Latest news with #Jenkyns
The Independent
05-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Reform offers home working jobs despite vowing to crack down on working from home
Reform UK is offering staff the chance to work from home despite vowing to scrap remote working when it takes over councils, it has emerged. A job advert for Reform's south central regional director promises ' home working with occasional travel within the region'. The £50,000-per-year role is being advertised online just days after Reform leader Nigel Farage promised that nobody working for a Reform-run council will be allowed to do so from home. After taking control of 10 councils, Mr Farage said those with jobs relating to climate change or diversity or who work from home 'all better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly'. Asked what his party's priority would be, Mr Farage told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We are deeply dissatisfied with the way that county councils and unitaries in Britain have been running their budgets. 'We look at the millions a year being spent, in many cases, on consultants. We look at the money being spent on climate change; on areas that county councils, frankly, shouldn't even be getting involved in.' He added: 'No more work from home, increased productivity. That won't be a magic wand, it won't solve every problem, but it will be a good start and we'll be judged on that.' Sharing the Reform job advert, Labour's Stella Creasy said the hypocrisy was 'glorious'. 'Apparently if you want to work for Reform, you can work from home,' she added. Several other Reform job adverts offered applicants home working. Reform said the regional organisers cannot easily attend the party's single London office, but staff based in the capital work from the office five days a week. The job posting came as The Independent revealed Reform mayor Dame Andrea Jenkyns ' vow to get rid of council diversity officers as one of her first acts in Lincolnshire has fallen flat as the county council doesn't employ any. Mr Farage and Dame Andrea put getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officers at the top of their agenda as they impose their own version of Elon Musk 's cost-cutting Doge on the county. Ms Jenkyns said: 'We are going to have a Lincolnshire Doge. We are going to ensure that we get rid of diversity officers because amazingly Lincolnshire County Council is now Reform controlled. That is a historic moment.' However, The Independent unearthed a freedom of information answer from Lincolnshire County Council, where Reform now has a majority, stating: 'Lincolnshire County Council does not employ any diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officers.' The council had been asked how many DEI officers it employed and what their salaries were. The answer was issued in March just before the local election campaign began in the county. But in response, Ms Jenkyns told The Independent that another one of the three councils under her remit as the combined authority in the county, North Lincolnshire Council, does have diversity officers.
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Reform UK to resist housing asylum seekers in its council areas, chair says
Reform UK has vowed to use 'every instrument of power' to resist housing people seeking asylum in areas where it now controls councils, its chair has confirmed. Zia Yusuf, the party chair and a major donor, acknowledged it may not be able to stop people seeking asylum being put up in hotels where the Home Office has contracts with accommodation providers. However, he said the party would use 'judicial reviews, injunctions, planning laws' in an effort to prevent them being accommodated. 'You know, a lot of these hotels – there has been litigation around this already – a lot of these hotels, when you suddenly turn them into something else which is essentially a hostel that falls foul of any number of regulations, and that's what our teams of lawyers are exploring at the moment,' Yusuf told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme. Yusuf's comments were made after Nigel Farage, Reform's leader, said he would 'resist' those seeking asylum being housed in the 10 council areas where his party had taken control after winning more than 670 seats overall in Thursday's elections. Since then, the party has come under scrutiny over some of its promises to slash spending at councils and prevent the housing of asylum seekers. The party has said it wants to cut diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) officers and work at the councils it controls, despite this being a very small part of their budgets, with most money spent on social care and education. Yusuf said Reform would introduce task forces to audit spending in the councils where it has won control and suggested the party would be digging into what council job roles involved in order to cut costs. 'If you take Lincolnshire county council, yes, they do not currently have somebody with the job title 'DEI officer', [but] they do spend considerable money on DEI initiatives,' he said. Yusuf said the party was 'realistic' about the fact the levers of change at a local level 'pale in comparison' to the powers of Westminster. 'That's why this is part of a journey to making Nigel the prime minister with a Reform majority,' he said. Andrea Jenkyns, Reform's new Greater Lincolnshire mayor and a former Conservative MP, also confirmed her suggestion that migrants could be housed in tents, saying the UK was 'acting like bees to honey by putting people in hotels'. 'This is taxpayers' money and it should actually be tents, not rent,' the former Tory minister told LBC. Jenkyns also said she wanted to cut up to 10% of Lincolnshire county council's staff and 'root out the waste' at the local authority. 'I think, personally, [we] ought to look at maybe cutting the workforce by up to 10%. We've got to have a lean, mean local government.' 'That's what I personally like to see, but again there's variables there, because we haven't elected a Reform county council leader yet, so there's got to be discussions.' Jenkyns also said she was 'up for a fight' with the unions, after the head of Unison urged staff at Reform-run councils to join them and secure union protection.
The Independent
04-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
New Reform mayor Andrea Jenkyns vows to sack county council's diversity officers - except there aren't any
Andrea Jenkyns ' vow to get rid of council diversity officers as one of her first acts as the new Reform mayor for Lincolnshire has fallen flat after it emerged that the county council doesn't employ any. Nigel Farage and Dame Andrea put getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officers at the top of their agenda as they impose their own version of Elon Musk 's cost-cutting Doge on the county. They doubled down on the promise at a rally in Kent last night where Ms Jenkyns and Mr Farage were among a line of leading speakers as part of Reform's 'war on woke'. Ms Jenkyns said: 'We are going to have a Lincolnshire Doge. We are going to ensure that we get rid of diversity officers because amazingly Lincolnshire County Council is now Reform controlled. That is a historic moment.' However, The Independent has seen a freedom of information answer from Lincolnshire County Council, where Reform now has a majority, stating: 'Lincolnshire County Council does not employ any diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officers.' The council had been asked how many DEI officers it employed and what their salaries were. The answer was issued in March just before the local election campaign began in the county. But in response, Ms Jenkyns told The Independent that another one of the three councils under her remit as the combined authority in the county, North Lincolnshire Council, does have diversity officers. She said: 'I have been told by their employees that the leadership pressure staff to wear rainbow lanyards too. They also have diversity officers, named as 'outreach officers'.' Ms Jenkyns claimed that the county council 'has all the awful [DEI] training though'. Sharing documents on the breakdown of a £15,190 cost for diversity training between 2021 and 2023, she added: 'Not a lot but still can save a bit of money.' The Tories, who still feel bruised after losing badly in Lincolnshire and elsewhere, linked the failure to know there were no DEI officers in the county with claims they made that Ms Jenkyns lives in Leeds. A Tory source said: 'Someone who lives in Lincolnshire would know that there aren't any DEI roles going in Lincolnshire Council. 'Catchy slogans aren't always the answer to complex problems. It the latest proof that Reform is a one-man band without the answers needed to tackle the problems facing hardworking families across Britain.' However, union officials have issued warnings about the plans by Reform to sack DEI and net zero officers in the other councils they took control of. DEI employees exist in Kent, Durham, Staffordshire, West Northamptonshire, North Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire. Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: 'This is not the US. Thankfully workers in the UK have laws to protect them from bad employers. And soon employees will get even more protection from unscrupulous bosses when the government's new employment rights come in. 'Reform has consistently voted against these new measures that will make work more secure. So much for being on the side of ordinary working people. 'Rather than attacking hard-working council staff, Mr Farage should be focusing on his own job representing the people of Clacton. But judging by his voting and speaking record in the House of Commons, he'd clearly rather be making big bucks elsewhere.' She added: 'Unions are there to ensure no one can play fast and loose with the law. Any staff working for councils now controlled by Reform, and who aren't yet members, should sign up so they can be protected too. 'Nigel Farage and his party's new councillors have much to learn about local government. They'll quickly discover there's nothing left to cut and many authorities are balancing on the edge of the financial precipice.' Ms McAnea was responding to Mr Farage telling DEI officers or those working on climate change via Sky News: 'I think you all better really be seeking alternative careers, very, very quick.'
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Farage claims Reform UK local election gains ‘beginning of the end' for Tories
Nigel Farage claimed he had broken the grip of Britain's two main political parties as Reform UK gained an MP and swept to a string of victories in England's local elections, making deep inroads into Labour and Conservative heartlands. On a sobering day for Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch that brought immediate recriminations, Reform took hundreds of councillors from the struggling Tories and won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by just six votes ahead of Labour. In further signs of fracturing political loyalties, a BBC projection of how the voting would have looked in a UK-wide election put Reform first on 30%, Labour on 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 17%, the Conservatives fourth with 15% and the Greens on 11%. An increasingly jubilant Farage said his hard-right populist party had now supplanted the Conservatives, as he pledged that Reform-run councils and mayoralties would block asylum seeker accommodation and, in a direct echo of Donald Trump, dismantle equalities programmes. 'We've dug very deep into the Labour vote and in other parts of England we've dug deep into the Conservative vote, and we are now, after tonight there's no question, in most of the country, we are now the main opposition party to this government,' Farage said. Speaking at a later rally, Farage declared that the elections marked 'the beginning of the end of the Conservative party'. Reform won in Runcorn and Helsby with a 17-point swing away from Labour, overturning a majority of more than 14,000. Its candidate Andrea Jenkyns, the former Conservative minister, easily won the new mayoralty of Greater Lincolnshire, and the party also took the mayoralty in Hull and East Yorkshire. By late Friday, Reform had taken control of seven councils – Durham, Kent, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire – with a gain of well over 500 seats. While moving from a protest party to one with responsibility for policy and delivery could bring risks, Farage used a victory rally in County Durham to pledge a pushback against equality and diversity programmes and allowing council staff to work from home. 'I would advise anyone who's working for Durham county council on climate change initiatives, or diversity, equity and inclusion, or thinks they can go on working from home, I think you had all better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly,' he warned. Farage also said Reform would resist asylum seekers being accommodated in Reform-run areas, while Jenkyns called for them to be placed in tents. 'I say no to putting people in hotels. Tents are good enough for France, they should be good enough for here in Britain,' Jenkyns said, an apparent reference to the makeshift camps used by asylum seekers along the French coast. A rout of Conservative councillors had been widely predicted, including by Badenoch, in part because the party had done so well the last time the seats were contested, during the short-lived Covid 'vaccine bounce' under Boris Johnson in 2021. But the shedding of so many seats – by late Friday there was a net loss above 50% – plus the fourth place in the projected vote share will place renewed pressure on Badenoch, whose insistence of a slow buildup on policy ideas has worried some of her MPs. The Liberal Democrats also made renewed gains in previously Conservative heartlands, taking control in Oxfordshire as the Tories lost 15 seats, and also taking over in Cambridgeshire and Shropshire. The Greens picked up dozens of new councillors and came third in the West of England mayoral race, one they had harboured hopes of winning. More surprising was the scale of Labour losses, with the party losing proportionally fewer seats than the Tories, but with some major localised drubbings, such as a net loss of 38 seats in Durham and 27 in Lancashire. Speaking on a visit to a defence factory in Luton, Starmer said: 'What I want to say is, my response is, we get it. We were elected in last year to bring about change … I am determined that we will go further and faster on the change that people want to see.' Labour officials accepted that some results had been bad but in part blamed a greater-than-expected collapse in the Tory vote, which helped Reform make gains in three-way contests. A Labour source said there were some signs of government policies starting to resonate with voters, pointing to Ros Jones holding off Reform to keep the Doncaster mayoralty in the wake of central investment to reopen the local airport. 'Doncaster is a good example of the sort of muscular government that voters notice,' the source said. 'When the PM says further and faster, it's about positive change, now we've made the difficult fiscal decisions.' It was nonetheless notable that Jones was among the most vocal critics of Starmer's record on Friday, highlighting cuts to the winter fuel allowance as a subject stoking voters' anger, as well as reductions in disability payments and a rise in national insurance. Asked whether the prime minister was listening to her voters, Jones said: 'I would say no. They haven't actually realised, because the people of Doncaster know how hard life can be, and it's about delivering for them.' There was also criticism from a number of Labour MPs, albeit with those going public tending to be from the left of the party. Other did join in. Ayesha Hazarika, a Labour peer and former adviser, said the party needed to 'admit that some mistakes were made, like the winter fuel allowance'. Speaking on Times Radio, she said the result in Runcorn would 'throw up some big questions about the strategy and the operation'. When given anonymously, the verdict was particularly damning. One senior Labour MP said: 'I was quite shocked at how complacent the campaign was, especially in Runcorn but nationally as well. Everyone seemed convinced we were going to win by a reasonably comfortable margin. 'The NHS message does not work against Farage, but the centre wouldn't hear it, or the fact that Keir's unpopularity was brought up on almost every door.' A second Labour MP said: 'The boys in No 10 should spend less time briefing about who's driving the train and more time actually getting on with building the tracks.' A third said: 'It's all very well for No 10 to say we've got to keep delivering. The problem is that it's the stuff we've delivered that people hate.'
ITV News
02-05-2025
- Politics
- ITV News
From Greggs, to Miss UK stage and Grimsby Town Hall: Who's Reform's first mayor Andrea Jenkyns?
Dame Andrea Jenkyns has been elected as Reform UK 's first-ever mayor. In her victory speech, Jenkyns vowed there would be 'an end to soft touch Britain' and declared it was a "new dawn in British politics". Dame Andrea has certainly worn many different hats - from working at Greggs after leaving school at 16, to reaching the final of Miss UK at 18, to a political career spanning local authorities, Parliament and two parties. But who is she, and what shaped the former Conservative minister's return to politics? Time with the Tories Jenkyns' political career began at Lincolnshire County Council, where she was elected in 2009 - a seat she later lost to UKIP. But 2015 saw her political career gain momentum, beating Labour's Ed Balls to the Morley and Outwood constituency, a seat she ended up holding for nine years. A staunch supporter of Brexit and Boris Johnson, Jenkyns submitted no-confidence letters in both former prime ministers, Theresa May and Rishi Sunak. Under the Johnson administration, she was appointed assistant whip in September 2021 before becoming an education minister in July 2022. But shortly after she took up her new job, she sparked outrage when she flipped her middle finger at the public outside Downing Street as she was en route to watch Johnson's resignation speech. Her actions were met with outrage from teachers' leaders after footage of the incident circulated on social media. In response, she claimed a 'baying mob outside the gates were insulting MPs on their way in" - something that "is sadly too common,' she added. She was reappointed in the role by Liz Truss that September, who she endorsed in the party leadership election, but remained part of the cabinet for only 49 days and left after Rishi Sunak became the new prime minister. Shift to Reform UK In the run up to the election, she was forced to defend using a picture of herself and Nigel Farage on her campaign leaflet. Standing by her choice, she said: "All conservatives must be prepared to come together to prevent a socialist supermajority and the end of Britain as we know it." However, Dame Andrea was voted out of her constituency of Leeds South West and Morley in last year's general election, losing to Labour MP Mark Sewards. She then defected from the Conservative party to Reform UK in November 2024. Describing her former party as "tired", she claimed to be "politically aligned" with Nigel Farage. Jenkyns will now oversee a £24 million budget and influence areas such as transport, regeneration and housing. ITV News' Political Correspondent Shehab Khan, who has been watching events unfold from North Lincolnshire, said: "Her election as the first Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire now offers a revealing opportunity to see how Reform governs in practice. "One member of the shadow cabinet summed up their mood with a pointed remark: 'Let's see how they get on when there's actual work to do'."
