We already saw Nigel Farage earning very low grades in terms of doing his actual job as an elected MP. In his first year he turned up to Parliament and spoke only a fraction of the number of times that other party leaders did – less than once a week. He also voted fewer times than his peers, despite his claims to have strong opinions on a vast array of topics and delight in ranting about whatever comes to his mind to any media channel that will have him.
We can feel especially sorry for the people who live in his constituency, Clacton. He has managed to mention his constituency, Clacton, a mere four times in his first year.
As a comparison, his deputy, Richard Tice, has spoken more than 4x as often, 211 times, and mentioned his consistency at least 25 times.
Why? Well, Farage is a busy man. He has at least 9 “second” jobs, most of which enrich his huge personal wealth far more than merely doing the job he was elected to do would do. Over the same period he’s received almost £1 million from his other jobs.
DeSmog shares some quotes that give us a further sense of his greedy and unpatriotic alternative activities:
“Over the last year, Farage has put his speaking tours of the U.S., his GB News show and various side hustles as a landlord, shilling for a climate science denial think tank and flogging nappies and tax-free gold, all ahead of being the MP for Clacton,” said Jolyon Maugham, Good Law Project executive director.
“It’s not so much Britain First as Farage First.”
A number of Clacton voters have noticed Farage’s absence. Speaking to The Mirror, local residents accused the Reform leader of “doing nothing” aside from “looking for photo opportunities”.
As they note, we can’t really be surprised at Farage’s irresponsible laziness given his previous political record:
Farage has a long history of failing to perform parliamentary duties. While serving as a Member of European Parliament (MEP), he was a member of its influential fisheries committee, yet over three years turned up to only one of 42 meetings.
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”.
George Finch was one of the many Reform councillors elected in the last local elections. However he is relatively unique in terms of his age, having been only 18 when he took up the position in Warwickshire council.
The elected leader of the council at the time in Warwickshire was another, somewhat more aged, Reform gentleman; Rob Howard. But not for long. Howard was one of the many, many Reform councillors that quit or were fired after a few weeks of doing the job.
He left Finch in place as the temporary cover for the position of council leader. More recently, Mr Finch though, was appointed to take the position up permanently. This final appointment was the a result of a vote, although one that he won only because the race was so tight that the rules allowed the council’s chairman – who also happens to be from Reform – to cast an extra vote to break the 23:23 tie.
This means Mr Finch becomes the permanent head of Warwickshire County Council. He’s now in charge of £1.5 billion’s worth of assets, managing a budget of around £500 million, responsible for over 5,000 employees, on behalf of his 600,000 constituents.
Quite the responsibility!
Now, perhaps this is a slightly tough topic, because young people getting engaged with politics is undoubtedly a good thing. The more young people that take an interest in political matters, the better, at least in general. Aside from such engagement being a public good in general, their views often can of course be at least as informed and reasonable as those of older adults. often moreso (although I’m not so sure that’s self evident in the case of Mr Finch; see the section of “socialist wokeism” below).
And I can see the attraction for a certain type of youngster. It’s not hard to see several recent governments, local and national, as having totally let down the younger generations in many, many ways.
All I can say though is that it wouldn’t have been remotely advisable to appoint me, or anyone I have ever known, to a position of such complexity and responsibility at the age of 18, just after completing my A-levels. Or even at 19 for that matter, giving Finch the benefit of the doubt as having had a birthday since his election.
In general, to me it seems probably best for basically your first ever job post-school to not to involve being the boss of an institution very much in the public eye that involves managing millions of pounds and making decisions that could be literally life or death for some folk at the receiving end of the council’s offerings.
This is not to blame Finch. He’s a right to apply for the job. He’s clearly a very adept and impressive young man in certain ways. Good for him for taking such an interest in civic life. But it feels like the height of irresponsibility to both the area’s constituents and to George Finch himself to put him in harm’s way like this.
Modern-day politics can be cruel and damaging – especially when Reform, who trade on conflict and hatred, are involved. He’s already had to have Reform’s standard waste-of-time argument about flags. To put a necessarily-inexperienced teenager into the position of being the figurehead for a deliberately divisive party, managing a half-billion pound budget and making critical service decisions seems an absolute abdication of responsibility; almost abusive.
Rachel Taylor, the Labour MP for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, said she was “deeply concerned” that Reform was “proposing that an eighteen-year-old with no previous work experience should be running our county council”.
And another:
Preet Gill, has criticised the decision, saying the people of Warwickshire “frankly deserve better”.
“This is not work experience,” she told the BBC. “This is not about learning on the job.”
The Deputy Leader of the local Labour group does give Finch respect for being an extremely mature 18-year old, but still notes that:
Making these very far-reaching decisions about the lives of our Warwickshire residents – I don’t want to criticise 18-year-olds – but it does need people with experience
Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK thinks that “Reform is trolling democracy” with this appointment. He says that it’s simply too much to ask of a 19 year old who just left school (or, more accurately, might be on his summer holidays)
They simply haven’t got the training and necessary experience to do so. And by allowing this appointment to take place, Reform shows us what they think of us.
They’re treating us with contempt. They’re making a mockery of the whole system of local government. They are undermining democracy and public services, and they’re doing so deliberately. These people are not to be trusted. They’re not serious about meeting our needs.
A resident of the local also thinks it’s a bad idea:
Geoffrey Manion labelled the appointment “crazy”. He said: “He hasn’t lived long enough to know what’s what. At the end of the day, he’s just not old enough. It’s crazy, absolutely crazy.”
Another says:
I have no problem with him being a councillor, but I have a big problem with him being the leader of the council. I just think you need more experience of life before you can take on such a position of responsibility. It wouldn’t happen in any other walk of life, would it
Although to be fair that’s not the universal opinion of local residents – some are perfectly happy with the situation. For their sake let’s hope their optimism is well-placed.
In the recent past Councillor Finch has written articles for “The New Reformer”, a Reform-allied website, producing such compelling articles as “Richard Tice – The Cool Cat of Politics“, of which I promise to only share a few words:
Above all the great mannerisms, fashion sense, intelligence and integrity Mr Tice showed the people of Boston and Skegness that he meant business…
…
Many, many constituencies in the UK would love an MP as strong, brave and somewhat indestructible as the man the cool cat himself Mr Richard Tice.
On his profile page he describes his own principles as being “integrity, honesty and respect”. A less charitable person than me might applaud the sentiment but note he probably joined the wrong party. To be fair he wasn’t always a Reform guy; in the past he was a Conservative, having had since then some (presumably childhood) conversion experience.
When asked to sum his politics up in a few words though, George iss back on familiar Reform territory, expressing the highest degree of love for the abjectly failed experiment that more than half the country wish they could largely undo that is Brexit:
If I was to be politically summed up in a few words it would be; Brexit, sovereignty, strong military and most importantly a strong and united family unit.
Workwise, the teenage Mr Finch apparently isn’t satisfied with just running an entire council.
The Byline Times discovered that he’s also listed as an online tutor for a company called SuperProf. Hire him for just £15 an hour!
His sales pitch:
I’m 18 turning 19, I have just finished A-Level and I know what you need to pass your exams, the Knowledge is the most important area of A-Level or GCSE’s.
[I] specialise in Tudor History, Cold War, USA politics, UK politics and many other areas in history too
They note that he hasn’t declared this on his council declaration of interests. If someone actually paid him the £15 an hour then concealing it from the said declaration is of course another example of a Reform councillor breaking the rules.
One rule for them; another for the rest of us.
Being a councillor wasn’t necessarily his original dream career. In fact, his ambition until recently was to become a history teacher. But his dreams were thwarted by nothing less than “socialist wokeism”:
I loved history and I loved teaching but the problem was the curriculum, especially history. Universities and colleges are a conveyor belt for socialist wokeism.”
Finch, who as we’ve seen is quite the history fan, has previously noted that there is a precedent for extraordinarily young politicians in the UK. William Pitt the Younger was elected at the age of 21 -and in fact became Prime Minister at 24). However it will still be a couple of years before Mr Finch reaches that particular ripe old age.
Now the British Governments appears to be finally trying to address the absolute disaster that is Britain’s water industry, Nigel Farage is of course trying to get in on the act in yet another desperate attempt to say whatever it takes to make him popular.
He’s absolutely right that something needs to be done about the industry. It’s just that what he says he’s going to do once again appears to be based on pure fantasy vibes.
This week’s pull from the random sounds-good-if-you-don’t-think-it-through grab-bag of Farage policies is that he’s going to “nationalise half of the water industry“
Which half, how and why, of course, are questions that neither have, nor to his thinking, need answers.
Which is presumably why he had none in last weekend’s famous BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg. We previously learned from it that he knew nothing about his own councils or the environment. It turns out he also knows nothing about his own water policy – or nothing convincing at any rate.
Given the dire state of state finances, Kuenssberg fairly asks:
How much taxpayers’ money would you be prepared to spend to take half of the water industry into public control?
After he rambled on for a bit about how shareholders might just magically all decide to give him their stakes for free, she tried to get him to actually answer this very basic question:
…what I’m asking you is how much of our viewers’ money you would be prepared to spend on that? Because the credible estimate is it would be about £50 billion.
His answer?
Well, I think it’d be a lot less than that if you strike the right deal.
“A lot less”. What does that mean? Kuenssberg asks him for the roughest of estimates:
So you don’t know how much it would be in any ballpark? £1 billion, £10 billion?
But no, no interview can fool Farage into even pretending he put any thought into his proclamations! His answer:
Of course not.
but apparently
…it doesn’t need to be a big sum of money if you incentivise private capital to come in and do the job properly.
Oh good. Not a “big sum of money” then. Kuenssberg points out that it is precisely private capital that runs it now. And, as we know, that’s been an absolute disaster. They created this disaster.
But private capital runs it at the moment and they haven’t invested enough.
Farage:
Of course. Listen, all sorts of people set up businesses and fail. There are more business failures than there are successes.
Well that’s reassuring!
In a last ditch attempt to get him to say something concrete, or at least try and show a smidgeon of justification for his words, she notes that he hasn’t always been such a fan of public ownership.
When Jeremy Corbyn talked about nationalising water, you used to say his economics were from la-la land. So why is your proposal not from la-la land?
His response of course in no way either addresses the question or explains why it doesn’t matter that his proposal is undoubtedly comes more from la-la land than anything Corbyn could dream up.
Look, we have Conservative and Labour governments who can’t even build a railway. So do we want government running these things? No.
I’m not sure what we learned from that exchange then except that Farage agrees that wants the water industry to be owned both by the state and by private capital, but also that neither the state or private capital are capable of running it. He agrees with what Kuenssberg claims but also disagrees with it. And whatever he does won’t cost much money because he will “make a deal”, contents unspecified – and/or anyway maybe those famously kind-hearted shareholders will just give everything to him for free.
Farage’s vibes-based policies are running amok once more. I’m sure all the economists that laughed in despair at his previous ludicrous economic proposals are guffawing again tongiht.
This time it’s Ed Hill. Reform recently threw him out of the party, cancelling his membership.
The stated reason the party gave for his eviction was that he wrote to MPs about free school meals signing the letter from all Devon’s Reform councillors, even though the rest of them hadn’t formally given their permission to be included. Supposedly this “damaged the interests of the party” who presumably do not want to be seen to be in favour of a policy as progressive as helping feed hungry children.
However, Ed Hill, and plenty of other people, don’t believe this is the real reason they wanted to get rid of him. Especially as he believed he did have their consent to sign the letter
In a WhatsApp exchange seen by ITV West Country, Mr Hill attempted to ask his fellow Reform councillors if they’d be happy to sign the letter about free school meals, which was addressed to all of Devon’s MPs and published on social media.
One councillor said: “They will sign the letter, they just won’t join this group.”
Hill thinks it’s a stitch-up, saying:
Let’s be clear: this incident is being used as a pretext
So why else might Reform want to get rid of him?
A while ago he reported a couple of his council colleagues and an election agent to the police for breaches of election expense rules.
For UK county council elections, spending limits are set per ward based on how many voters there are there. Mr Hill reported now-councillor Neil Stevens for breaching those limits by over a hundred pounds – spending £1995.72 compared to the limit of £1827.04.
He alleges that Stevens’ brother, Tony Stevens, who also just about won his a council seat in the same election for Reform, claimed a podcast expense that should have been split between the brothers – meaning that Neil would have been over the limit by a larger amount than the above suggests.
So Hill made a complaint about this to both the police and the electoral commission, because he’d made:
“a clear promise to the people of Exeter” to “hold our candidates and councillors to the same high standards we expect of others”.
Ed clearly joined the wrong party if that was how he wanted to behave.
What did Reform UK do about his report? Well, as we’ve seen so many times already, holding candidates and councillors to high standards really isn’t their scene. So, naturally they immediately demoted Ed Hill from the position of chairman of Reform UK party for “bringing the party into disrepute” – presumably for reporting this crime. Telling someone about the offence is clearly a much bigger infraction than committing it in the first place for this corrupt party.
Of course Reform has no intention of taking any action against Neil Stevens, the Reform councillor who is alleged to have committed the offence.
Hill was permitted to carry on doing his basic councillor job as a Reform representative.
Until now, when he was forcibly ejected from the party entirely, supposedly due to the letter based offence outlined above.
Perhaps it wasn’t unexpected. He claims that Reform were already taking out their anger at being caught out for potential electoral crimes on him, saying in a statement that:
Since reporting a fellow Reform UK councillor to the police for suspected electoral offences, I have been systematically ostracised from internal party communication — removed from WhatsApp groups, excluded from meetings, and shut out from coordination with my own colleagues. If Reform UK had maintained proper internal channels, this situation would never have occurred.
And that for all their clearly ridiculous claims about openness, honesty, accountability and transparency Reform have no intention of fostering an environment conducive to that, saying:
This is not just a personal matter. It raises wider questions about how Reform UK treats whistleblowers, how it manages internal discipline, and whether it can honestly claim to support transparency and accountability.
The Reform UK leader was asked about Scarborough Town Council increasing its mayor’s allowance by 600 per cent, despite his party promising to cut costs for taxpayers.
Asked about the rise, from £500 to £3,500, Mr Farage said: “I have no idea… whether what you say is true or not, I have no idea.”
Asked whether it is the right thing to do, Mr Farage again said he has “no idea”, before saying he has “no idea” whether Thomas Murray, Reform’s mayor of Scarborough Town Council, does the role as a full-time job.
Unfortunately this is not the only topic he has no idea about.
He went on to say he has “no idea” how much humans have contributed towards climate change.
Quite concerning for someone who at the end of the day wants to be the person setting policies regarding such matters.
Of course the mayor story is true, and there are no shortage of the top experts in the world available to tell you about serious human impact on climate change if you can just be bothered to spend 5 seconds searching.
Although I do not believe for one minute that he never heard of either of these topics given his pre-emptory “I’ve no idea” before Kuenssberg even finished the question, trying to laugh it off – it’s almost certainly just another Farage lie.
It looks like Ian Cresswell might be the latest in the ever-growing list of Reform’scollection of councillors, and other hangers-on who hold more power than they deserve, who don’t believe in the basic facts of climate change.
He’s a little less overt about it than some of his peers, not going so far as to claim the whole thing is a shadowy conspiracy a la Councillor Bingham – perhaps in order to save his skin given he is, once again, the cabinet member for the environment. Not that that stopped Bingham.
I pondered my answer to this for quite a while. I also read many different pieces of information on it – and it all depends which side you want to sit, which hat you want to wear.
So I will simply say that this is a very complex area of science and the questions on the consensus of human activity simply can’t be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Councillor Jenkins, the person who raised the question to Cresswell, quite rightly concludes
The fact that it had to be pondered and you had to think about the answer is a problem – the answer is obviously yes. It’s a scientific fact.
and that:
If we have someone in charge of the environment who denies the basic science of the environment then maybe they shouldn’t be in that position.
He asked Cresswell whether he’d thus re-consider his position.
Cresswell would not. So that’s that.
Says Jenkins:
It’s deeply worrying that someone in charge of protecting our environment can’t commit to the basic facts.
Worcester was flooded five times last winter, causing huge distress and upset for residents.
Now, farmers are sounding the alarm bells about failed crops as we enter our third heat wave of the summer, after an exceptionally dry spring. Worcester and the wider county are on the frontline of climate change. We need leadership that takes the climate emergency seriously.”
His statement includes the claim that he believes in “plain speaking” and “standing up for the people”, Well, based on his purported social media posts the former might be true, but the latter most certainly isn’t – at least if you’re not the type of person he prefers.
Screenshots of the posts – from an account in the name Samuel John Journet – were shared on X (formerly Twitter) by an account devoted to exposing misconduct by Reform candidates.
Here’s an example of the writings of wannabe-councillor Journey:
I can walk perfectly thanks, shame you can’t though, because your all monkeyfied, you swing from trees
He finds the death of British soldiers hilarious:
Another British soldier has been killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. That’ll teach him for playing on hardcore…. LOOOOOOOOOOOL!
Some other choice snippets as reported in the Echo:
In the posts, all from around 15 years ago, the account in Mr Journet’s name refers to someone as a “retard” and asks whether they “bend for the soap”.
Posts also call the person a “little monkey” and “monkey” alongside abusive swear words.
I can see why the site didn’t want to report the one full post referring to a monkey. Here’s a censored version of it:
f*** off you monkey piece of s***
go f*** your f******* sister you incest f******* child.******
And one that includes a particularly specific threat of violence:
If you want to give it, then bring it to my door and I will slice you into four and serve it to my dog
The Echo approached both Reform’s national press office as well as their local organisers. They didn’t bother replying.
Members of opposition parties quite rightly are appalled that this is the man that Reform want to represent the area. Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty served in the same unit as the solider who was killed that Journet found so hilarious and wants Reform to withdraw their support. The local Labour organisation also believes that post to be “disgraceful”. I’m sure many other non-politicians agree.
Journet’s Facebook account has since been deactivated, hiding the evidence. But not before it was shared widely by others on social media, hopefully giving today’s voters a sense of the person they will be putting into a position of power if they vote Reform in today’s Basildon election.
Sure, these posts were from many years ago, and perhaps he’s changed his views – but the lack of response from him or his party might suggest that’s not the case, or they simply don’t care. It also makes Reform’s concern that their candidate vetting process is somehow too strict at present seem like the laughable claim it obviously is.
Unfortunately Lincolnshire looks like it’s stuck with Mayor Andrea Jenkyns for now.
She was in the process of being taken to court on the basis that she should never have been allowed to run for mayor in the first place. That’s because you can’t just stand for mayor for any random bit of the country that takes your fancy. You need to fulfil some criteria that makes you are connected to the place in question. Typically this would mean you live there, although there are also alternatives.
Guidance by the Electoral Commission, external states that in order to be allowed to stand, candidates need to live or work in the area, own or rent land or property there, or be on the electoral roll.
Now, not even Mayor Jenkyns herself seems to be arguing that she does actually live in Lincolnshire at present. Apparently she still lives in Yorkshire – and nor did she have a work connection to the area at the time.
Dame Andrea was added to the North Kesteven electoral roll at an address in Bassingham, near Lincoln, this month. Inclusion on the roll is based on where someone lives and can include second homes.
It seems that in order to get around the “you should live in the area that you are running for mayor in” she used her privilege to rent a second home (or perhaps room in a house?) which let her get onto the electoral register.
It’s a tip that could have come straight out of the handbook of her boss, Nigel Farage, who once pretended to have bought a house in the area that he is supposed to be representing as MP.
Another candidate in the area, Councillor Overton, was still appealing Andrea Jenkyns’ eligibility to the local High Court – but recently dropped the appeal on the basis of there being more important issues to focus on.
The principle of our elected representatives being committed to our local area is vital. That is why it is set in law that candidates live or work in the area they hope to represent. Just renting a room does not suffice.
Local candidacy is important for democracy. If we have candidates parachuted in for political expediency, to whom will they be listening, their political boss or local residents?
Recent Reform MP James McMurdock seemingly hasn’t managed to clear up those pesky accusations of conducting illegal business activity previously levied against him.
Despite his protestations as to his innocence – “all my business dealings had always been conducted fully within the law and in compliance with all regulations” – his apparent abuse of prior governmental largesse during the Covid pandemic turns out to have been serious enough to need referring to the Public Sector Fraud Authority by the Covid corruption commissioner.
He has stood down from Reform for now – but somehow is permitted to keep doing his job as a member of parliament.
