Reform’s Amanda Clare arrested for assault and criminal damage at a Pride event

Reform councillor Amanda Clare from the Cheshire West and Chester Council attended a Pride event in Winsford last week end. Sadly not as a supporter.

Rather her behaviour was so bad that she ended up getting arrested – and later charged with assault and criminal damage.

Cheshire Police said they were called to reports of a disturbance at Winsford Pride at around 16:30 BST on Saturday, where they arrested Ms Clare, who is known as Mandy Clare.

Here she apparently is, being forcibly escorted out of the event after committing “intimidation and attacks on drag acts”, per Ben Walker’s tweet.

She’s due to appear at Crewe Magistrates Court on August 8th.

In the mean time, there’s a petition on change.org demanding that she is removed for breaching the code of conduct that such public representatives are supposed to live up to.

From Steven Harris, who started the petition:

I’ve seen and experienced the ill-effects of local councilor, Cllr Mandy Clare Dene’s, harmful hate messages. Her actions are not only a breach of the code of conduct, but they are promoting discrimination and spreading hate among our community.
…
It’s time to take a stand and remind our leaders that their duty is to serve and protect all citizens. That’s why we demand the immediate removal of Cllr Mandy Clare Dene from office due to her breach in code of conduct, as found in her actions promoting hate speech and discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community.

Reform councillors fail to fill in the legally required public register of interests

British councillors are required to fill in a public register of interests, in the name of transparency.

The legal declaration they sign states that:

I am a member…of the following body/ies, one of whose principal purposes include the influence of public opinion or policy (including any political party)

However, several Reform councillors have failed to even disclose that they are part of Reform UK.

That’s aside from any side-gigs they might have. The Byline Times notes that Darren Grimes hasn’t mentioned that he’s also a member of the "right-wing Free Speech Union" (or Reform).

The 18 year old leader of Warwickshire council we covered recently, George Finch, has also failed to declare that in between running an entire council and attending university he also offers online tutoring services. If this is a paid gig then he’s likely broken the rules too.

The Daily Mail on how Reform is ‘sowing chaos’ in local government

No new revelations in the Daily Mail’s story – but it does present a nice summary of some of the mess that the incompetant new Reform councils are making.

A damning dossier has revealed the ‘chaos and confusion’ that Reform councillors are sowing across England after their local elections success on May 1.

As well as winning hundreds of council seats, the insurgent party also seized control of ten local authorities in a major breakthrough.

But critics are questioning Reform’s ability to govern at a local level following a series of disputes over the past eight weeks.

This includes the scrapping of a floods team in a flood-hit county, the banning of the Ukrainian flag and a bitter row with firefighters.

The party has also faced embarrassment by the resignations of a slew of councillors – just weeks after their election – as well as claims of Reform councillors sharing far-right content on social media.

In addition, the party was left red-faced by vowing to scrap Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in areas where none existed.

More details of all the above in the Mail’s story – which it has to be said does read like something of an advert for the Conservative party. But still, facts are facts.

Another Reform leader quits – leaving an 18-year old in charge of a council

The Reform leader of Warwickshire County Council, Rob Howard, didn’t impress all that many people with his first few actions. The Coventry Telegraph lists amongst his many accomplishments him choosing to choosing to go on holiday over attending his very first meeting, and the time he told a newspaper that his council didn’t actually have any policies – despite their presumably rabid campaigning to get in.

Anyway, he’s gone now – claiming that now he actually discovered what the job he fervently applied for actually entails it turns out his health isn’t up to it. He’ll remain a councillor but no longer the council leader.

Fear not though, council leaders have deputies, so up steps councillor George Finch to run the place. Finch has the relatively unique attribute of being 18 years old.

Reform councillor George Finch standing in a park
Photo from ITV story

I don’t know the guy, but it seems unlikely to me that just as I was leaving school I would have had quite the breadth of knowledge and experience to make a good job of running a budget of not far off half a billion pounds, managing 5000 employees and being responsible for the lives of 600,000 constituents.

When asked to sum his political self up in a few words, the first word he picked was Brexit, a policy that increasingly few people believe was good, and an increasing number want undone at least in part. Perhaps he’s forgotten a few of the details – Finch would of course have been aged around 9 years old when the Brexit vote happened, and 13 when the policy actually came into being.

The whole episode can be summed up in one reaction to the story The Coventry Telegraph shares:

Residents deserve better.

The IFS points out yet more flaws with Reform’s proposed Britannia Card

Yesterday we saw that Reform’s proposal to allow mega-rich non-doms to buy their way out of the existing UK tax system, under the worthy-sounding guise of helping the least fortunate of our country, was in fact basically another one of their massive giveaways to the already rich.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has since highlighted some more problems with the proposal.

Firstly, it incentivises not investing in the UK. It welcomes the super rich to live in the UK, taking advantage of what the state has to offer. But it would be a disincentive to actually using their money to invest in our country.

it would be relatively attractive to non-doms with high offshore wealth, but not necessarily to those who want to invest that wealth in the UK (because remitting money to the UK brings it within UK taxes).

They highlight also that the claim that the cost of the Britannia Card would “all but guarantees a net positive outcome for the Treasury” financially is not obviously true. It might be a net benefit if the holders pay a lot of UK tax on their non-foreign income – or it might not.

The £250,000 fees for the card would be redistributed to low-paid workers and therefore be neutral for the exchequer, so the question is what other revenue impacts the policy would have.
…
for those who would have been in the UK (and paid tax on their UK income) anyway, the exchequer would lose the tax they would otherwise have paid on their foreign income and gains – which must be at least enough for them to prefer to pay £250,000 to avoid it, and would often be far more than that. The relative sizes of those two effects would be key.

After all, presumably someone who would buy the card would see it as more favourable to their own tax situation than the status quo.

The next problem is that the “redistribute the income to the lowest-paid full-time workers” lacks detail, whilst superficially attractive, is potentially misguided and is probably actually not feasible to implement, at least not with our current systems.

HMRC doesn’t know whether or not anyone who is self-employed is a full-time worker.

Providing lump-sum payments to low-paid full-time workers would face serious administrative challenges. For a start, HMRC currently has no way to identify whether a self-employed individual is working full-time – would the self-employed be included regardless of how much they worked, or excluded altogether? Neither choice seems satisfactory.

And to the extent that the policy comes across as trying to help the poorest in society, the “must be a full-time worker” criteria doesn’t work.

The policy would benefit the lowest-paid full-time workers, though this does not correspond to the lowest-income households, both because the lowest-income households do not generally have someone in full-time work and because many of the beneficiaries would have working partners and thus a higher household income than their own earnings might suggest.

The way they talk about it is that it’d be a threshold entitlement. If you’re in the lowest 10% of fulltime workers by income you’d get it. Bottom 10%, it’s yours. But hit the 11th percentile of income and you’d lose it all. thus it may:

…discourage low earners from increasing their earnings and risking losing eligibility for this payment

As Faiza Shaheen’s column in the Guardian says, the whole thing is “political theatre” :

Reform’s ludicrous ‘Britannia Card’ is a masterpiece in political manoeuvring

that:

While it promises to enrich the poor, it simultaneously offers a subtle tax break to the wealthiest. The proposal would be a significant boon to the global super-rich

Once again, Reform’s ‘Robin Hood tax’ seems to be a multi-billion pound giveaway to the already extremely wealthy

Reform UK is up to their usual tricks in terms of misleading us about the impact of their “make the very rich even richer” economic policies.

This comes from their announcement of a “Britannia Card”, the details of which are available here. But in summary, this card would allow anyone who wants to move to the UK, or already has “non-dom” status – meaning that they chose to make another country their home for tax purposes – opt out of paying any tax at all on their wealth, income or capital gains earned abroad if they are prepared to make a one-off payment of £250,000. It’s basically a way for the very rich to buy themselves a ticket out of a lot of our tax system.

These payments would then be divided up and given tax-free to the lowest 10% of full-time workers, giving them something like £600-1000 each.

It’s being called a Robin Hood tax– redistributing much-needed money from the rich to the poor. What’s not to love about that?

Well, quite a lot.

Tax Policy Associates runs through several concerns.

Firstly, it’s quite obviously a blatant method for the mega rich to buy themselves out of their normal obligations. £250,000 sounds a lot to most of us – but is it to the truly wealthy? Especially given it’s a one off payment.

Let’s imagine someone who would otherwise be due to pay tax on £1 billion. £250,000 represents a 0.025% fraction of their wealth. Basic income tax payers in the UK have to pay 20% tax on anything above their personal threshold, and up to another 8% if they need to pay national insurance. Quite the difference.

And the basic rate tax payer needs to pay this continuously – whereas the £250,000 is a one-off payment.

This comparison isn’t really a fair reflection of what would happen as the situation for non-doms is still, even after recent changes, rather more favourable in terms of off-shore tax than what normal British citizens have to pay.

Nonetheless, it has been calculated that it would still constitute a whacking great loss to the UK state, exempting the super rich from providing a tax intake of substantially more than the £250,000 lifetime fee would.

Tax Policy Associates calculate the immediate cost to the state – and hence the benefit to the very rich – of this as being at least £34 billion over four years. That’s because all the people who are already in Britain currently subjected to tax, but are eligible for the Britannia Card for a one-off payment, will stop paying that part of their tax.

The proposal would give a windfall gain to a relatively small number of very wealthy people who were planning to stay here and pay UK tax, but will now pay the £250k fee instead. That’s tax that now won’t be received, and there will be no wider economic benefit (because these people were already going to be here).
…
The £33.9bn reflects tax raised from a small number of very wealthy people who would opt to buy a Britannia card and so pay no tax – it’s therefore revenue immediately lost by Reform UK’s proposal.

Their analysis goes into why they think even this is an underestimate.

The director of another think tank, CenTax, agrees:

But Dr Arun Advani, director of think tank CenTax, told The i Paper that the proposal would cost taxpayers £34bn over five years, citing estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility for 2024/25 to 2029/30.

Even if non-doms spend £2.5bn on “Britannia Cards”, the £34bn in lost tax receipts effectively means foreigners would get a tax cut of at least £31bn, he said.

“Cost to the state” of course inevitably means even more cuts to state provided services or increases for other types of tax – those that more normal citizens have to pay.

As the i Paper reports:

Dr Advani said the £34bn cost was a “big problem” that would force Reform to raise taxes, cut spending or increase borrowing.

The Labour party agrees, calling it a bonanza for billionaires.

…Ellie Reeves, the Labour chair, said it was “quite simply a bonanza for billionaires”.

“Not only is this a golden giveaway to the rich, but experts warn this will leave a massive black hole in the country’s finances that working people will be left to pick up the bill for,” she added.

Tax Policy Associates details two other problems they see with the policy.

First, it would discourage most the high-skill professionals we increasingly need to benefit our country from moving here. They wouldn’t be able to afford the immediate £250,000 payment – and if you don’t pay it then you have to pay full tax on your foreign income – which is actually a big tax increase from today’s rules.

Whilst the proposal makes the UK more attractive to the very wealthy, it makes the UK much less attractive to the highly skilled and highly paid professionals we want to attract into the UK – for example doctors, coders, senior scientists and entrepreneurs. The effect of the Conservative and Labour reforms is that these new arrivals would be exempt from tax on foreign income for four years without paying anything. That’s attractive because high earners will often have assets/savings back home, and having those savings taxed in the UK is unattractive.

Secondly, you have to convince those taking advantage of the offer that the one-off lifetime payment for tax exemption will indeed last forever. The non-dom tax situation has been changed a lot over time by various government. Tax Policy Associates struggle to believe that many of the super rich would take a punt on the idea that the lifetime offer is in fact going to last their lifetime.

It also highlights something about their immigration policy. Reform tend to be virulently anti-immigrant. But the stated purpose of this proposal is to attract foreigners to our shores. But only extremely rich ones. So they do seem to like a certain type of immigration – it’s just very much limited to their billionaire friends.

None of this “give more money to the mega-rich” impact probably comes as a particular surprise to many people though given the general tendency of their economic policies to favour the rich far more than that average working person they pretend to care so much about. Reform UK is a party / business of the rich, for the rich.

Reform councillor to face standards committee for skipping more than 40% of his meetings

A Reform councillor in Powys, Karl Lewis, is not living up to the stated standards of his colleague elsewhere Jo Monk who said that councillors who miss meetings should quit (before missing most of her own meetings and not quitting) having only attended 59% of the meetings he was supposed to.

This is low enough that he is due to be hauled in front of the council’s standards committee in order to explain why he’s skipped so many of his elected duties.

When the democratic services officer phoned Lewis about this: “He said he would get back to me about it”.

And then, inevitably, didn’t.

Reform shares an photo of an road in Texas, USA in order to criticise Labour’s record in Bracknell

The Reform party in Bracknell apparently posted this extremely strange graphic on their Facebook when fighting the town council by-election.

Reform Facebook post showing a photo of a flooded road

I’m really not sure what the icons on the right are supposed to represent – a ban on plunging your toilet? – but the general idea was for the photo to highlight “Labour’s neglect of our roads”.

The only issue with that is that the road depicted is in a totally different country. It’s a stock image of a road in Texas, US.

Well, actually, that’s not the only issue to be honest. Apparently the duties of the town council position being fought for actually have very little to do with roads anyway. Roads are the job of a borough councillor – a totally different job.

Labour councillor Bailey says:

Reform, meanwhile, care so little about our community that they’re busy producing campaign materials about the state of roads in Texas. The Reform candidate also does not seem to be aware that roads are the responsibility of Bracknell Forest council, not the town council which he is standing for.

So it’s yet another instance of Reform making promises that their candidates will do things that they could not even in theory work on given the position they’re seeking.

Reform’s latest candidate for Mendip ward is an ex-police officer who was sacked for ‘inappropriate misuse of his position of authority’ having ‘truly lost his moral compass’

Stuart Ball is the Reform candidate for the forthcoming Mendip Ward council election.
He’s an ex police officer.

However, becoming a councillor wasn’t a conscious career change choice on his part. He was dismissed from the police force on account of his wildly inappropriate behaviour.

The impropriety consisted of a “misuse of his position”, which is especially concerning for someone who claims they want to be a public servant.

The story itself is almost comically strange, if this wasn’t a person who was standing for a position of power anyway. PC Ball found an actual ball in a shop that the assistant rightfully told him wasn’t for sale so PC Ball the assistant of an imaginary crime.

…his son had found a basketball while the family was shopping in a Sports Direct in August 2018, which staff said was lost property and not for sale.

The panel heard that Mr Ball claimed “finder’s rights”, ordered a shop assistant to the police station, and got into a “heated” exchange with the shop manager who asked him to leave.

The manager took the ball to Wells Police Station the following day and complained about Mr Ball’s behaviour, whereupon Mr Ball accused the manager of theft and threatening violence.

A statement from the chair of the misconduct panel that investigated the issue said:

This was a ridiculous and disproportionate spat over an item of trivial value.

“PC X’s demonstrable behaviour in the shop was bullying, disrespectful and a wholly disproportionate and inappropriate misuse of his position of authority as a police officer.

The allegation against PC X is that he dishonestly tried to criminalise people for offences he knew had not been committed in order to excuse his own behaviour — just about the most serious thing an officer of the law can be accused of.

We find it astonishing that PC X can still say that he does not believe he has done anything wrong. He truly lost his moral compass.

Reform are seeking welfare policy advice from the dangerous autocrat Viktor Orban – a man whose policies actually exacerbate inequality

The Times reports that Reform, rarely a party to thoughtfully come up with their own ideas, have been actively seeking advice from none other that Viktor Orban, the extremely illiberal prime minister Hungary.

On a recent trip to Budapest, Reform officials sought advice from aides to Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, on welfare policy…

Orban’s welfare policies have been described as “a social catastrophe” for Hungary – they do little to actually help the people that most need assistance.

They make poor people poorer.

Severe austerity measures were implemented with respect to both the availability and level of social benefits, which has led to a significant decline in the poverty-reduction effect of cash transfers. Eligibility for disability benefits has been severely restricted and tens of thousands of former beneficiaries have partially or entirely lost this support—frequently in unfair revaluations—and approximately half a million long-term jobless citizens do not receive any social benefits at all. The incomes of those living in deep poverty were further decreased by setting the wages paid in the ever-more-extensive workfare programmes below the statutory minimum wage.

They are anti-worker, favouring fat cat bosses.

Changes in labour law has—by intensifying the insecurity of wage labourers—further increased the power inequality between capital and labour, whereas the curtailment of the right to strike and the abolition of tripartite negotiations will ensure that this predicament persists. Government employees in particular, including teachers, have good reason to fear arbitrary dismissal as retaliation for expressing their political discontent.

Their policies to help parents are aimed at those that are already reasonably wealthy:

The government’s family policy favours the more well-to-do through generous tax benefits which are inaccessible to poorer families, while the real value of universal family assistance has been continuously decreasing

Overall, increasing inequality:

Hungary’s family policies have been designed to only benefit certain kinds of Hungarians….access seems to only be limited to citizens who are already well off in Hungarian society. One of Hungary’s own demographers has stated that that “scheme targets the most affluent people and increases inequality, which is probably a world first among such programs” and has created a “perverse redistribution.”[

And are only in any case accessible to people who fit Orban’s ideal of the perfect family.

Hungary’s family policies explicitly bar certain Hungarians from participating. Unmarried and divorced mothers cannot access many of the subsidies. Further, LGBT Hungarians are also barred from receiving benefits, leaving out potentially hundreds of thousands of Hungarians.

Being seemingly based on an idiotic conspiracy theory:

Orban has explicitly framed his family policies as a possible solution to the great replacement conspiracy theory – a theory purporting that global elites are seeking to replace white westerners with black and brown immigrants

They promote inequality between the sexes:

The government (which was formed in 2010 exclusively by men) frequently frames family policies with an explicit affirmation of segregated, unequal gender roles, where women are caregivers and men are breadwinners.

And are prejudicial against LGBT people:

In 2020, the country amended its constitution to exclude same sex couples from the definition of “family.”

They help those with higher incomes get housing:

Housing policy in Hungary has long been biased toward those with higher incomes, with disproportionately low public expenditures in support of low-income housing. However, the government has recently decided to discontinue all state responsibility for the provision of housing assistance.

Perhaps we should not be all that surprised that Reform are enchanted by Hungary’s welfare system given the manifold evidence that Reform, despite all their “man of the people” schtick, actually wants to go out of its way to help the super rich get richer at the expense of the poor; that they promote anti-worker policies, and are run by Nigel Farage – someone who appears to have real admiration for Orban’s anti-democratic, anti-civil rights, nationalist and autocratic regime.

Farage of course appeared at the same sort of conferences that Orban attends and promotes a similarly dangerous, pretty insane, conspiracy theory to his audience. Memorably, Farage said that:

The biggest threat we face is the fifth column in all our countries that is attempting to destroy the family unit, Judeo-Christian Culture

Our children are being indoctrinated. Our universities have become madrassas of Marxism, and it needs to change,”

Already it seems like Reform’s opportunistic but morally correct claim that they’d abandon the two child benefit cap might well come with some serious limitations. From their chats with Orban’s administration, Reform are apparently:

…enthused by one of their suggestions: lifting the two-child benefit cap only for working mothers.