Ann Widddecombe says she is not ‘teaming up with any losers' in dig at Tories and Robert Jenrick
Reform UK's Ann Widddecome says she is not 'teaming up with any losers' in a dig at the Conservatives and senior MP Robert Jenrick.
Ms Widdecombe's comments, made during an interview with Times Radio on Wednesday (23 April), come after Mr Jenrick said he would bring a 'coalition together' in order to end the electoral battle between the Reform and the Tories.
When asked by Daniel Finkelstein if she would 'team up' with Mr Jenrick, Ms Widdecombe replied: 'Absolutely not. I'm not teaming up with any losers. Reform is winning. Reform is at the top of the polls.'
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The Herald Scotland
36 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Do the Scottish Conservatives have any reason to exist?
Before dismissing this prospect out of hand, consider the point that political parties are manufactured, not innate. They are coalitions of the more or less willing, designed to provide a vaguely coherent offer to the electorate in order to secure power and effect change. Consequently, they have no guaranteed right to exist. Anyone remember the squadrone volante? In the old, pre-Union Scots Parliament, they steered a cautious middle way between the Court and Country parties, before eventually sinking into oblivion. OK, so that is an obscure recollection. Consider this instead. In the 19th century, the Liberals were utterly dominant in Scottish politics. Their role was largely usurped by the Labour Party. The Tories battled on. They secured, in 1955, the only popular majority ever achieved by any party in Scotland since universal suffrage. But that was a Unionist vote. As times changed, and the SNP rose, the Tories struggled again, eventually losing every Scottish Westminster seat in 1997. They were only rescued as a party by the advent of devolution and by proportional representation. Two developments they had steadfastly opposed. And more recently? They flourished to a degree under Ruth Davidson's leadership. She contrived to corral pro-Union votes to her side by depicting her party as the most reliable bulwark for that Union. And now? Two points. Indyref2 seems relatively distant, meaning that the political focus is elsewhere. The Davidson bulwark has less clout. Read more from Brian Taylor: Secondly, there is an alternative on the Right, in the shape of Reform, explicitly promising to supplant the Tories before going for the other parties. The Tories have endured defections. To Reform. And MSP Jamie Greene who switched to the Liberal Democrats. His verdict on his erstwhile party? He reckons folk are 'completely scunnered' with the Scots Tories. Nodding towards the Tories' Westminster leader, he summons up a vision of 'Kemi-geddon.' Not, I would suggest, the most felicitous phrase. But you take his point. Ms Badenoch has scarcely inspired confidence since taking over. Her own view, delivered this week during exchanges with the Prime Minister, was that she gets better every week, while Keir Starmer gets worse. Again, less than uplifting. Trying hard. Getting better. It is all a bit like a school report delivered to a struggling pupil by a kind and supportive teacher. However, is it entirely her fault? I would suggest not. She might well get better. Except she is burdened by voter memories of her predecessors. Rishi Sunak might be exculpated somewhat. But not Boris Johnson and certainly not Liz Truss. Lest there is any danger of the voters forgetting, Labour constantly summons up the spectre of the unfunded Truss budget which so spooked the markets that she had to quit. Only this week, the Chancellor referred repeatedly to Ms Truss, as she set out her own spending plans. The Prime Minister taunted Kemi Badenoch, saying reflections of Liz Truss would continue to haunt the Tories. Yes, Kemi Badenoch has had a troubled start to her leadership. But, as one close observer noted to me, Winston Churchill would struggle to lead the Conservatives right now, given the degree of entrenched voter anger at governance past. While noting that, I would add that Tory problems are exacerbated by the presence of an alternative offer on the Right. The Tories previously dismissed UKIP. Reform appears more challenging. Is Russell Findlay happy in his role as Scottish Conservative leader? (Image: PA) And what of Holyrood? I noted recently that Russell Findlay does not seem entirely content in his role. Perhaps, one suggested to me, he was happier in his previous job as an inquisitive, investigative journalist. However, a senior insider dismisses that prospect. I was told that Mr Findlay is determined to set out a clear direction for the Scottish Tories – by differentiating them sharply from their main rivals. He will not, I was told, be 'knocked off course' by Reform. He believes that the SNP, in particular, talked up the challenge of Reform in the recent Hamilton by-election, only to witness a set-back for their own party as Labour won. The big Scottish Tory offer? Lower taxes in Scotland, including the removal of lower bands. Amounting, they say, to a substantial saving for every worker. In the past, the Scots Tories have been somewhat reluctant to pursue this route. They feared it would not be seen as credible, that they would be challenged on spending cuts. Ideologically, they fretted over departing from a UK fiscal pattern. No longer. They say they will fund tax cuts by civil service efficiency savings, an approach also backed by the Chancellor. And by cuts to Scotland's benefits bill. Read more: In response to which, John Swinney sharpens the knife he has already honed for UK Labour – and turns it upon the Scottish Conservatives, accusing both of seeking to gain electorally from enhancing poverty. Both his rivals demur. But there is more from Mr Findlay. In conference this weekend, he is projecting what he calls 'common sense' policies. Reflecting, as one insider noted to me, the 'real priorities of the Scottish people, stopping the nonsense of the political bubble.' So potholes, rather than gender reform. An end to the North Sea windfall tax. An understandable move, in keeping with Tory instincts. Except that John Swinney has already shifted ground to focus on fundamentals. And Labour's Anas Sarwar talks without ceasing about popular concerns such as the NHS. And Reform? Both UK and Scottish Tory leaders will hope to sideline them. That might prove difficult, especially given the options offered by list voting. Other factors. Reform themselves may be subject to closer scrutiny. As the Holyrood election approaches, people may turn their attention to big choices. Who forms the new devolved government which will set their taxes and control their public services? The Tories hope they can bring a distinctive perspective to that choice. They know they are down. They can only hope – and believe – they are not yet out. Brian Taylor is a former political editor for BBC Scotland and a columnist for The Herald. He cherishes his family, the theatre - and Dundee United FC
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
No more Edinburgh Book Festival for me – where did it all go wrong?
One other event at the book festival I recall, for different reasons, was a session with the writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I can't remember why I went to see her now because she's the sort of harrumphing lefty who sets off my allergies, but perhaps I figured it's good to listen to a range of views, which it is. I certainly remember being irritated when she laid into Ukip as an English not a Scottish problem even though the party had just done well in Scotland at the European elections. The same sort of flawed reasoning persists now with Reform. But the audience seemed to like it. They applauded at the end, and shuffled out for tea and biscuits. I mention the Alibhai-Brown event in particular because even then, ten years ago, the problems with the Edinburgh Book Festival were starting to become obvious. The lack of diversity on the stage and in the audience, by which I particularly mean diversity of class. The weak, and sometimes execrable, chairing of events that fails to challenge or properly explore the writer's opinions and assumptions. And most important of all, the tendency to platform writers like Alibhai-Brown and unplatform or ignore writers of a different or more conservative persuasion. In the end, it meant the festival became a place I enjoyed less and less, and eventually I just stopped going. But, you know, it really is good to listen to a range of views and I'm a hopeful sort of person on the whole, so this year, like every year, I looked at the line-up on the festival website to see if there was something good and if things had changed, and I scrolled and scrolled and saw that the answer was no. Things appear to be just as bad as ever, worse in fact, and the worry is that the problems at the book festival may have started to rot it from the inside. You start to wonder: how long will it last? The most obvious symptom of the problems is the lack of diversity on stage, which is worse than ever. One of the biggest stories of the last year – and the focus of one of the biggest-selling books of the year – was the trans debate and the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of 'woman', and yet you will not find a trace of it on the festival line-up. The book in question, The Women Who Wouldn't Wheest, was edited by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, so why haven't they been invited? Is it because – unlike one of the big guests of the festival Nicola Sturgeon – they are seen to be on the wrong side of the debate? Yes, of course it is. Read more The chairman of the festival, Alan Little, rather gave the game away when he said the festival should be 'a place where progressive and nuanced discussion can happen in a safe and respectful space'. He's spot on with nuanced – we need it badly – but why only progressive? Why not traditionalist or conservative as well? And what's with 'safe'? It's become one of those words certain activists use to ratchet up the pressure, to hystericalise, but would the festival be unsafe because the line-up included Susan Dalgety or Lucy Hunter Blackburn? The only thing that would be unsafe would be the consensus that's dominated the festival and still does. The organisers would probably say in their defence that there would be a threat of disruption from activists – indeed, that was reason they gave for dropping Baillie Gifford as one of their sponsors. A number of activists, you will remember, a very small number, demanded the investment company be dropped on the grounds it invests in fossil fuels and sad to say, the organisers caved. They said they could not be expected to deliver a festival that was safe – there's that word again – because there was a threat of disruption from activists and so they ended their relationship with Baillie Gifford but more importantly they ended their relationship with Baillie Gifford's money. But it didn't have to be that way. First of all, if everyone buckled as quickly as the festival did over the threat of disruption to the free expression of views, we'd be in a very unpleasant place indeed; their weakness is pathetic. They could also have borrowed some of the stoicism of the Fringe which faced similar pressure over Baillie Gifford from the same sort of activists, but stood firm and it all came to nothing. To put it another way, everyone was perfectly safe. The Edinburgh Book Festival (Image: Newsquest) The organisers of the book festival also appear to be guilty of a kind of economic and practical idiocy that now threatens their future. There are some people who object to corporate sponsorship of arts events – so what: the only alternative is an increase in public money and that ain't happenin'. Baillie Gifford also invests in fossil fuels – so what: it invests far more in clean energy, and the objections of the activists led to the cancellation of a million pounds in money for the arts. The danger here is that the arts world ends up, in the words of the director of the Science Museum Ian Blatchford, eaten alive by its own piety. And the risks are particularly high for book festivals aren't they? We saw what happened to Aye Write in Glasgow when it failed to get funding from Creative Scotland; it only went ahead after a donation from the charity set up by the Lottery winner Colin Weir. The Edinburgh book festival is also going ahead this year thanks largely to a donation from Ian Rankin. But how long before the activists start digging into the personal views of the philanthropists writing cheques? And is this what they want: the arts funded by a few wealthy individuals? It doesn't sound all that progressive to me. Better, I think, to try to build more robust festivals that have a chance of lasting and that must mean some changes. First, encourage a broad diversity of views and opinions at the festival that will attract a broader and more diverse audience. Secondly, drop the piety and encourage corporate sponsorship because public money is not coming to save you. And thirdly, be robust when the activists rock up and shout 'unsafe!' They only have power because you give it to them. Reject them. Ignore them. And carry on. Mark Smith is a Herald features writer and opinion writer
Times
8 hours ago
- Times
Reform's Zia Yusuf: My Doge-like mission on behalf of the taxpayer
Asylum seekers have been taken trampolining, bowling, to the cinema and on shopping sprees, including to a store selling luxury hair extensions, according to Reform's anti-waste council team. Auditors styled on Elon Musk's Doge (Department of Government Efficiency) said the trips out and other spending at JD Sports and PC World cost taxpayers more than £24,000 between April 2022 and December. The claims were made about Kent county council as part of Reform UK's drive to inspect accounts at ten local authorities of which it won control in May. Zia Yusuf, who is running Reform's Doge unit, said he was concerned that some local authority bosses were treating taxpayers as 'their own personal piggy bank'. He signalled a crackdown on spending on LGBT Pride events set to take place in June and vowed to make payments to contractors for filling potholes. A team of 15 auditors has been assembled by Reform, all working nearly full-time for free. After meetings began with the council earlier in June, Yusuf said his unit had uncovered 'profligate' spending. Up to 3,000 staff at the council can work from home, Yusuf said, but his questions about how laptops were monitored to ensure productivity were met with 'filibustering'. An initial trawl of documents showed that 'civil servants are spending taxpayer money like it's their own personal piggy bank', Yusuf said. Transport for children with special educational needs (Sen) was also identified by Yusuf as an inefficient system. Councils must provide payments for taxis or bus services if the child lives more than a set distance from their nearest suitable school. Costs have risen significantly for local authorities — the County Councils Network estimates that the number of children requiring transport funding has risen by a quarter since 2019. Yusuf said: 'I've been doing some analysis already with some of the team on looking at these contracts and zooming in on how much it is costing per mile to take these kids to school. In most cases, it's somewhere between seven and 15 times the cost of an Uber ride.' Yusuf said he wanted to 'really fight for the taxpayer here and say 'it doesn't make sense, the taxpayer shouldn't be paying seven to 12 times more'. ' He said some councils could save 'tens of millions of pounds'. Yusuf said he recently met a mother whose three children all have Sen and go to the same school but are taken in three cars. 'She just thinks it's really wasteful,' he said. He stressed that 'if you're a parent with a child with Sen, then you've got nothing to fear from a Reform council', adding it was an example of how he wanted to 'deliver better services for lower marginal costs'. Action on 'vanity projects' was also signalled by Yusuf. When asked whether councils should spend money organising Pride events, he said it was up to elected representatives where to spend money — but added: 'Speaking to our councillors, I think you're going to see a lot of those things either reduced materially or cut completely … The bar for spending taxpayers' money should be ridiculously high. And those are essentially vanity projects.' Auditors have started to ask councils for full lists of staff job titles in an attempt to avoid them 'hiding' diversity, equity and inclusion roles, Yusuf said. Whistleblowers have also come forward to reveal spending Yusuf deemed wasteful. They included council workers who told him that when their laptop screen broke, they were told to have it repaired, which cost double that of buying a new one. Contract competitiveness was highlighted by Yusuf as another area of concern. He said Reform's auditors were using artificial intelligence to comb through thousands of pages of successful tenders. Too often only one firm bids and therefore automatically wins the contract, providing little in the way of competition and value for money, he said. Terms can also last for more than 20 years. 'When Nasa awarded SpaceX its space exploration contract, that was six years because you want to create accountability,' Yusuf said. 'If you give someone a 25-year contract, there's no accountability. And then you wonder why our roads are so undriveable and potholes never get repaired.' While Yusuf admitted that some of the spending criticised by Reform's Doge team was 'relatively small' in the grand scheme of council budgets, he said it was still 'egregious' and had caused the social contract to start 'fraying at the edges'. A pothole-filling pilot scheme will be set up at several councils. Yusuf said contracted firms were often paid a day rate with 'no specific deadline' and used 'Iron Age' pickaxes that delayed completion. 'We're going to run pilots and demonstrate we can massively reduce the marginal cost of repairing potholes, and then provide that as a blueprint for everybody,' he said. Audits of council finances will be replicated at the national level if Reform wins the Welsh or Scottish parliament elections next year. 'We're going to bring that to every corridor of power that Reform wins,' Yusuf said. Reform has come under criticism from political rivals for the manner of its audits. Opponents have said Nigel Farage's party will have few areas to make cuts because many council spending commitments are based on statutory requirements to deliver services. There have also been two by-elections announced for Reform councillors elected in May, leading critics to claim they are a waste of taxpayers' money. After a return to Reform last week 48 hours after he resigned as chairman, Yusuf confirmed he was 'very open' to standing as an MP and said being in parliament 'allows you to have greater impact'. He left open the possibility of vying to be Farage's pick for a potential future chancellor and said he would 'leave such decisions to him'. Yusuf was unfazed by the fact that Reform raised less than the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the first quarter of the year. He stressed that much of the party's income was from £25 membership fees and added about some perspective donors: 'Some of them are, I think, a bit deluded in thinking that the cadaver of the Conservative Party might somehow be resuscitated.' Some Tory MPs are in discussion with Reform about potentially defecting, Yusuf said, but he warned that their time was running out. He said the party would need some people with experience of working in government and taking on 'the blob' in Whitehall but 'the bar is extremely high … Why would we want a Johnny-come-lately in 2028-29 when we've got amazing people who are completely new to politics'. Kent county council was contacted for comment.
