Nathan Gill, former leader of Reform UK in Wales, sentenced to 10.5 years for bribery and corruption

@ArishMell He was convicted under the 2010 Bribery Act and the judge never addressed his motives. My second sentence merely expresses a hope that this reminds politicians of where their duty lies.

@SunshineGirl I share that hope.

@SW-User There will be a lot of tactical voting in the next election..my sister and brother in law like Zack but in their constituency it's labour or reform. I get that. Plaid winning in Carmarthen shows the way.

All these maps that show reform getting 400 seats are BS for that reason. By my estimation, the non lright vote needs to be at least 40% to stop a Reform majority and at least 55% (pref 60%) to stop a hard right coalition. It's possible.

@Burnley123 Most British people I believe will do what is necessary to keep out Reform.

@SW-User I hope you are right. We will see.

@gandalf1957 You have strong views on the subject! Streeting will be accountable for what happens next. I think the claims of "waste and duplication" are overstated for the press, but he feels the department is not as responsive as it should be and is rebuilding it.

Yes, it is easy to criticise in hindsight. Personally speaking, I think some blame must be attached to those ministers who set up the "VIP lane" and decided that some favoured companies could mark their own homework.

@SunshineGirl It just wasn't that simple we needed PPE at huge quantities and as i said above we had to pay for it up front driving a coach and horses through the normal purchasing controls and procedures, paying on ordering before knowing the quality of the equipment, otherwise another organisation somewhere in the world got the PPE. Some British suppliers were also supplying foreign countries at astronomical prices ahead of the British needs. Many private nursing and rest homes had no PPE stocks at all and thought the government should be supplying them when in actual fact their directors and shareholders should have been paying themselves less and properly equipping their nursing homes. Some organisations were hurriedly making ventilators from bits from scrap cars supplying those to hospitals as we couldn't purchase ventilators, and amongst all of that we also had the fraudsters sending in invoices for alleged PPE purchases where no purchases had been made. The medics, nurses and back room staff whether in the Hospitals or NHSE worked their arses off. Decisions had to be made in minutes not days. Yes some of those decisions were wrong as were some in government, but I would really wish to have seen how well those lawyers would have done making decisions on the first world wide pandemic for 100 years if they had to make the decisions against the back drop of dying patients including in some cases the Hospital Trusts' own doctors, nurses and backroom staff. My trust lost an electrician, who probably picked up Covid servicing electrical equipment in the theatres. I think there are very few Acute trusts that didn't lose at least one member of staff.

@gandalf1957 My wife was working as a district nurse throughout 2020-21, I have some notion of the pressures you were under.

@SunshineGirl I agree.

@SW-User The two child cap on benefits was arbitrary and cruel. Labour will lift half a million children out of poverty with this simple reform and pump money back into the economy. That is something to be proud of.

@SunshineGirl Handy things to politicians, are children. I do wonder if 500 000 is correct but I suppose it's based on the number of claiming households.

"pump money into the economy"... No, just circulate what money there is, in another way.

I think the biggest harm to the economy is the one the politicians of all parties fail to see through: the "inwards investment" myth.

@SumKindaMunster No, I see straight through you . .

@SunshineGirl Perhaps. What you don't understand is how logic and evidence works.

@SunshineGirl

@SpudMuffin Not a bad idea 👍

@ninalanyon The offences all date to 2019. If they had occurred post-2022 it would be interesting to see if any additional charges would have arisen. Even Nigel Farage has been circumspect enough to end his association with Russian Today following the invasion of Crimea. The judge did not dwell on his motivations, beyond the financial reward.

It won't disqualify him from seeking election - one of the five current Reform MPs has a criminal conviction for domestic assault - but hopefully the electorate will eventually begin to join the dots.

@SunshineGirl I'd so love to think so, too. The polls suggest otherwise at the moment, but there's still time for the hard right to do what the hard left always do: fall apart over doctrine.

@ninalanyon I do not know if there is a law to allow such a ban on public office, but it would certainly be for his or any other political party to decide if they will want Mr. Gill as a member.

If they do not then the most he could do is stand as an Independent MP, and hope to find electoral support.


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Nigel Farage and his merry men have form of course.

When he stood down as leader of his original United Kingdom Independence Party, he was replaced by Gerald Batten.

So far so good until Batten appointed as "special advisor", Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - a man whose extremist views barred him from UKP membership, and who had already served a prison sentence for his past membership of the British National Party or the National Front. (I forget which, but both were extreme-Right outfits with as few scruples as their far-Left opponents.)

It's entirely possible this hastened the end of UKIP as a serious threat to any other party.

@SunshineGirl reform, same as all the other main parties, do not represent the people that vote for them. Just pointing out if you bring up reform and representing russia you should a!so hold the same principle for politicians and Friends of Israel? Crux of the matter is, voting is a rigged game and the suits you select to govern/rule you do not represent you

@gol979 If you have any evidence, show it. Advocating an idea or cause in a democratic forum is one thing, accepting money to do so is corruption under UK law.

@SunshineGirl type in "Friends of Israel uk politiicans" on the internet and you will clearly see how many of them are taking money/influence from the israeli government (all major political parties, its bi-partisan)......like i said, if you are calling reform out (correctly) then you should also call the others out

@AdmiralPrune I watched a documentary about the affair last night. The bribes were taken in 2019 when he was a Brexit MEP. The impression given was that, having campaigned successfully for exiting the EU, those MEPs literally had nothing to do all day (although they were of course funded by the taxpayer). Hence some people did some crazy stuff.