Fresh off of losing an argument about flags, the afore-mentioned leader of the council, George Finch, put forward a proposal for the council to pay for three “political advisors” at an estimated cost of an extra £150,000 from the public purse.
I can certainly see why a teenager in charge of a half billion pound budget might want as much advice as possible – but it’s most certainly the height of hypocrisy for a party that trades on the constant disparagement of “unelected bureaucrats” and “wasteful” government expenditure.
Sam Jones, a Green Party councillor, put it well:
Reform have had a sniff of power, they’re making it so clear that they never cared a jot for the will of their supporters. No to overpaid, unelected bureaucrats before the election, but yes to up to £150,000 of unfunded spending on political assistants now the campaigning is over.
George Cowcher from the Liberal Democrats is also no fan:
These proposals are all about spending some money so they can have a chum in their group and I think that is not particularly helpful given the financial state of this council
Although perhaps Reform don’t really have a grasp on the financial state of the council given another one of Cowcher’s critiques is that a quarter of the way through the financial year there’d been no proposals from them regarding managing the authority’s budget.
Around the same time, the non-Reform parties of the council put forward another motion. This one was to officially recognise that climate change is real – increasingly a novelty amongst Reform folk, contrary to basically everyone else who might know about the situation – and support the existing declaration around there being a climate emergency.
Thankfully that motion was carried, against the wishes of Reform.
Sarah Feeney of Labour explains on reason why tackling the issue is critical in that area even today:
Sarah Feeney, the Labour leader, said the climate crisis was a “not a hypothetical” and was already having a major impact on farmers, with flooding causing elderly people to sometimes barricade themselves in their homes.
There was a group anti-Reform protestors outside the meeting concerned, including Becky Davidson, who, presumably in reference to the flag argument, was rightfully sick of Finch “using a marginalised community as a propaganda tool”.