Reform have been labelled a ‘clown show’ after Zia Yusuf claimed Kent County Council is spending its “asylum budget” on trips to bowling alleys, the cinema and crazy golf.
This week, Yusuf has decided it’s time to start ramping up Reform’s Elon Musk-inspired DOGE scheme. Now that he’s back in the party, following his bizarre two-day resignation, Yusuf is claiming his government efficiency team has started uncovering unnecessary spending at Reform-controlled Kent County Council.
Unsurprisingly, Reform’s claims of wasteful spending all seem to revolve around immigration and asylum seekers – and are yet to be backed up with any actual evidence.
This started on Monday, when Yusuf posted on X that taxpayers’ money was being used by Kent council to pay for licence fees for asylum seekers, a claim later published in an article by the Sun. Despite being asked by a number of people to, did not provide any evidence or proof to back up this claim.
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This was then followed by a video in which the Reform figure claimed Kent County Council had been using taxpayers money to ‘take asylum seekers trampolining and skateboarding.’
He went on to allege that the council had been “doing trips to the cinema, trips bowling and crazy golf” using money out of the “asylum budget.”
It took less than two hours for an MP to find a pretty substantial hole in these claims – the fact that Kent County Council doesn’t have an “asylum budget.”
Reacting to Yusuf’s video, Tunbridge Wells MP Mike Martin said it was a “clown show”, adding: “Kent County Council doesn’t have an ‘asylum budget’ so it looks like you’re talking nonsense.”
In a follow-up post, he suggested that the spending Reform believed they had ‘uncovered’ was in fact from the care system.
Martin wrote: “I *think* what you’re saying is that unaccompanied children are put into the care system, where they are treated like other children in the care system.
“Not sure what change you’d like to make to this system? What would you like the UK to do to children who literally wash up on our shores?”
Just like with his TV licence claim, neither Yusuf or Reform have provided any evidence or documents to prove their claims about spending within Kent County Council.