A Reform county council leader gave a hilarious answer that ‘showed how bright he is’ during a ‘disastrous’ BBC interview.
On Monday, Sean Mathews, the Reform Leader of Lincolnshire County Council, appeared on Look North (East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire) to discuss how his party was running things.
During the interview with news presenter Peter Levy, Mathews was quizzed on the ‘UK DOGE’ trial that Reform had launched in Kent. The Elon Musk-inspired scheme apparently aims to cut waste and increase efficiency on the Reform-controlled Kent county council and the party wants to role the scheme out across all councils it controls.
The five-person team leading the efficiency scheme includes Brexit donor Arron Banks and Reform party chair Zia Yusuf, but according to reports none of them will be paid for their work.
This has prompted concerns from some over whether the volunteers should be scrutinised under political donations rules.
Addressing this issue, Levy asked Mathews whether the DOGE team were doing the work for Reform pro bono.
With impeccable – and completely accidental – comedic timing, Mathews replied “No, they’re doing it for free,” clearly unaware that pro bono does in fact mean to do something free of charge.
Reacting to the moment on X, one account said the moment “shows how bright he is.”
In another highlight from the interview, Levy quoted a line from Nigel Farage, where the Reform leader had called for his party to “ditch things county councils shouldn’t be involved with.”
When Levy asked the councillor to give him an example of something his party would ditch, Mathews said he didn’t know, to which Levy hit back: “You don’t much do you it seems!”
“I’m not being rude but there haven’t been many answers to the questions,” he added.
Related: Nigel Farage called out by BBC reporter for ‘racist lies’ about Scottish Labour leader