BRIAN READE: ‘Lies and hypocrisy of the welfare slashers is simply taking the PIP’

Robert Jenrick spent last summer stuck up lampposts on a step ladder, with flags of St George in his hand attempting to “restore pride in our country”.

He’d shed a few stone, squeezed into a Tommy Robinson polo shirt and set his sights on his party’s leadership by fuelling anti-immigrant rhetoric.

But the Tories just yawned. So he joined Reform and set his sights on their leadership by positioning himself even further to the right and spewing out even bigger dollops of hate and deceit.

He’s had the opportunity to do a lot of that this summer as Nigel Farage quivers behind a Chesterfield couch in one of his many homes, avoiding media questions about his bulging bank accounts.

This week Jenrick proudly announced a plan to slash £50billion off the welfare bill. Obviously not by reforming the pension triple-lock because most Reform groupies receive it, but by stopping benefits to all foreign nationals. Even though most of them work and settled here from the EU, meaning a million Brits living in Europe would then be stripped of benefits and we’d need a new Brexit treaty.

And even if such a xenophobic wet dream played out, Jenrick would still be tens of billions shy of his magical target.

However, the small print on the back of his fag packet showed £22billion of cuts will come from slashing Personal Independence Payments (PIP). Exactly how Jenrick sells that policy in Newark with twice as many PIP claimants as his majority, or Richard Tice promotes it in Skegness which has five times as many PIP claimants as his majority, is a mystery.

And how convenient for Nigel Farage that this fantasy welfare slashing was announced days after polls closed in Clacton, one of our most welfare dependent towns, where more than 10,000 voters claim PIP. Jenrick also pledged to force long-term benefits claimants to do 20 hours of community work or lose all welfare support, which led Farage to proclaim that Reform were ending “something for nothing” Britain. This from a man who thinks it’s OK to accept £5million gifts for doing nothing, and draw a £98,599 MP salary to devote little of what’s left of his time to Clacton after doing his many other jobs.

I’m not sure what is most offensive about the wealthy, cynical clique that runs Reform: their lies, hypocrisy or cowardice. From claiming they’ll make the Navy tow boats back to France, use the Army to magic up prisons, and this unworkable butchering of welfare, they know they’re spinning whoppers that bear no relation to reality.

But they also know as long as they headline every policy by punching down on foreigners, they’ll seduce enough fools to believe them.

Actually it’s the cowardice that’s most offensive. A week after Farage chickened out of the Clacton by-election count for fear of ridicule, Reform suspended probably its most principled campaigner Tim Montgomerie for daring to question the ethics of its leadership.

A suspension handed down by charlatans who defiantly brand themselves the party of free speech.

Around the same time that Jenrick was on flag-hanging duty last summer, Farage labelled him a “fraud”.

Thinking about it, that’s probably what clinched his application to join the most fraudulent operation outside of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.