Reform UK has emerged as an electoral force.
Nigel Farage’s right-wing party won 10 councils, two mayoralties and a parliamentary by-election during Thursday’s polls.
Wes Streeting, speaking for the government on Sunday, acknowledged Reform is “a real threat” to Labour and is being treated as a “serious opposition force”.
“In that spirit,” Streeting added, “I think Reform does deserve more air time and scrutiny of their policies.”
So what has Reform said it will do since its electoral gains? Yahoo News UK takes a look.
Diversity roles scrapped
Farage suggested any staff at the 10 councils now under Reform control who had been working on diversity or climate change initiatives would see their roles scrapped.
After Reform won in Durham on Friday, he said: “I would advise anybody who’s working for Durham County Council on climate change initiatives or diversity, equity and inclusion… I think you all better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly.
“We want to give council taxpayers better value for money. We want to reduce excessive expenditure. We want to find out who the long-term contracts are signed with and why, and reduce the scale of local government back to what it ought to be.”
It prompted Christina McAnea, leader of Unison, the UK’s biggest union, to urge staff at Reform councils to sign up.
However, the rhetoric of Reform’s new Greater Lincolnshire mayor, Dame Andrea Jenkyns – who also pledged to get rid of diversity officers – fell flat after it emerged the county council, which Reform also won, doesn’t actually employ any.
‘Resisting’ asylum seekers in Reform counties
Farage pledged to “resist” asylum seekers being housed in the counties now under his party’s control.
Claiming they were being “dumped into the north of England, getting everything for free”, he said “it is unfair, it is irresponsible, it is wrong in every way and I don’t believe [Sir Keir] Starmer has got the guts to deal with it.”
It is unclear whether Reform councils could actually block asylum seekers being housed in their areas as the system is managed by the Home Office. But Reform chairman Zia Yusuf said his party would use “every instrument of power available”, saying contracts for such provisions are drawn up between the Home Office and accommodation providers.
Watch: This is the death of Conservative Party, Farage says
He told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Judicial reviews, injunctions, there’s planning laws. A lot of these hotels, when you suddenly turn them into something else, [it] is essentially a hostel that falls foul of any number of regulations, and that’s what our teams of lawyers are exploring at the moment.”
Asked if Reform’s policy was to house migrants in tents, as the party’s Greater Lincolnshire mayor Jenkyns suggested, Yusuf said: “That’s what France does.”
He added Reform will be publishing a plan “to deport everybody who is currently in this country illegally in our first term of government… in the coming weeks”. Starmer is also expected to set out a proposed crackdown on immigration this month.
Patriotic teaching at schools
In an interview with The Sunday Times, party chairman Yusuf said schools under a Reform government would teach a patriotic curriculum.
He name-checked China, Russia and the US as examples the UK should follow.
He told the paper: “There has been an industrial-scale demoralisation, particularly of young people in this country, who are basically being taught quite deliberately that they should hate their country, they should be deeply ashamed of their country’s history, that the United Kingdom had a brutal empire… the British Empire was not perfect, but I actually think overall the British Empire did much more good for the world than it did bad.
“I think this country has one of the most profoundly impressive and decisively impactful histories of any country in the world. These things are not taught and embedded into British people in the way that they are in many other countries. Go to China, go to Russia, go to the United States of America… we’ve got to revive that.”
‘War’ on net zero projects
The Telegraph has reported Reform will use its new control of 10 councils to use “every lever” to block renewable developments.
Deputy leader Richard Tice also said he will write to all prospective developers in Lincolnshire, where Reform won both the county council and mayoralty elections, to say it will block net zero projects.
He told the paper: “I’m now going to write again to them, saying now that we’ve won these elections, you need to be under no illusion. This is war. We will wage war against you people and your terrible ideas.
“If you think that you’re going to do this in the county of Lincolnshire, you are going to regret it. You’re going to waste your money. It’s going to be very painful financially, so you might as well take your money and your daft ideas elsewhere.”
Energy secretary Ed Miliband recently accused Reform of peddling “nonsense and lies” about net zero, which the government is legally committed to achieve by 2050.
