Is Reform really the alternative that this country needs? - Yorkshire Post Letters

How to describe the Reform Party who, it is said, will bring new clarity, decisiveness and inspiration to the UK. How many layers of the onion? Their candidate for the byelection in Gorton and Denton, Matthew Goodwin, says that women and girls should have "a biological reality check" to encourage them to have more children.

Goodwin is supported by Tommy Robinson, aka Yaxley-Lennon, imprisoned five times so far. Nigel Farage despises Robinson; clarity?

The recently announced Reform policy: to cut 5p off a pint by reinstating the cap on child benefit - this would force half a million kids back into poverty and diminish birth rates (policy contradiction - clarity?). Ignore all that harm - a cheaper pint is the key priority.

Nigel ‘doesn't know if human activity causes climate change’ despite the convictions of 97 per cent to 99.9 per cent of working scientists in relevant fields. Many UK farmers flooded out this January say food prices and food security this year and in future will be ‘catastrophic’. Still the cause is not important for Nigel.

MPs say they are ‘rushed off their feet’. Not Nigel, the champion of ‘outside’ earnings. As he failed in eight parliamentary elections he's now cashing in by making videos for newlyweds and is a ‘Bullion Ambassador’.

He's also a convinced disciple for cryptocurrency especially as the main donor to Reform, Chris Harborne, living in Thailand to reduce UK taxation, is a crypto billionaire. Harborne and two other multi-millionaires have given 76 per cent of the contributions received by Reform since 2021.

A ‘party of the people’? And Elon Musk, first a supporter of Farage, later a critic, is still considering an enormous donation guaranteeing UK ‘independence’?

Nigel has been to the US at least nine times since his election. He has said Trump is "the bravest person he has ever met" - suitable praise for a President who is destroying US democracy and destabilising the world economy?

Farage was so impressed by the education system at a Michigan college, that he promised to sell their methods to English schools because teachers here are ‘poisoning’ their pupils.

Farage admits that his becoming PM would provoke an immediate teacher strike and it would ‘take years to turn education around’. Things to be proud of?

Nigel is a great judge of character. Nathan Gill, a UKIP and Reform leader in Wales was, said Nigel "the least corruptible person, honest and loyal".

Apparently Nigel didn't hear Gill's well-paid propaganda about Russia and was then "shocked" when Gill was given 10 and half years in prison.

Nigel said in 2014 that Putin was "as an operator...brilliant”, also a "long time ago" but should a proud Brit ever praise a monstrous dictator? And the Reform MPs didn't turn up in Parliament recently when Russian influence was debated. Why?

Nigel's greatest achievement to date is Brexit of course. Now 58 per cent of Brits say they want to rejoin the EU. Nigel blames other politicians for ruining it; a mature response?

Local councils, with Reform majorities, are praised for showing what a Reform Government could do. They promised to cut council tax - Worcester among others has raised tax. Also praised is Kent Council; the party has lost nine of its councillors because of arguments.

This is just the surface. Dig deeper - do you find paradise or a nightmare? And of course the worst ‘could never happen here’...