MEND statement on Reform UK councillors filmed by ITV Exposure

Reform UK has more than 2,300 councillors. ITV has now shown the country what some of them really think of the people they were elected to serve.

They called minority communities “parasites” and “animals” who have “infested” their neighbourhoods. In Solihull, a councillor said Muslims in our courts, schools and hospitals are “against us” and talked of putting Asian families on planes to Pakistan. His colleague wanted to desecrate the site of a planned mosque with pork. In Bromley, Black children were called animals. In Tameside, a councillor wants migrants and their children rounded up house by house. And they spoke about women in their own party in the language of sexual assault.

This is hatred by people who hold public office. Reform calls it a vetting failure. Vetting failures do not produce the same views from south London to Greater Manchester to the West Midlands. Party culture does.

Alan Feeney, who called his own approach “racist canvassing”, chairs Solihull’s community cohesion scrutiny board and is Deputy Mayor. A man who would not knock on Asian residents’ doors now sits in judgement on how well Solihull brings its communities together. He has left Reform and kept both jobs. He must go.

Reform’s response? “We regret this outcome, and we wish them well.” They basically chose to give him a leaving card.

And here is the scandal behind the scandal: no council in England can suspend a single one of them. The government promised to change that and still has not.

Public office is a trust, and these men have broken it. Write to your MP today and ask them to press the government for the law that lets councils suspend councillors like these. It takes about a minute.

Write to your MP today: https://headless.newscord.org/mend/complain-to-the-minister-for-loc