Reform UK has beaten Labour to a manifesto launch in the Greater Manchester mayoral election race. Both parties are, of course, going through by-election-related leadership dramas.
The latter saw former Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, unseat its historically unpopular leader, Keir Starmer, in Makerfield. Reform now faces the not insignificant prospect of its leader being challenged by Count Binface. And Nigel Farage’s popularity is tanking too, thanks to his repeated corruption.
With all this going on, Reform reportedly sent internal WhatsApp messages to party activists telling them to get themselves down to Clacton and abandon Manchester’s mayoralty. (Reform denied this in Manchester Mill.) All because Reform is worried it can’t take on a character almost as unserious as Farage.
But it hasn’t stopped Reform putting out a mishmash of ideas for Manchester, many seemingly borrowed. (The Canary hasn’t been able to confirm whether its manifesto is properly costed either.)
Given all their competitors’ furore, the Green Party must be laughing. The Greens are celebrating their ability to out-match Labour by beating them to a proper manifesto.
Green Party mayoral candidate, Geraldine Coggins, said:
Labour need to get serious…You can’t hope to run a 3 billion budget based on a cartoon bus.
Greens slam ‘unserious’ Labour in Manchester mayoral election
Reform: Is this Manchester’s great Reformation?
Reform’s candidate, landlord Sian Astley, is in fact promising to “go to war” with vape shops and “dodgy” barbers. Meanwhile, Reform promises to:
Cut waste, slash spending on little-used cycle lanes, reverse the increase in the Mayor’s tax and end spending on DEI projects such as equality panels and funding for greener future programmes.
This is despite every elected Reform-controlled council promising to do similar, failing to find the phantom woke DEI “waste”, and instead raising taxes. Anyone who cycles around Manchester — an activity that’s not party political — knows that the idea that bike lanes are somehow overfunded is nonsense.
Reform pledges to “shut down every migrant hotel” with no mention of where asylum seekers are intended to go after.
However, councillor Astley, previously pledged to build immigrant prisons in non-Reform-voting areas. This viciously punitive — not to mention likely illegal plan — is part of Reform’s national policy. Astley doubled down on it, but the general public hated those plans when announced.
Astley also pledges to create the “toughest police force in Britain” if elected. This is despite the fact that Greater Manchester Police was recently found to have used “disproportionate and unnecessary force” against anti-fascist demonstrators in April. The question, then, is: tough on who, exactly?
Not fascists, presumably. Just drugs, knives and shoplifters, according to the manifesto.
Is Reform just pinching policies?
This rhetoric is perhaps standard Tory-esque stuff. “Tough on crime”, yada yada yada. Maybe a little bit more of a fascist flavour when the time comes, we’ll see…
Reform is in lockstep with the Tories and both parties’ fossil fuel donors, railing against “Net Zero measures” and pledging to scrap all of them in Greater Manchester Combined Authority. You couldn’t publish this at a worse time as Manchester and much of the lower North West is covered in smoke from a raging wildfire burning near Oldham.
But Reform has also pinched policy ideas from its further right, with a pledge to launch an inquiry into “grooming gangs”. The party has alleged to pursue every perpetrator and “publicly expose the officials who enabled them”. This language is a clear imitation of Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party, which is likely eating into Reform’s vote again as we saw in Makerfield.
Lowe calls Farage a “coward” for not launching an inquiry, which Lowe did himself. He claims it found 250,000 cases of child rape — a figure seemingly plucked from thin air, in a biased document clearly targeted against Muslims.
The inquiry was truly hateful and dangerous and led to stabbings against five people in Edinburgh mere days after its launch. Right-wingers are farming racist mass psychosis.
This is standard fare for Reform now, who time and again has been caught with racist councillors, hateful spads and vicious MPs. From racist dog whistles to overt hate, we know its direction of travel.
Reform UK sees its sixth councillor suspended over racist rhetoric
Vague unaccountability and watered-down policy
There’s also a commitment to “proportional” funding for regeneration across the boroughs and plans to build on all brownfield sites. Not bad ideas, in theory. The latter is certainly something that many could get behind, including greens.
But surely Astley, whose business is property sales, will be a boon for the unaccountable development interests that have dominated this city under Burnham.
Reform seems to have some consciousness about Burnham’s shocking legacy. That legacy was fully overseen and enabled by Labour candidate, Bev Craig, as city council Leader.
Reform has promised:
For luxury developer contracts in the region, Reform UK say they will publish every loan agreement, decision record and contract above £1million held by TfGM and the GMCA, commission an independent audit of the Housing Investment Loan Fund and Renaker loans, impose a conflict of interest regime, enforce terms of existing deals and refer evidence of wrongdoing by developers, officials or contractors to relevant authorities.
The question is whether it’s purely political vengeance, or whether the party will hold itself accountable too. Reform offers very vague plans for housing, without even bothering so much as to put a target on building homes. Instead it only promises “affordable homes where they need to go”.
The thing about not having targets, like the Greens’ 20,000 homes plan, is that you don’t have to be accountable. That seems to be Reform’s underlying plan. Accountability and apology is not its game.
Lastly, in a policy blatantly pinched from the Greens, only measurably shitter, Reform pledge free bus travel… for 16-18s only. Hardly as ambitious or crucial as the Green pledge of free for under-22s.
It’s just more evidence that Reform grifters are short on ideas and lack real substance.
Featured image via Manchester Gazette
Reform’s Manchester mayor candidate is a landlord, because of course
From Canary via This RSS Feed.