by Reform into fearing migrants – only to find “Stop the Boats” meant “Stop the nurseries”. Ten publicly-run nurseries are to be shut down by Reform-led South Tyneside Council, forcing mums and dads to grapple with soaring childcare costs in a cost-of-living crisis.
Although the nurseries are set to close in July next year, staff among the 116 employees affected will start losing their jobs in December this year. Residents were sobbing and hurling shouts of “shame” at councillors during a cabinet meeting.
Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice paid tribute to the council's courage, saying: “Having the courage to make important decisions and in order to get the bills down, spend the money properly, means I've got great confidence in all of those councillors leading the way. That's why they voted for us to take bold decisions.”
Financial decisions and wider consequences
As a registered political party, Reform would not have been able to directly subsidise the £1million it would have cost to keep those nurseries open from their recent £72million windfall, still fresh into their accounts from controversial benefactors, the article notes, adding that the optics are horrible, especially with talk in the past week that they are to use big money to set up their own TV station.
If there is to be a ray of light amid the most horrible period in politics in the last 40 years, it is that even voters hoodwinked into backing Reform are now seeing the light, and that others elsewhere in the UK can use the multiple examples of administrative vandalism being wreaked in real time by clueless councillors as a cautionary tale.
The piece cites flagship areas like Kent, where Reform promised to cut council tax, then put it up while dealing with infighting, resignations, and downgraded Ofsted ratings for children's services, and Reform-led Lancashire County Council, where residents are still furious over roads likened to “the surface of the moon” and data being withheld setting out pothole repair response times.
Because it's one thing using racism and xenophobia to frighten good people into losing their country, but even the current snapshot of a UK being plunged into the abyss under Reform – with the Black and Brown people sidelined or gone – should send a shiver down your spine, the article concludes.
