A big part of the pledges Reform made whilst campaigning during May’s local elections was that they would cut vast swathes of supposedly wasteful public spending, leading to lower tax for us, the citizenry.
In practice they are increasingly showing that either there was a lot less waste than they claimed – something that was self-evidently true in many cases, they’re too incompetent to clean it up, or the whole thing was a lie made up for self-interested political reasons. Or, most likely, a combination of all 3.
From The New World:
It is a similar story in Kent, where Nigel Farage insisted that spending was “beyond belief” and that his party was “going to save a lot of money”. Now, rather than slashing spending, plans are in place to increase council tax and ask schools to pay £2.2m more for services that are currently subsidised.
Reform are actually perfectly happy with spending more money than was the case prior to their various election victories – as long as it is on themselves.
In Lincolnshire, where former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns pledged deep cuts after she became mayor, it is now proposed that the budget for her office should actually go up by a whopping 128%, from £115,000 to £262,000.
Whilst simultaneously failing to meet the obligations of her job in that case:
Perhaps her next purchase should be an alarm clock – in her short time as mayor, Jenkyns has missed two meetings of the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority and been half an hour late for one.