Reform accused of ‘thriving on hate’ after asylum accommodation misinformation
Rumours spread online that Kilgraston School, near Bridge of Earn, which closed last year and was recently sold to a private developer, was going to be turned into large-scale asylum accommodation.
A petition, which had nearly 600 signatures and has since been removed from Change.org, was launched by a woman who states she is a member of the Reform Party.
South Lanarkshire councillor Ross Lambie, who defected from the Tories earlier this year, reposted the initial tweet urging followers to sign it.
It turns out that there was never a plan to turn the building into asylum accommodation – something you would have hoped a councillor from a party so obsessed with all things asylum seeker related would know
Owners of the site, Lumar Capital, called the rumours “entirely unfounded and wholly inaccurate”.
Well, perhaps it’s less that Reform were ignorant and more that, once again, they were happy to whip everyone up into a misinformation-filled frenzy of hate against something that was never happening in the first place in order to themselves profit politically.
That seems to be what MP for Perth and Kinross, Pete Wishart thinks anyway:
MP for Perth and Kinross, Pete Wishart, believes the false rumours were “deliberately weaponised to stoke fear and division”.
He blamed the Reform Party members for “cynically pushing” the misinformation to “inflame tensions” and “exploit people’s anxieties.”.
He said: “This is exactly the kind of faux outrage and hate-filled politics that Reform thrives on; spreading lies, sowing distrust, and turning neighbour against neighbour.”
“It is dangerous, it is reckless, and it has no place in our democracy.”