John Swales, is standing as the Reform UK candidate in the by-elections in Harrogate

John Swales, is standing as the Reform UK candidate in the by-election for the Stray, Woodlands and Hookstone Division of Harrogate

John swes you’re standing as a a reform UK candidate in the the Harrogate byelection for stray woodlands and hookstone um why why have reform decided to Fil A candidate right good question well reform are relatively new political party in the UK they’re growing very quickly very strongly membership’s

Increasing by the day um we believe in basically a small state and personal freedoms uh with standing can Cates in every seat in the general election would also standing candidates um to sit on local councils because we believe that by having representation on local councils is the only way we can start to

Change things and start to influence decision making in the country to reflect what the people want rather than what national government decide they want to do on a particular day on a particular topic and I think many people have followed reform UK well over a number of years really but particularly of recent

You know we’ve seen particularly like Richard TI and we’ve seen many um conservative MPS if you like or a number of conservative MPS uh move across to reform so they’ve seen a a picture of a growing U following if you like on the national reform UK saying what’s what’s

Happening in in harate is it a small group or a developing group where where is the local thank you very much a growing group we’ve got over 500 members in Harriet and growing by the day um we’ve got at least 50 of those are active members and by that I mean they

Attend meetings and social functions we have they’re out campaigning for us um delivering leaflets putting posters and uh po posts in the gardens um and really spreading the word because I think that’s one of the most important things that they can do is to talk to their friends um and answer

Questions really because people obviously a lot of people know reform a few people don’t they don’t know what we stand for what what positions we’ve got they don’t understand that we are really representing them and their country um and those conversations are quite powerful in fact they’re the most

Powerful thing we can do so we’ve got a large membership in harria and it’s growing and and when you look at the the policies and all the manifesto kind of items for reform I suppose this is more of on a sort of the national pict here I think there’s a tendency to sort

Of view that one and I think this is possibly true at one time there was you know un Focus around immigration um and brexit but I know things have moved on much more from from you know that was a number of years ago um where where is

The party with its sort of Manifesto and telling people what it’s going to do well we’re not publishing a Manifesto per se we have a number of policies welldeveloped policies that have been well considered and argued with a lot of experts in the country on the economy on

Defense Education Health police all well developed um but what we’ve produced is a contract a contract between reform and the people it’s a 10-page document it’s available on the website it’s available on our local website and it just explains in detail what we’re going to do on all those key areas immigration is

One of the areas of course because it is an issue that that needs to be managed and needs to be managed responsibly and properly um and also all of these pledges in our contract are costed and by reducing the size of the state not a lot but just cutting out waste and

Inefficiency we can deliver the pledges in our contract to the people and still save a few billion pounds a year and you and you ter it like a contract whereas I think in in the past we’ve seen um I suppose you’d call it like overc commitment wouldn’t you in Manifesto

Items and I think I think the public is very wary of what they’re being promised at the moment more when we’re coming up to a general election is that more of a you know like an agreed deal if you like then with the general public is that is that why it’s

Been termed a contract well exactly I mean a contract has a has a legal meaning you know if you’re two parties to a contract then you both have obligations to each other where a Manifesto is just some words on a piece of paper or in particular promising

Everybody everything all the time to get their votes when none of it’s costed out properly and it’s all based on spurious assumptions about something that may or may not happen in the future and as we know the the country is significantly in debt at the moment the cost of servicing

That debt does inhibit our ability to do a lot of things so we have to sort out the economy uh as well as all the other things Defense Education the NHS roads locally an issue and then just just sort of tur into the to the local campaign and on

Yourself what what makes you the the right person to stand then do you believe for for a counselor in the in the division yes another good question uh I’m born and bred I was born on leed’s road lived here all my life my my father my grandparents had local

Businesses which I’ve worked in so I know Harriet I know what makes it work I know what it stands for I know it’s got a unique identity and a culture and that’s something I want to preserve so for example I’m not in favor of expanding a water bottling plant to cut

Down the pinewoods that I used to play when I was little I’m not in favor of destroying the middle of town to put in something called a gateway project which doesn’t appear to do anything apart from put a bicycle lane up the busiest Road through the middle of town destroying

The character of the town yet again so I stand for keeping harut as harut and not turning it into some sort of Quasi City that the planet the central planers want to do cycle Lanes across the straight I’m against those the new tiger crossing the side of the straight I’m against

That I just don’t see that we need them and when you when you look at those projects then um do you see a level of sort of consideration for why they need it I know we there’s a lot sort of I think the term used a lot is active travel

Which is a new term that seems to have been created really over the last couple of years yes or been put out there a lot more um and and there seems to be a lot of around those schemes it’s sort of divided harate as well um what’s your

Kind of take on what it’s done to hargate as a community then well the concept of the active travel schemes is a central government Drive um which is basically forced onto the councils because they it’s the only way they can access funding they have a lot of

Schemes that they they will have want to to bring in over the years now funding is primarily available for these active travel schemes so they are repackaging a number of old schemes as if they were brand new ones to get active travel funding so they’re basically coming up

With projects just to get the funding rather than than talking to the local people and asking them what their issues are and what the solution is oh yes they’ll have a consultation which to be perfectly honest is worse than useless because it’s counterproductive because they know the answer to the consultation

Before they do it so I think it’s much more important to look at what the local people want and then secure funding for those projects than to just get something built because the government will give you money for it yeah and the the counselor role is it’s I think it’s

Very interesting that obviously you a counselor is voted in to represent the people in the division but you also in a way represent the division um on the area committee for the council and then you also if you like represent haray with um the County Council yes so it’s a whole kind of

Cascade of of accountability really is is there a particular approach that you’d adopt to representing people on all those those forums I know that’s a big a big question well I I think I would I would use my knowledge of harria and what I like to think is common sense

To get some common sense into the policymaking and the decision making to do things in the interests of the people of hargate and the division in particular uh rather than as I’ve said earlier central government dictat been rolled down and forced onto people so I will be pushing back on things that the

People of harut don’t want and supporting the things that they do um and the O the odd thing is you may say oh it’s only one person well there was actually a reform counselor on the council already so if we elect another one that’s two the conservative party

Don’t actually have control of the council anymore so those two or three votes that we have can actually make the decision can actually Force the decision in a certain direction because nobody has overall control so don’t think there’s only two or three of us because we could actually call call these decisions on

Projects and then just looking at and just to finish up talking about your campaign how’s your campaign going have you got a particular approach that you’re adopting to you know to make people aware of you yeah well we we’ve got a a multimedia campaign so we’ve got the traditional campaigning leafleting um

Talking to people I was I was out to the weekend talking to a number of people Everyone very happy to take the leaf at some people want you to know more some people even saying oh I used to vote conservative but I just can’t do it anymore I don’t recognize them anymore

I’m going to vote reform you’ve definitely got my vote so that was very heartening um and we’ve got a post a campaign starting this weekend but we’ve also gone for social media so we’re quite active on Facebook I think we’ve got uh we’ve got a guy managing the

Facebook account for us we’ve got 4,000 followers on that just set up a Tik Tok account put some short form videos upon that and just blown away our first video uh we’re amate we’ll admit it but we’re just trying to do the best we can um 40,000 views and Rising so absolutely

Blown Away about that so we’re sort of coming at it through a multi-channel way really I’m not certain that um some of the other candidates have taken advantage of all of those channels to get through to potential voters and is just to finish up then is

There anything that that I I could have asked you that you felt I should have it’s always a tricky one to put to a yes someone on an interview yeah well um I’m I’m not so much focused on on me I’m more focused on the campaign and the

Change that we can bring um and also you know it’s down to all the people who who’ve joined us who are so enthusiastic and so committed it’s really heartening to see so um the only other thing I could ask is say thank you to them John swes thank you very much thank you