In a recent article entitled “Dear Britain, do you worry that Team Farage is just a hot mess in power? Or is everyone too angry to care“, the indefatigable Marina Hyde summarises the abject “achievements” of Reform since they took over several local councils several months ago.
Flash forward to today, and in Reform’s dry run for running the world’s sixth largest economy, the party’s councils are finding it a lot harder than they made out.
In Nottinghamshire, the Reform county council leader banned party engagement with the Nottingham Post after completely wetting his pants over an article in the paper about … local government reorganisation.
Elsewhere, Reform have frequently shown themselves to be the free-speech warriors who love the mute button, the anti-snowflake crew who somehow constantly make complaints about bullying – and do so top to bottom. There have reportedly been eight official complaints of bullying to Reform’s south-east regional director in the past three months, while Reform’s top brass actually called the police about the mean words of Rupert Lowe (previously one of their five MPs but now suspended and independent).
Meanwhile, having honked endlessly about their Doge knock-off and all the millions in savings they would find just lying on the table when they took control, multiple Reform councils have found there aren’t any and they’re all probably going to have to raise the council tax by the maximum amount allowed.
As she says:
It’s all chaos and hypocrisy and drama, all of the time.