Reform’s phony war on ‘woke’
Three times Reform UK pledged to scrap schemes that don’t exist
Reform UK wants to scrap anything with even a hint of ‘woke’ about it. Now that they run 10 councils, they have their opportunity.
There’s just one problem: they keep targeting schemes that just don’t exist – at least not outside the imagination of the right wing press.
Here are three times Reform went to war with non-existent policies.
Andrea Jenkyns’ invisible diversity officers
As new Reform mayor of Lincolnshire, one of Andrea Jenkyns’ first acts was to pledge to fire every diversity officer from the council.
“We are going to ensure that we get rid of diversity officers,” she said, “because amazingly Lincolnshire County Council is now Reform controlled. That is a historic moment.”
Unfortunately for Andrea, it turned out that Lincolnshire does not employ any diversity officers.
The case of the imaginary LTNs
Low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) are a bugbear of Reform, as part of its ‘anti net zero’ attitude to climate change.
Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf said there would be a “large-scale reversal” of LTNs in Reform’s 10 councils.
However, none of the 10 councils that Reform now run had any LTN schemes to begin with.
Darren Grimes and the DEI training that wasn’t
Former GB News presenter Darren Grimes was just elected as a Reform councillor in Durham.
He declared that, as a new councillor, “I will not be attending DEI training or climate change training”.
There’s just one problem: Durham county council’s training for new councillors does not include training on either issue anyway.
What’s next?
Reform UK in office are finding that many of the issues they have made their name opposing are little more than hallucinations of the right wing media.
This means that their pledges of “savings” from these budgets will come to nothing. What imaginary schemes will they scrap next?