What will Kim do now?

Reform now controls South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland, having got about a third of votes cast but that is what first past the post does – just like Starmer’s wretched Labour in 2024. Given that Durham was already in the hands of Reform that means that a majority of the committee’s elected members from the ranks of the set of clowns who typify Reform. There is a Business Rep from the North East Chamber of Trade and a Community and Voluntary Sector Rep who worked for Goldmann Sachs in his past – the Vampire Squid itself – truly just the man to speak for North East communities. Kim will have to give Cabinet roles including chairing key function committees to these loons.  Probably just as well that the Authority has limited powers but watch out for a roll back on any confrontation with climate crisis. Of course Labour deserved to lose control of these councils but the Greens who have nothing to offer working class communities but an insistence on the rights of men who say they are women over biological women – not well received – gave control to Reform because of vanity and entitlement.  The person elected on to Holyrood despite having only a student visa and coming from the Indian elite typifies the Greens.