Nigel Farage’s “economically illiterate” climate policies could wipe £92 billion off the UK economy, according to the New Economics Foundation.
Reform UK’s policies to “scrap net zero” would cost more than 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the UK economy, according to a new study.
Nigel Farage’s party — which took control of 10 councils in the recent local elections — this week claimed that the government could save £45 billion every year by ditching climate policies.
However, analysis by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) published today suggests that Reform’s policies would cost jobs and investment, and could raise household energy bills.
A leading Reform UK campaigner has admitted that the party’s spending plans do not add up.
Tim Montgomerie, who left the Tories last December in a high-profile defection to Nigel Farage’s party, made the comment on BBC Question Time on Thursday night.
Reform UK has said it will scrap net zero and cut all renewable subsidies – the impact would be hugely damaging
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Reform UK has said it will scrap net zero with various figures banded around by the party’s representatives for how much this will raise – anywhere from £225bn to £45bn. The Institute for Government, who’s analysis is used to calculate the larger of these two figures, has already said the Party has misrepresented its analysis and failed to acknowledge that most of this investment will come from the private sector – in other words, Reform UK’s policies would likely destroy much needed investment into the UK economy.
But what is the real cost of their anti-renewable and anti-net zero policies? It is important to ensure all political parties are accountable to the public and the impacts of their policies are estimated in a transparent and consistent manner.
A city councillor in Doncaster has been expelled from Reform UK over historic social media posts deemed “unacceptable” by party leaders.
Mark Broadhurst, who had been in post for just four weeks, will sit as an independent councillor after the party’s decision to withdraw the whip on Thursday.
Councillor Guy Aston, Reform UK group leader, said the decision was a result of “inappropriate social media activity that does not reflect our values or standards: family, community, country.”
A Facebook page belonging to Broadhurst shared a post comparing black Islamic dress to “bin bags”, and a now-deleted image which suggested Adolf Hitler would have been a “legend” if he had targeted Muslims.
REFORM UK will take official command of Warwickshire County Council tomorrow (Friday) with no-one having the faintest notion of how the party will run the authority.
Although people have a rough idea of Reform’s policies at a national level, the party did not issue a manifesto for the county council elections on 1st May.
A ROW erupted on BBC Debate Night over a “racist” political advert published by Reform UK.
Last week, Nigel Farage’s party was accused of “not so much a dog whistle as a foghorn” after it was found to have promoted an advert on Facebook and Instagram which claimed Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar would “prioritise the Pakistani community”.
The quote, which Reform UK falsely attributed to Sarwar, included selected clips from a video which had been spread by far- and alt-right agitators on social media the previous month.
The National revealed how Reform UK have spent more than £10,000 promoting the advert online, despite sparking outrage from across the political spectrum.
Nigel Farage has defended a controversial Reform UK advert about Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Both Labour and First Minister John Swinney have described the online video – posted ahead of a Holyrood by-election – as “blatantly racist”.
At a press conference in London, Farage played the video and accused Sarwar of introducing “sectarianism” into Scottish politics.
The Scottish Labour leader described the claims as “absolute nonsense”.
The Reform advert, posted on Facebook and Instagram, features clips of a 2022 speech Sarwar gave, external at an event celebrating the 75th anniversary of Pakistan’s independence.
Stuart Adam, a senior economist at Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, said increasing the annual income tax allowance to £20,000 could cost between £50bn and £80bn a year, depending on the details.
“As it stands, I don’t think they’ve really set out how they would pay for such big giveaways,” he said.
“Of course they don’t have to do that yet – we’re not at a general election. But at some point, if they’re going to be a party of government, they would have to make those numbers add up.”
Exposing Farage and the far-right political party he leads
Nigel Farage claims he wants to take back control for working people. But Reform UK is a far-right political party run by City traders and fuelled by millionaires. We’re shining a light on their shadowy practices.
Nigel Farage’s fiscal arithmetic is as eye-catching as it is unserious.
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That reality is the sticking point. Raising the tax threshold to £20,000 is estimated to cost between £50bn and £80bn all on its own. Reform claims to have found a cool £225bn down the back of the Treasury sofa by scrapping net zero and insists it could save more still by cutting funding to quangos. Good luck, as they say, with that.
But how successful will Reform’s opponents be at pointing this out? Shadow chancellor Mel Stride has been out and about, calling Farage’s plans “fantasy economics”, while Labour has gone for “fantasy promises”. Farage’s answer to this charge was that all parties fudge the figures in their manifestos, suggesting Reform’s creative accounting was par for the course. Against the general backdrop of disillusionment with the political establishment, the narrative will be that Reform are no worse than the other parties – and that official estimates should be viewed sceptically anyway.
One attack line might get through. “Trussonomics on steroids” was how the Liberal Democrats responded to Tuesday’s proposals.
Farage has shown absolutely no loyalty to hundreds of hard working party members across the country, who have dedicated themselves to building Reform up to be an election winning machine, on the contrary. he treats them with contempt, regularly casting them aside to be replaced by ‘yes men’ who are willing to display sycophantic loyalty.
Reform-run Kent County Council will not fly a Pride flag this summer and will remove the Ukrainian flag from the chamber, the new council leader confirmed.
At the beginning of May, Reform swept to a local elections victory in Kent taking 57 of 81 council seats, wiping out a Conservative majority which had stood for almost 30 years.
On Thursday, councillors heard from the new leader of Kent County Council, Linden Kemkaran, at their annual general meeting at County Hall in Maidstone.
Ms Kemkaran, Kent’s Reform leader, told the chamber her new administration had little time for “special interest groups” or the flags that represent them.
Reform UK presided over its first full Kent County Council (KCC) meeting last week, with the new leader announcing a cut in councillor allowances and a special post for finding savings.
On a morning dominated by frequent applause and table thumping by Reform’s members, KCC’s new leader Linden Kemkaran said she regarded her new role as a “privilege”.
But she pledged to look at every area of spending at the authority with the creation of a department of local government efficiency (DOLGE) and proposed to cut member allowances by 5%.
Ms Edmunds also said she no longer has to “watch what I say” and so called for the jailed far right activist Tommy Robinson to be freed from jail, describing him as a “political prisoner”.
Reasons range from dodgy social media posts to not being eligible to stand in the first place
Over 600 new Reform councillors were elected in the May 2025 local elections – and many seem to have been unprepared for it.
Reform is seeing an unusual number of councillors resigning in their first few weeks in office. In each case, this will trigger a council byelection costing in excess of £20,000.
Nigel Farage’s Reform refuses to tell people whether it has their data and doesn’t delete it when they ask. We’re challenging Reform so it respects data law.
When we gave people tools to find out what data political parties were holding on them in the run-up to the general election, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was by far the worst, ignoring the vast majority of requests.
Not only did Reform fail to respond to requests for the data that they hold on individuals – as all organisations that hold data on individuals are required to do by law – but they also refused to delete that data.
No organisation, especially a political party, should be allowed to ignore fundamental data rights.
New Leicestershire Reform councillor was fired from police force
His actions were branded ‘deliberate’ and ‘for personal advantage’
A newly elected Leicestershire councillor was fired from his previous job with Leicestershire Police. Andrew Hamilton-Gray, one of the new county councillors for Loughborough, was sacked by the force in January 2024 following a misconduct hearing.
Swinney accuses Reform of racism over Sarwar advert
First Minister John Swinney has accused Reform UK of a “racist attack” on Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Both the SNP and Labour have complained to Facebook’s parent company Meta about a Reform advert running on the site ahead of a South Lanarkshire by-election.
The video features text claiming Sarwar “will prioritise the Pakistani community”.
Reform has denied the video is racist and said it has no plans to take it down.
Reform scraps Derbyshire’s climate change committee, prompting fears on flood prevention work
Derbyshire has been hit by numerous floods in recent years and this committee handled much of the work to mitigate future damage and assist residents and businesses
Reform has scrapped Derbyshire’s committee on climate change, biodiversity and carbon reduction, with fears this will directly impact flood prevention. In its first series of decisions with the keys to Derbyshire County Council, Reform UK has chosen to axe one of the authority’s scrutiny committees, formed four years ago by the Conservatives.
The appointment of an all-male cabinet to Lancashire County Council by Reform UK has been described as “retrograde step” by opposition councillors.
The new group was unveiled at the council’s annual general meeting with all nine positions filled by men.
Gina Dowding of the Green Party said this was “disappointing” and the “first time since we moved to the cabinet system that there’s been no women at that top table”.
Reform promised much to voters and now runs £8bn worth of public services. After three weeks, what has party accomplished?
When Nigel Farage held a victory lap of England after his mammoth local elections win on 1 May, he was characteristically bullish about Reform UK’s plan to shake up town halls.
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Yet three weeks into power in nine of England’s cash-starved local authorities – where Reform UK now runs £8bn worth of public services – Farage’s “Reform-quake” has been limited to smaller but symbolic acts of the “war on woke”.
In Kent and Durham, councils with a combined £1bn of debt, one of Reform’s first acts was to take down the Ukrainian flag – hoisted to show solidarity with the war-besieged nation – and vowed not to fly rainbow-coloured flags in support of LGBTQ+ residents.
A newly elected Reform UK council has abolished a flooding committee, despite other parties calling for it to be saved.
Lincolnshire County Council’s Flood and Water Management Scrutiny Committee was axed by the party which took control of the authority in this month’s elections.
The Reform UK leader of a council has accused other political parties of hypocrisy over their reaction to the cost of a by-election, after one of his councillors resigned.
Wayne Titley won the Eccleshall and Gnosall ward for Reform earlier in May but faced criticism over a social media post around immigration and stepped down.
His resignation means a by-election at an estimated £27,000 cost and the Conservative leader on the council called it a “waste of money”.
Nigel Farage hailed his party’s election success as proof that Reform had professionalised but, just a few weeks on, “the truth is beginning to emerge”, said The New European, “as newly-elected Reform councillors begin to quit, wasting tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money” on by-election costs for their replacements.
All 10 council areas controlled by rightwing party tell the Guardian they have no low-traffic neighbourhoods
Reform UK’s pledge to remove all low-traffic neighbourhoods from the council areas it controls looks to be achieved in record time after the 10 local authorities said they do not actually have any in place.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s chair, said last week there would be a “large-scale reversal” of existing LTNs in the 10 areas across England where the party won control of the councils in local elections on 1 May.
“We view these schemes with the same suspicion as mass immigration and net zero,” Yusuf told the Telegraph, adding: “You can expect, if you live in a Reform council, for there to be a much higher bar for any proposals for LTNs and for the large-scale reversal of these existing LTNs.”
The Guardian contacted the councils now run by Reform – Derbyshire, Doncaster, Durham, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, North Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and West Northamptonshire – and they all said they had no such schemes.
Reform UK has refused to answer questions about a new Doncaster councillor whose Facebook account featured posts comparing black Islamic dress to bin bags.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) approached the party after a number of posts on a Facebook account belonging to Councillor Mark Broadhurst went viral along with calls to “suspend him”.
The LDRS had asked whether the posts – including a since deleted image which suggested Adolf Hitler would be a “legend” had he targeted people following Islam – were acceptable to the party.
A Reform UK spokesperson said the party would not be commenting on questions submitted by the LDRS.
A new Staffordshire County councillor has stepped down, just two weeks after being elected.
Wayne Titley won the Eccleshall and Gnosall division for Reform UK, beating the Conservative Jeremy Pert by just 27 votes.
However, he attracted criticism for a post on his Facebook account in March that called on the navy to intercept small boats attempting to reach Britain and use a “volley of gun fire aimed at sinking them”.
Reform UK Ltd’s councillors, are already proving they are unfit or unwilling to serve
A worrying, if not surprising, number of Reform UK Ltd’s new councillors have been accused of sharing extreme right-wing posts on their social media accounts. However, it’s not just the abhorrent racism, misogyny and links to cosplay fascists that Reform’s AI-based vetting procedure appears to have missed. While they were checking out potential representatives, maybe they should have asked them if they intended to hang around for longer than a couple of days after the election or even if they were actually allowed to be a councillor in the first place.
The Reform company, sorry party, has already seen four of their new cohort announce that they can’t or won’t represent them in the council chamber, decisions that in some cases will cost local government tens of thousands of pounds.
A Reform UK councillor elected just over a week ago has resigned after failing to declare that he worked for the council.
Andrew Kilburn will no longer take up his role as a Durham county councillor for Benfieldside.
He was elected with 1,007 votes alongside fellow Reform candidate Sandra Grindle as the party gained both seats in the Benfieldside ward – one from Labour and one from an independent.
The social media posts have been described as racist, Islamophobic, and misogynistic – including a post by one elected councillor who “joked” about beating his wife.
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The posts seen by LBC include:
A Reform UK councillor “joking” about domestic abuse and racially stereotyping former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Another saying we should build fewer mosques because they “divide communities”.
Others appearing to promote conspiracy theories that climate change is ‘geo-engineered’ and supporting far right figures including Tommy Robinson.
Up to 12 winning councillors under scrutiny with three accused of retweeting Britain First comments
Up to 12 newly elected Reform UK councillors are facing allegations of sharing social media content ranging from support for the far right to explicitly Islamophobic comments.
They include councillors at three different county councils who have shared social media content from Britain First, a far-right party known for staging provocative marches and stunts.
Desmond Clarke said he is ‘unable to deliver’ what people need
A Nottinghamshire Reform councillor has stepped down only a week after he was elected as he felt he was ‘unable to deliver’ what people need. Desmond Clarke won his seat for Newark West on Nottinghamshire County Council only one week ago in the May 1 elections.
A new Warwickshire county councillor has apologised for a “mistake” that means he will be unable to serve under the Reform UK banner for now.
Councillor Luke Shingler swept to a comfortable victory in Nuneaton’s Galley Common ward having been promoted as the Reform candidate until five days before the ballot.
He took to social media on the Saturday before the polls to tell residents he was not allowed to “run under a political organisation, party or movement due to my employment” but that it was too late to change ballot papers that linked him to Reform.
A newly elected councillor who quit Reform UK after she was suspended over a social media post has described it as a “cult”, and accused the party’s leader Nigel Farage of treating its members with contempt.
Donna Edmunds, who was elected for Hodnet Ward in Shropshire, was suspended following a post on X about her plans to defect from the party after the local elections.
“I thought I was joining a party. It turned out I had joined a cult,” Edmunds said in a statement.
Councillor Joel Tetlow appeared to compare the small boat crossings in the Channel to Hitler’s invasion of Europe in a post he has now deleted. He told Sky News he did not mean “any disrespect” to soldiers who fought in the two world wars.
Reform UK is not suspending a newly elected councillor who has been criticised for sharing a now-deleted Adolf Hitler meme on social media.
Councillor Joel Tetlow is under fire after he posted a picture of the Nazi leader on Facebook, overlooking a map of Europe with an apparent reference to small boats crossing the Channel.
A caption on the picture said: “Why don’t we invade them slowly? A few men at a time in small boats.”
Mr Tetlow, who was elected as county councillor for Accrington North on Lancashire County Council last week, then added: “Let’s be grateful this idea was never put to him. Or the world as we know it would be a whole lot different.”
After being approached by Sky News, Mr Tetlow deleted the post. It had been uploaded on Tuesday.
The councillor had posted on social media about her plans to defect from Reform UK after the election
A newly elected councillor has quit Reform UK after she was suspended over a social media post just days after being elected.
Donna Edmunds, who was elected in Hodnet in Shropshire, was suspended for writing on X, formerly Twitter, that she was planning to defect from the party after the local elections.
Ms Edmunds on Sunday had written on the platform that she had been suspended from the party “pending an investigation”.
She had previously posted about waiting for the party’s ousted MP Rupert Lowe to set up a challenger party “and then I will defect”.
