Reform’s party chair, Zia Yusuf, has announced a change in direction, saying that the contract with the people should now be considered “more as the philosophy of what the party wants to achieve rather than policy details.”
So much for being a ‘man of the people’ and Reform UK being an ‘anti-establishment’ party, for Reform has decided to scrap its ‘contract with the people’ just two months after the election.
The ‘contract with the people’ was supposed to differentiate Reform from other mainstream parties, unlike a manifesto, which Reform said was full of lies. Reform, we were told, would honour their promises.
Yet just weeks after the election, Reform’s party chair, Zia Yusuf, has announced a change in direction, saying that the contract with the people should now be considered “more as the philosophy of what the party wants to achieve rather than policy details.”
At the time of its launch, the ‘contract with the people’ was slammed as “Liz Truss economics on steroids”, after it promised £140bn in tax cuts including raising the threshold of income tax to £20,000, claiming it could find £156bn in spending cuts.
The IFS at the time rubbished Reform’s maths behind their spending pledges, saying that the sums simply did not add up.
Addressing the problematic spending plans, Yusuf said: “They don’t add up on the basis that you implement everything in there on day one for arriving in Downing Street. That’s fair. But that was never going to be the plan.”
It comes as the Reform chair admitted that the party was looking to learn from far-right, xenophobic parties such as ‘Germany’s AfD and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally’ on how to ‘boost its vote’.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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