Latest news with #politicaladvisers
The Independent
2 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
Row as Reform councillors back spending £150,000 on political advisers
Reform UK councillors have come under fire over plans to spend £150,000 on political advisers despite vowing to cut costs. George Finch, the 19-year-old leader of Warwickshire county council, put forward the plans, which were narrowly approved, on Tuesday. The money would pay for publicly funded political advisers for Reform and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, the two next largest parties on the council. Despite losing a vote over climate change, Reform pushed through the £150,000 spending plans. Green councillor Sam Jones told The Guardian: 'Reform have had a sniff of power, they're making it so clear that they never cared a jot for the will of their supporters. No to overpaid, unelected bureaucrats before the election, but yes to up to £150,000 of unfunded spending on political assistants now the campaigning is over.' And Lib Dem councillor George Cowcher said: 'These proposals are all about spending some money so they can have a chum in their group and I think that is not particularly helpful given the financial state of this council.' The spending plans come after Reform's success in the May local elections, during which it campaigned on a promise of cutting costs and boosting efficiency. It has copied Elon Musk and Donald Trump 's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) unit, sending teams of software engineers and data analysts into local authorities to identify wasteful spending. Reform's Doge unit is led by former party chairman Zia Yusuf, who quit and then returned to a prominent role in the party after 48 hours following a row over calls to ban the burqa. Sending the Doge unit into Kent county council last month, Mr Yusuf said: 'For too long British taxpayers have watched their money vanish into a black hole. 'Their taxes keep going up, their bin collections keep getting less frequent, potholes remain unfixed, their local services keep getting cut. Reform won a historic victory on a mandate to change this. 'As promised, we have created a UK Doge to identify and cut wasteful spending of taxpayer money. Our team will use cutting-edge technology and deliver real value for voters.' The row over political advisers at Warwickshire county council threatens to undermine the party's promise to ruthlessly cut costs and save local taxpayers' cash. Mr Finch defended the plans, challenging councillors who opposed not to take advantage of the funding. Mr Finch took over Warwickshire county council temporarily after the previous council leader, also a member of Reform, resigned just weeks after being elected. On Tuesday he was voted in as the leader of Warwickshire County Council, which has £1.5bn of assets and a budget of around £500m.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Reform councillors criticised after voting to spend £150,000 on political advisers
Reform UK councillors have been accused of hypocrisy after voting to spend £150,000 on hiring political advisers at a county council despite pledging to cut waste and save money. The plans were put forward by Reform councillor George Finch, a 19-year-old who was narrowly elected as the leader of Warwickshire county council during a meeting on Tuesday, which was picketed by protesters. The protest came after a row over an attempt by Finch, as interim leader, to have a Pride flag removed from council headquarters before the end of Pride month. The chief executive refused the request, telling him she was responsible for such decisions. However, there was fresh controversy during a meeting of the council, one of several where Reform became the largest party in the recent local elections, as it narrowly pushed through plans to hire political advisers but lost a separate vote relating to the climate crisis. Opposition councillors accused Reform of reneging on promises to voters over the political advisers, who would be publicly funded for it and the other two largest parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. 'These proposals are all about spending some money so they can have a chum in their group and I think that is not particularly helpful given the financial state of this council,' said George Cowcher, councillor and deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. He added that it was almost a quarter of the way through the financial year and there had yet to be any proposals from Reform about managing the authority's budget. Sam Jones, a Green party councillor, said: 'Reform have had a sniff of power, they're making it so clear that they never cared a jot for the will of their supporters. No to overpaid, unelected bureaucrats before the election, but yes to up to £150,000 of unfunded spending on political assistants now the campaigning is over.' Finch defended the plans, which would involve a political assistant for each of the three big parties, on the basis that it was permitted by legislation and occurred in other councils. If other parties were against it, he challenged them to vote against the plan and then choose not to hire political assistants. His colleague, the councillor Michael Bannister, said the party saw the move as 'value for money' and funds would be found from elsewhere. However, there was a defeat for Reform when opposition MPs supported a green motion to recognise that scientific evidence clearly states climate change is happening, and support the council's 2019 vote to declare a 'climate emergency.' 'We are here as local people sorting out local problems. It is ridiculous to be asking for anything else,' said Reform councillor Luke Cooper, who said he had experience of installing solar panels and measures that he said people could not afford. Sarah Feeney, the Labour leader, said the climate crisis was a 'not a hypothetical' and was already having a major impact on farmers, with flooding causing elderly people to sometimes barricade themselves in their homes. Tracey Drew, a Green party councillor, said: 'The least well off in our county are going to be the first and the most to be impacted by the effects of climate change.' Outside the council meeting, demonstrators included Becky Davidson, a district councillor who said she was there to support the LGBT community. Finch was 'using a marginalised community as a propaganda tool', she said. Carolyn, a resident of Stratford-upon-Avon, was holding a placard reading: 'Donald Trump inspires Farage to import to the UK DEI: Division, Exclusion, Inequality'. She said she was worried about Reform overturning 'policies around recognising the climate emergency' and that she was there to object to Finch's 'pettiness' over the Pride flag.
Daily Mail
17-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Pay of top No10 advisers soars by almost £1million under Labour as Morgan McSweeney leads parade of Starmer advisers with six-figure pay
Sir Keir Starmer has added almost £1million to the bill for political advisers in No10 in a first year in which the government's popularity has fallen through the floor. The Prime Minister's top special advisers - known in Westminster as spads - are costing the taxpayer almost £4.2million a year, according to official figures released today. The Prime Minister's chief of staff Morgan McSweeney heads the list of the best paid Downing Street staff with pay of up to £159,999 - £15,000 more than his Tory predecessor. Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser who played a leading role in the 'surrender' of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, is the joint second highest-paid with a salary of up to £149,000. The Cabinet Office today released the salary bands of all spads in the government paid more than £76,000. They showed that despite talk of cutting the cost of the government, Labour has only shaved £400,000 off the total bill across all departments in the first year. The almost £4.2million spend by No10 alone in the past year is up from £3.3million under Rishi Sunak's last Tory administration. The average salary of a senior No10 aide is £107,434, higher than it was under Mr Sunak, and there are also more spads working for the current PM. One Tory source pointed to the row this week over Labour ministers struggling to define the average worker, adding: 'No wonder they can't define a working person - all of them are earning more than the average Joe.' The Government also forked out £3.1million in severance payments - largely for former Conservative special advisers who lost their jobs following the general election. But the figure is also likely to include a pay off for Sir Keir's ousted chief of staff, Sue Gray. She was entitled to five weeks' salary - around £16,000 before tax - after her departure from No10. She earned £170,000, more than the Prime Minister, but was axed after weeks of bitter briefings against her. No special adviser in the government now earns more than the PM's £167,000 salary. After the cost of severance is removed, the cost of spads in the year to March 31 2025 was £13.6million, down from £14million in the year previously.
Washington Post
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Within Pete Hegseth's divided inner circle, a ‘cold war' endures
An enduring rift among Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's cadre of senior advisers has divided the Pentagon's front office and fueled internal speculation about his long-term viability in the Cabinet post after several episodes that attracted White House scrutiny, according to numerous people familiar with the matter. The conflict within Hegseth's inner circle persists even after he purged several political appointees in April and attempts to portray a sense of unity among his remaining brain trust. His claims, however, are belied by continued behind-the-scenes dysfunction, brought on by unresolved personality conflicts, inexperience, vacancies in key leadership roles and a steady-state paranoia over what political crisis could emerge next, current and former officials said. They described the situation on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity and fear of retaliation.
