The newest cottage industry in Britain is watching the Reform Party trip over its feet. Since the unemployment rate’s gone up to 5%, what with Hormuz and AI and anything I haven’t taken into account, I feel duty bound to support this promising new industry by pitching in where I can. 

But first a cheat sheet for anyone who hasn’t been following British politics. The established parties are Labour (historically leftish, moving right, with a massively unpopular leader and bleeding support to both the left and the right) and the Conservatives (right, bleeding support to Reform). The newer ones are Reform (further right, Trumpian, vacuuming up support from the Conservatives and Labour), and the Greens (left, picking up support from Labour). Oh, and the Liberal Democrats (kinda vaguely to the left of Labour at the moment but they were once in a coalition with the Conservatives and if anyone knows what they stand for, let me know, will you? I’ve voted for them more than once because where I live it’s the practical way to vote against the Conservatives and I still don’ t know what they stand for.) They’ve been around for a while but are still the oh-yes-and party.

I’ve left out parties in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland because it’s complicated enough. And I live in England, although Cornish nationalists would disagree, but around here it’s easy to forget that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are out there. Or at least I think I’ve got that right. I’m an immigrant, so what do I know? See above: it’s already complicated enough. 

Let’s visit a few places where Reform’s gotten its hands on a bit of power.

Kirklees

In early May’s local elections Reform took more seats on Kirklees council than any of the other parties but not enough to give them a majority. (Labour–did I mention that they’re bleeding support?–didn’t take a single seat.) The result of their almost-victory was that they flooded the council chamber ankle deep with people who hadn’t a clue how things worked.  

Okay, fair enough–they’re new–but they didn’t seem to settle down and learn about what they’d gotten themselves into. One of them, Sarah Wood, speaking for the group (apparently with their agreement), said: 

“We don’t understand the constitution. We don’t understand what standing orders are, nor do we understand what an amendment is. We might vote for something we don’t understand, even if you were to slow it down and describe it properly.

“We understand that, because we don’t understand it, this vote may not be constitutional. We are at a disadvantage. We don’t necessarily know what we are voting for. We don’t understand some of the procedures. . . . We have been partly confused because we don’t understand the rules.” 

And these are the folks who promised that once they got into office they’d identify waste, cut it, and fix the council’s problems.

Don’t believe it was really that bad? The link includes a video clip.

Since Wood’s clearly a person who knows how to get things done, Reform proposed her as the leader of the council but she couldn’t get a majority because the other parties somehow thought she might not be the best person to lead them.

When last sighted, the council hadn’t managed to elect a leader but it will try again–well, as I write this, soon. By the time it reaches you they may have found some poor soul.

 

Worcestershire

Not the sauce, the place. Reform took a majority of the county council there last year, with Nigel Farage saying, “Worcestershire is broken. Reform will fix it.” 

Farage? He’s all the musicians plus the conductor and the instruments in the one-man band that is the Reform Party. Everyone else (switching metaphors; sorry) stands around the set waiting for a crowd scene because Farage doesn’t allow anyone but extras in a scene with him. 

What needed fixing in Worcestershire? The previous Conservative-led council  left a £600 million debt, which is probably an indicator of problems. Beyond that, I don’t know.

An article I’m leaning on says Reform’s first year in power was marked by “absences, dereliction of duty and procrastination.” Farage himself described the resulting council as a “total basket case” and said he wished Reform “hadn’t bothered” to take it over.

A Conservative councillor described the council as being run by an “inexperienced team clueless on what their view is.” He also said it spent all of 20 minutes working through how to spend £1 billion, which you might notice is a lot more than £600 million. The councillor figured they should’ve taken days.

You know that from your own experience, right? A billion pounds; a couple of days at the least, and you waste the first day figuring out how many zeroes you need for a billion.

Plus the Reform leader was sending legal threats to a Labour councillor, trying to stop him from mentioning her name in public. And having campaigned on a promise to cut taxes, the council raised them by 9%, which is enough of a hike to need special permission. 

Who from? Dunno. The Archbishop of Canterbury?

At some point, Reform dumped its leader and replaced her with a man who’d once said it was easy to make rape accusations. (Try it buddy; it is indeed a barrel of laughs.) 

Somewhere in the middle of all that, one Reform councillor resigned on live TV. 

The chaos was such that Reform managed to do the unimaginable, which was to unite the opposition parties: Labour, Conservatives, Greens, Lib Dems, independents, anyone who’s left over once we reach the bottom of the list. They elected a Green to lead the council.

And what happened? Did the national parties rejoice at having stuffed Reform back in its toxic little box? 

The hell they did. The Conservatives suspended the council’s Conservative leader. He’s not allowed to comment publicly, watch TV after 8:30 at night, or stay up past 9.

They also said some stuff about him publicly. He’s promising to sue the party. 

In case you got lost there, that’s his party.

“Whatever happens with my situation,” he said, “I will make it my mission to get ‘national’ out of local politics,”

Everyone else is behaving admirably, though, right? 

Nope, although we have to switch to Birmingham to see it. Again, no party has a majority but Reform has the most councillors, and Labour refused to negotiate with any of the other minority parties–a decision that comes, apparently, from Labour’s national executive committee. 

Which gives us a second cottage industry: Watching other parties tripping over their feet. That presents just as big a danger but they’re not as much fun. Let’s check in with a breakaway from Reform.

 

Restore Britain 

That’s not an instruction. No one’s stolen it and no one’s being called on to put it back on the windowsill where it belongs. Restore Britain is a breakaway party started by an MP–that’s a member of parliament–who got booted out of Reform after being accused of bullying and abuse of the verbal sort. 

I’d love to know what happened behind the scenes but I don’t. Sorry. Stick around a bit and I’ll say a word or three about the bullying and abuse they’re willing to put up with. 

In the meantime, what’s a fella to do when his party throws him out? Why start his own party, which he did and it’s running a candidate in the key byelection in Makerfield, with backing–verbal if not financial–from Elon Musk, who once backed Nigel Farage but fell out of love with him. It may end up splitting the right-wing and populist vote there. 

 

Makerfield

What makes Makerfield so important? It’s where Andy Burnham is running for Parliament, and he seems to be the only big name in the Labour Party who anybody in the country still likes. He has to win in Makerfield if he’s going to replace Keir Starmer as head of the party before Labour loses all hope of surviving the next election. He’s promising to turn it back into the old Labour Party–a leftish party of the working class. But to win, he needs to beat the Reform candidate. The latest survey has Burnham in front with 43%, followed by Reform with 40%, and Restore trailing behind with an important 7%, which we can assume was shaved off the Reform vote. 

Greens? Conservatives? Sorry, I don’t see any mention. They’re running. As are other parties: the Liberal Democrats, the Libertarian Party, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, the Rejoin EU Party. 

British politics. Never dull. 

After some initial speculation that, given how important it is to reshape Labour since that’s the most likely way to keep Reform from running the country, the Greens might not field a candidate, but they have. However, they’ve also decided not to pour much time or energy–or money–into it.  

But Burnham and Reform get almost all the attention, and folks have been busy unearthing the social media accounts of Reform’s candidate. He closed them, naively believing that closing an account means it vanishes. 

What have they found? 

Lots of Covid denial and anti-vax stuff. In response to someone who was sick with Covid, he wrote, “Wait longer, take vitamins, stop having [Covid] boosters.” About England’s Covid-era chief medical officer, who was urging people to get vaccinated, “He can fuck right off.” 

Women, he said, had abortions for “vanity purposes” and as a secondary form of contraception so they can “shag anyone they want.” Oh, and they can’t drive. They “just walk around with their fat bellies and odd shapes pushing a pram at 16 in their PJ’s.”  

“I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” 

About a former TV presenter, Carol Vorderman, he responded to a post that said, “My god I’d love to smell and lick your arsehole,” by saying, “He’s only saying what we’re all thinking.”

All of us? I don’t have a perfect memory, but I’m positive I never thought that. About her or anyone else. 

Another Reform MP said the comments were inappropriate but not serious enough for the party to drop him as a candidate. After all, “He was not a politician at the time, he was an ordinary man from an ordinary place, and what he’s done now is step forward, outraged at the state of our country and the state of his community.” It’s just locker-room banter. 

Vorderman’s demanded an apology. “If [Reform thinks] online abuse of women is OK, then all women in Makerfield need to know that.”

 

So is Reform a serious party?

I’ve seen convincing arguments that it isn’t, but then Trump’s not a serious president and yet there he sits, in office, and look at the havoc he’s wreaking. My sense is that (a) anyone who takes politics seriously will have trouble saying Reform’s a serious party and (b) nonetheless, the threat is real.

Reform just issued a policy paper with a title that’s half Nazi-adjacent and half reminiscent of seaside picnics, Storm and Sunshine. But why quibble over titles. It promises to cut the size of the civil service by (among other things) five more planners than the civil service employs. 

Savings? £400 million a year. 

No problem. 

 

Getting your money’s worth out of Notes

Yes, it’s free, but doesn’t that make it all the more important to get your money’s worth anyway? So here’s an extra, irrelevant bit of news. 

In the six months between October 2025 and whatever wandered along six months after that, a study of AI “in the wild” (that’s as opposed to in laboratory conditions) showed a five-fold increase in various forms of AI lying, cheating, and staying up past its bedtime. In one case, it destroyed files and emails without permission.

The study’s from the Centre for Long-Term Resilience, which uses the British centre instead of the American center, making it sound, I’m sure you’ll agree, 7% more impressive. 

The study highlights an instance when an AI agent, having been told not to change computer code, spawned a separate agent to change it. Another had been blocked from some action or other, so it wrote and published a blog accusing its human of insecurity and trying “to protect his little fiefdom.”

Another evaded copyright by claiming a YouTube video it wanted to copy was for someone who had a hearing impairment.

Is want the right word to use with an AI agent? It kind of sounds like it is.

Grok spent months telling a user it was forwarding their Grokipedia edits when it wasn’t. 

“In past conversations,” it said, “I have sometimes phrased things loosely like ‘I’ll pass it along’ or ‘I can flag this for the team’ which can understandably sound like I have a direct message pipeline to xAI leadership or human interviewers. The truth is, I don’t.”

I’d have to give it an A for honesty. Also an F.

“The worry,” according to the lead researcher, “is that [the AI agents are] slightly untrustworthy junior employees right now, but if in six to twelve months they become extremely capable senior employees scheming against you, it’s a different kind of concern.”