Council employees working from home “better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly” roared Nigel Farage last week as he announced newly Reform-led local authorities would be banning the practice. If so,
why not seek an alternative career as a regional director for Reform? The party is currently seeking one for the South Central region with a salary of £50k.
And in precisely which office will the plum role be based? Er… it’s “home
working with occasional travel within the region”.
Meanwhile, after Reform were embarrassed at last year’s general election when various candidates were exposed for racist posts on social media or support for far right extremists, Nigel Farage vowed to vet wannabe representatives properly in future.
He even went so far as to threaten to report the vetting company he hired to
the police after it failed to run background checks in time (no police action was forthcoming what with failing to run background checks on political candidates in time not being, technically, a criminal offence).
How did things go this time? The party suspended Donna Edmunds three days after her election as a councillor in Shropshire, ostensibly for posting on social media about planning to defect from Reform in the future (and not, for example, for previous comments about why every town square should have a statue of Tommy Robinson, or how businesses should be allowed to refuse service to black or gay people if they liked).
Reform is now said to be examining social media accounts linked to other new councillors to see if action should follow. These could include accounts in the names of Ivan Dabbs, elected in West Northamptonshire, and Steven Biggs, elected in North Durham, which both shared posts by the fascist party Britain First. In 2015, Biggs posted on Facebook that “Islam has no place on this earth. One big nuke bomb needed”.
