On Sunday, 4th May, BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg was joined by Reform UK’s Chairman Zia Yusuf to discuss the party’s recent success, along with the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and Labour’s health secretary, Wes Streeting.
While interviewing Zia, Laura wasted no time trying to get some firm answers on how Reform planned to enforce many of the promises they’d made. Asking about the party’s plans to resist migrants from staying in the places where they hold office, Laura asked: “Can you do that when migrants get sent to go and live in hotels because of contracts between the Home Office and three big providers? So, how were you actually going to do that, because again, we’ve checked this, the break clauses for these contracts are not till 2029, so aren’t you promising something you can’t deliver?”
Laura pointed out she didn’t think Reform could deliver some of their promises (Image: BBC)
Teasing that Reform will resort to using legal power, Zia replied: “We’ll use every instrument of power available to us to stop it and there are things you can do. There are judicial reviews, there are injunctions, there are a lot of different things that we can do. There are instruments of power available to us.
“There’s planning laws, you know a lot of these hotels where they have been sent, 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 a number of regulations and that’s what our teams avoids are exploring at the moment and we can look at budgets.”
It comes after Nigel Farage’s party also made inroads against both Labour and the Conservatives across England in local elections. Reform also gained its first mayor in Greater Lincolnshire.
The Prime Minister has come under intense pressure after Nigel Farage’s Reform UK turfed Labour out of the formerly safe Labour seat of Runcorn and Helsby.
Reform also scooped two mayoralties and secured 677 council seats as Labour and the Tories crumbled.
Labour MPs have warned Sir Keir that the party was heading for oblivion if he did not regain the “trust of the people”
