Reform suspends council chief in newest of sequence of blows to the occasion
Jo Monk, who previously led Worcestershire County Council, has been suspended for “refusing to accept the democratic decision of the Reform UK group”. Fellow councillors removed her as group leader last month, replacing her with former Conservative MP Alan Amos.
Council leader Jo Monk has been suspended(Image: BBC)
A former Reform UK council leader has been suspended in the latest of a series of blows to her party.
Jo Monk, who previously led Worcestershire County Council, has been suspended for “refusing to accept the democratic decision of the Reform UK group”. Fellow councillors removed her as group leader last month, replacing her with former Conservative MP Alan Amos. The move comes as doubts remain about the future of Reform councillors probed by the Mirror.
Yesterday, we reported that Stuart Prior had been expelled from the party following our investigation into online posts with the anti-racism organisation Hope Not Hate. He was elected to Essex County Council, giving Nigel Farage’s party a majority on the authority. He also gained a seat on Rochford District Council; he resigned from both.
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Monk’s son and fellow councillor, Ashley, has also been suspended for reportedly bringing the party into disrepute. Ms Monk told the BBC she would not comment until Thursday’s council meeting.
When Jo Monk lost a vote among the party’s councillors in April, her successor said he wanted to “be the first to thank Jo Monk for the hard work she’s done,” adding that they had “inherited a mess from the Conservatives”.
A row erupted after the election, with Ashley Monk criticising the decision and the new leader on social media.
The ex-leader’s time in office was marred by controversy: council tax rose 9%, and the authority required £59.9m in emergency government help to avoid effective bankruptcy. She is still formally the leader of the county council itself, despite being removed as group leader.
Meanwhile, doubts remain about the future of several Reform councillors who were investigated by the Mirror prior to the local elections.
Daniel Devaney topped the poll in his Bradford ward despite apologising for a post in which he said that he would “blast [Muslims] off the face of the earth,” describing them as ‘pure scum’.
He was voted in as a councillor. Ousted Bradford Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said she found some of the comments prior to the election “absolutely abhorrent” and stated that every major political party needed to call them out.
“People like that should not be running a city like Bradford where we get on. That is not Bradford. Bradford is a place where we get on, work together, play together. That kind of divisive rhetoric, divisive language is really dangerous and really unwelcome in a place like Bradford.”
Devaney apologised for his Tweets when the Mirror confronted him. Stuart Prior stood for Reform UK despite calls to “drop” him as a candidate ahead of Thursday’s elections.
Hope Not Hate (HNH) claimed Prior deleted an X account named @essexpriory that had tweeted “Muslims are dirt” and “Muslims are awful, globally”. He was accused of posting that genocide could not be committed against them. Prior told the Mirror: “That’s not what I would have put down,” and “this isn’t me”. He won the Essex County Council division of Rayleigh West with a majority of 796 votes, taking the seat from the Liberal Democrats. He also won Sweyne Park and the Grange on Rochford. Farage’s party won all 13 seats up for grabs on the district council; no one party now has overall control there. A by-election is likely to be held for both seats. Last month, Farage was asked if all of Reform’s candidates in the county had been vetted. “I know that our candidates will be held to a higher standard than any of the other parties,” he said. “That’s because we are the challengers. We are the ones taking on the establishment. Yet we have done a good, thorough professional job”. Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate, accused Reform of “a systematic failure in the party’s vetting.” When we confronted the 54-year-old at his home in an Essex village with our dossier of evidence, he denied being a racist. On his tweet about the “master race,” Prior claimed, “I don’t recall that at all, blimey.” And in reference to his comment about Black people’s brains, he said: “Goodness me, that is not me, 100% not.” Meanwhile, in November he suggested white people had bigger brains than Black people. A user shared pictures of white athletes on the floor next to their standing Black counterparts, writing: “But how did they manage to colonize us?” In response, Prior wrote: “Larger brains. Google which race has the smallest brain…. Then, once you have that answer, Google whether brain size dictates intelligence in humans.”
The same month, Prior declared: “There cannot be a genocide against Muslims. It’s only ever self-defence against those rats.” Reacting to a video of a Black man apparently being disruptive on a Tube train in October, Prior used a racial slur.
In response to a tweet referencing the Huntingdon knife attack, Prior wrote in November: “If this was caused by another third world invader, then this country needs a purge.” When we read him a tweet in which he had referred to immigrants as a cancer, Prior said: “This looks likely something that’s been kind of created against me.”
