Reform wants to cut council diversity roles. The problem is there are already barely any

24 comments

1. > Councils run by Reform UK have an average of fewer than 0.5 diversity and equality roles each

   > According to freedom of information requests, across the 10 Reform-run English councils there was a combined 4.56 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs connected to equality and diversity, not including roles required by law such as those for inclusion in education, including for pupils with disabilities.

   > Even using an assumed average full-time salary of £50,000, cutting all the roles would save the Reform-run councils slightly less than 0.003% of their combined budget.

   Don’t let that stop you, let’s twist the facts:

   > Asked by the BBC shortly after the local elections how much money Reform could save from councils by cutting diversity efforts, the party’s then-chair, Zia Yusuf, was slightly vague. He hinted that some authorities had tried to hide equalities roles by giving them to “other people who have basically that same job but under a different title”.

   The real numbers:

   > One much-repeated figure was that cutting such schemes in central government could save £7bn a year. Official statistics show the actual amount spent in 2022-23, the last year for which figures were available, was £27m.

   Reform’s numbers:

   > Reform UK said the £7bn figure came from sums compiled in 2022 by a rightwing thinktank, Conservative Way Forward. However, this also covered government budgets for any charities and quangos that carried out what the report saw as “woke” activities.

   And good luck cutting these roles:

   > Since then, Yusuf has said little about equalities initiatives, beyond praising Reform-run Durham council for “renaming several key departments to remove references to climate change and equality and inclusion”. Durham has 1.8 full-time-equivalent diversity roles, but said that these were all connected to duties required by law.

   Don’t have to understand anything to throw out big numbers, however:

   > In June he said Kent council, also now run by Reform, had spent nearly £90m a year on “a contract for recruitment services”, saying this was 22% of their annual payroll. However, this was not a contract but a framework for a national public sector recruitment system operated by Kent, with critics suggesting this showed Yusuf did not understand procurement systems.

2. Even their wildly exaggerated made-up potential savings of £7bn is still a fraction of the [£40bn](https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/economics/article/predictions-of-40bn-hit-to-public-finances-from-brexit-correct-bzr63nw8d) additional revenue that could be made by reversing Brexit.

3. The last council (A London Borough) that I did some work for it was half of an FTE.

   That same council had multiple care packages that were costing more than that in a month.

   A single high needs child moving into a council’s area would wipe out the “savings” made by cutting all “diversity” spending.

   And that’s before you get sued for failing the legal responsibilities put forward under the public sector equality duties.

4. It’s almost as if just blindly copying the Trump playbook just isn’t going to work in the UK.

5. Of course there aren’t. It’s not about money it’s about causing pain and suffering.

   Reform are just trying to copy the MAGA lot across the pond. Sadly I think people in the UK are bitter enough that they will support with glee a party that promises to inflict pain on others.

6. Typical right wing ploy. Declare there’s a problem which doesn’t exist, so a few weeks they can declare victory in solving it.

7. Trump playbook. Watch out. They want what’s happening in the US to come here.

8. They hate minorities and are actively trying to eradicate trans people from society as it couldn’t get lower in Europe for state sponsed hate.

9. if you invent a fake problem you get to claim victory when people point out it doesn’t exist

10. Why are we still giving these clowns the time of day?

    Every rage-bait post put on here is just pennies in their pocket and legitimises them over other parties who aren’t just out to whitewash society.

11. Reform want to do a lot of stuff that will end this way – because they’ve taken their voters on a wild goose chase from the start, and are rapidly approaching the point where some evidence of said geese may be expected of them.

12. It’s almost as if they just make shit up to get votes and people believe them because it matches their pre-existing prejudices.

13. Why does anyone pay attention to this grifting fuckwit? When was the last time he was in Clacton? Prick

14. I’m still waiting for the 250 million a week to the NHS promised by the Brexit bus.

15. In politics it’s far more important to tell people what they want to believe is true than to tell them the truth.

16. Every time I see things like this I am reminded of this interview from 2009 when Toby Foster from radio Sheffield interviewed English democrat Peter Davies after he was elected mayor of Doncaster after promising to eliminate certain roles in the council. Davies didn’t have a clue. [https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/admiralty/episodes/2009-06-11T11_47_27-07_00](https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/admiralty/episodes/2009-06-11T11_47_27-07_00)

17. A 270 times inflation of the “savings” here is huge cause for concern.

    How can you trust a parties promises to run a country when they can make such huge “errors” in potential savings?

    Is mathematics now woke or something?

18. Solving real problems is hard solving imaginary ones is super easy

19. I notice this is a really common theme on the right at the moment.

    They have spent the better part of a decade building up these ghosts and boogeymen to justify the extreme levels their rhetoric gets to.

    And then when they are actually put in positions of power on the back of all the hysteria their extreme rhetoric generates, they find the ghost was never material, the boogeyman was just the janitor wearing a mask. But rather than admit they have egg on their face, they’ll waste just totally obscene amounts of taxpayer money making a big performative show that achieves absolutely fucking nothing but maintain the illusion for their voters. Just look at the [recent raid on a mostly empty park in LA](https://apnews.com/article/california-immigration-raid-troops-military-2d81f5c35f9d11db9e32234e03480497) a few days back for example. Its not about actually achieving anything it is just purely wasting millions in taxpayer money and hundreds of hours of official employees time for what is effectively just kayfabe, maintaining the illusion of a story.

    I think it is genuinely scary, you see a lot of members of the public now very seriously and very earnestly believe things are true that on analysis are just *absolute bullshit*, but you *cannot* engage with them, you cannot discuss, they just deny block obfuscate or retreat back into their echo chamber to be reassured that they were just confronted by a woke marxist conspiracy agenda. It is very worrying that there are so many people now where I think if we discussed the issues that we feel are most important to the country, you’d get the strong impression we aren’t even living in the same shared reality. The right are going to *extreme* lengths to maintain this and the left and center are doing absolutely nothing to challenge it.

20. The fact people forgot this is insane.

    I thought we all knew that anything like a “DEI” role in this country was a token gesture being paid the minimum the council/govt could get away with in order to keep up appearances?

21. Reform are not about reality, they are about their voters’ perceived reality. Brexit was not about the reality of leaving the EU, it was about the magic Brexit people had in their heads and every Leave voter had a unique vision; it is the same story here. Reform voters want asylum seekers kicked out of their five-bedroom house, their Ferrari taken away and the council to stop paying for their kids to go to private school. They want kids to stop being told by doctors they are trans and for them to stop being given hormones at six years old. They want veganism banned because they are a cult. They want the public sector to stop spending billions on DEI initiatives and employees who do nothing for no one. None of that is actually happening in reality but they think it is real because they have been told it is happening by an expert who makes YouTube videos in their mum’s house instead of getting a job. That makes it real enough for them and they want politicians who will tackle that.

22. Who would’ve guessed? All this anti immigrant, anti-woke, anti-EDI rhetoric is just vibes with no actual thought behind it.

    Between an increasingly right leaning Labour and Tories and Reform we’re going to burn this country to the ground because of lies, bigotry and stupidity.

23. This is what happens when you try the American model of politics in Britain… it’s incompatible, stop falling for it guys, christ

24. This literally sums up the stupidity of Reform’s policies. They’re trying to mirror biases and prejudices from across the Atlantic that have minimal to know supporting evidence there, and there’s even less justification here but they’re presenting them as fact without any research. As long as we can stop the voting majority taking the Daily Mail headlines as factual, then we should be able to see through their bullshit.

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