Reform councillors admit they don’t know what they’re doing

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Do you remember being told that you could find out what sort of national government reform would provide by watching how well they did in in councils? I could not agree more. It's not often I agree with that outfit, but I think they're absolutely right. You got to watch very closely what they're doing in councils to get an idea of what they might be like at the national level. And here is a little clip from Kirkley's council meeting on the 20th of May featuring two of their newly elected counselors. Um, and then at the end of the clip, you'll hear councelor Tanisha Bramwell, who is uh one of the Kirkley's independents. But the two voices you'll hear first belong to newly elected reform counselors Sarah Wood and Robert Butler. And trust me, this is very special.

[00:00:39]>> I don't understand the Constitution. I have not had sufficient time to read that as yet. I don't understand what standing elders are, what they're made up of, nor do I understand what an amendment is. There is a possibility that we might vote for something that we don't understand at the moment. And whereas ignorance is not a defense, risk should be mitigated.

[00:01:01]>> I genuinely don't understand all the standing orders. I know you may be specifically talking about one specific thing, but frankly, our ignorance as new counselors, right, this is I do not believe this is in any way democratic because we are being maneuvered by with a with a game play that we we don't know the rules. Even if you were to slow down and describe it properly, you would be describing to us the course of action that councelor Balt and maybe others do wish to take. We don't understand the constitution. We don't understand the standing orders. We understand that just because we don't understand it that it may not be constitutional. But we are at a disadvantage and we do not necessarily know what we are voting for and therefore this we consider not to be a democratic process. We are willing and able to take the time to understand those things. But it is unreasonable for a chamber not to allow 43 new counselors to understand the rules of the game.

[00:02:08]If you wish to proceed, then we can't stop you. But do know that this will be seen by the Kirkley's constituents and we will make sure that it is understood by the Kirkley's constituents that we were not able to engage democratic democratically. I think it's absolutely unfair for any counselor. I've been elected, newly elected, however, I was in the council 18 months ago. If when you are elected, you have to prioritize educating yourself on how to be the best counselor and representative for your area. That's on you to call that I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but to call that unconstitutional is absolutely incorrect and it's not right. And we will also make sure that our residents are absolutely aware of who has competence in this chamber and I mean, I I I'm quite my mouth stopped working. I quite I I pay quite close attention to this stuff and they keep coming. That's literally an argument. It's as if it Twitter's in human form. I don't understand anything. So, you should all be banned from doing any counseling. We got to shut down the council cuz me and my colleagues don't understand anything.

[00:03:17]And when she said out loud, even if you explained it really slowly, we still wouldn't understand it. So, I used to have this catchphrase during Brexit, right? I'd say I can explain it to you.

[00:03:27]I can't understand it for you. That catchphrase just came to life in Kirk Le. That catchphrase has now assumed human form. I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. Tanisha Bramwell, who you heard at the end, just dropping some very simple truths, will be joining Ben Kentish, who is standing in for Lewis Goodall on Sunday morning.

[00:03:45]More joy from K. That's it. That's what happens when you elect Nigel Farage fans. um they start complaining about the fact that they don't understand anything and therefore everybody else should be prevented from doing their elected duties.

[00:04:01]>> Councelor Tanisha Bramwell is the independent counselor for Jewsbury West who um made those comments at that council meeting. Great to have you on program. Thanks for coming on. You heard um Robert Generick or you might have heard Robert Gri a few minutes ago responding to my question about the incident involving you and some of his colleagues. This was what he had to say.

[00:04:21]I understand the game that the media wants to play. You want to criticize reform, but it's clearly not working.

[00:04:26]>> I don't want to criticize. It's clearly not working with the general.

[00:04:30]>> It's clearly not working with the public because the public are voting for reform. They did at the local election.

[00:04:34]>> Doesn't mean we shouldn't hold you accountable.

[00:04:36]>> They see local they see reform in local government. They want more of it.

[00:04:39]>> That doesn't mean >> So his response was, you know, they haven't had long. Uh it takes a while for people to get up to speed. These are normal people who aren't sort of professional politicians. Give them a bit longer. What's your sort of assessment of what happened? Because you're you're quite irate if I may say so in that video. You're not you're not impressed with some of the reform members of your council.

[00:04:57]>> It wasn't I wasn't supposed to be that way, I assure you. Um what people don't know is if they haven't watched the the the full meeting is my response was um I I was responding to councelor Wood who said we will ensure that residents will know exactly what's happened today in this chamber and it was her opinion and she was stating it as a fact. So that was my fear to to have that narrative uh push put out there about myself and my colleagues. But um in terms of the reformed counselors, there are a lot of new reformed counselors. There are a lot of new counselors, point blank, and they do deserve that breathing space to to get to know the role a little bit better. But those counselors are not attempting to lead the cabinet or the chair of overview and scrutiny and they're not attempting to lead the council as the leader or the deputy leader. So it's okay in one breath to say, "Okay, we need time." But then in the number of say we don't need time and we should have these seats. It completely contradicts and it doesn't make any sense.

[00:05:49]>> Would would you were you surprised that having stepped forward saying right make me council leader. Um she and her her proposed deputy hadn't appeared to have read any of the rules of the council that they seek to lead.

[00:06:01]>> I was I was surprised because councelor Wood is not new to politics. Uh some people don't know this. She actually stood as as a parliamentary seat in 2019. So her saying that she's new to the council role is absolutely true. but no into politics, that's not true, you know. So for someone that's been seeking a political role for some time, you would get to know the basics. Um so for her to stand up and say that blatantly in a meeting and say, "We don't know which way we're voting. We don't know this. We don't know that." Those are questions that should have been posed to the legal officer prior to the meeting and not during the meeting. So do a lot of confusion.

[00:06:31]>> Do you see it as sort of representative of of a wider issue or would that be unfair?

[00:06:36]Um, I couldn't comment because I've not looked into it to have an opinion on that, but well, I can only comment on what I've seen so far, you know, in our council. Um, and some of the the feedback that we've had from a lot of people that have voted reform is give them a chance. Are you willing to work with them? We've made it very clear we will not be supporting independents, will not be supporting a reform council.

[00:06:53]We wouldn't support any party or non-political party that would stand up and say, "We don't understand how the council runs and want to run it." That's point blank. We wouldn't support that.

[00:07:02]But we would work with anyone and we'll communicate with anyone to bring a positive solution for our residents. And I think people need to differentiate that. We will communicate and work with, but we wouldn't vote for those people to lead based on their lack of knowledge at the time.

[00:07:16]>> How long did it take you to get up to speed on these things when you were a counselor? Because, you know, reading the rules seems like a fairly basic thing to do if you if I was elected as a counselor.

[00:07:25]>> Um, you know, I can't lie. Even someone like myself, I'm very very interested in politics. It did take me some time to understand and the constitution can change and vary and and we've got to take it upon oursel to make sure that we're reading up on that. However, I attended council meetings and I scrutinized and I attended cabinet meetings two year prior to being elected or even standing for a seat because it interested me. I run a charity in my other hat. So, I wanted to know why is it that I'm doing the ground work? Where are these mistakes failing? So, I educated myself on that a long time prior. Obviously, some people just didn't have the time to do that or or they're not they're not in that scenario to do that, which again, >> you think they didn't have the time or do you worry that some of these the reform counselors that we're talking about perhaps, you know, give the impression that they weren't taking their responsibilities as seriously as you do?

[00:08:07]>> No, I absolutely agree. I think they did have the time in this instance, especially because a lot of counselors have we have a oneweek induction with Kirkley's Council and those officers are fantastic. when I needed to learn and I needed to make sure that I would kept up to speed. I asked those questions to those officers and they pointed me in the right direction as I'm sure they would any new counselor. So they did have the induction. They did have two week to read up on it. We did receive a pack of the day that we all won including the AGM agenda and what that means and what that what that process looks like. So they they did have that time. I have some sympathy with her because you she's new to the job and I was thinking when you start a new job it takes about three months before you feel comfortable with your legs under the desk and but maybe she should have learned a little bit about local government before standing.

[00:08:52]>> Well, I actually I have a lot of sympathy. I'm I you know I cut my teeth covering local government back in the day and it's uh you know these things are not easy. This is you know this is the issue of insurgency parties actually you know because if you have an insurgency party you are essentially electing a lot of people who have no history work you know working in these councils no knowledge of them nothing at all and then and they're coming in with people who don't have that that knowledge and history because you know with the the old parties you would have kind of turnovers of counselors but there have been there people who' have been there for years who could taken them under their wing and shown them through >> and and so you know the really worrying aspect of this is that you know the next general election in parliament uh we're we're looking at similar insurgency you know situations and we're going to get you know schools and schools maybe hundreds of MPs from parties with no real history or understanding uh going into parliament and having exactly the same problem.

[00:10:03]>> Although there's a counterargument of sorts, isn't there, that you're going to end up potentially with more real people than career politicians. Um, we've had journalists, uh, George Osborne, journalists serving as chancellor of the excheer. I'm a journalist. I can barely I can barely add up.

[00:10:24]We accepted him. No one is prime minister until they're prime minister.

[00:10:28]and you can't you know you you can't train for that job per se but I can equally see that in any other world in any other career if if you applied for a job and you didn't understand the very basics the fundamentals of what that job required you wouldn't last very long yeah but to be fair of people like George Osborne or you know David Cameron or even Tony Blair back in the day when they became MPs they joined people who had been MPs for in some cases is decades and certainly years who knew the ropes who understood the inner workings there's a lot of training that goes on in fact one of the problems with the stama one of the many many problems with the stama government is that there were a whole lot of new MPs in 24 who were just immediately given ministerial jobs and hadn't had that either and that you know but it's um you know as I say this is a problem with uh insert you know it's all very well to talk about draining the swamp swamp and bringing in fresh blood and bringing in real people.

[00:11:31]If you don't have people who know the system, who know who have been there, who understand the rules, who understand the intricacies of these things because councils and parliament, you know, these democratic bodies are complex things. I I I I I I I know that to be true, but you know that that there's this lazy uh lazy phrase, the blob for the civil service and Farage has made no secret of his desire to sort of smash the blob.

[00:11:58]He's not the first to say it. Do you think he'll get very far?

[00:12:01]>> No, I don't. For exactly that reason.

[00:12:04]And if you know, if Farage succeeds, I I personally don't think he will. I think it's all overrated, but that's a different conversation. But uh but if he succeeds, he's going to have all these MPs who are just like those poor counselors in Kirk Le got a clue what they're doing. And he's going to need people who actually know what they're doing. Which means just like governments before, he's going to have to have experienced civil servants who actually understand what is going on.