\n<\/p>\n
For seven months Helen Pidd has been keeping a close eye on what has been happening in Lancashire, her home county.<\/p>\n
It is one of 10 local councils Reform has taken over \u2013 potentially a big indicator of what could happen if Nigel Farage\u2019s party were to get into Downing Street. She was keen to see if Reform\u2019s \u2018anti-woke\u2019 agenda would come crashing down when confronted with the cold hard realities of local government or if the party would prove itself more competent than people expected.<\/p>\n
The council was in financial trouble when Reform took it over and promised major Doge-style cost-cutting. It said it hoped to slash waste and cut down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. But, a few months in, things began to look like they might be getting tricky. A plan to close a care home left its residents furious, while a record number of complaints were made about Reform councillors.<\/p>\n
<\/span> Photograph: Duncan Elliott\/The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For seven months Helen Pidd has been keeping a close eye on what has been happening in Lancashire, her home county. It is one of 10 local councils Reform has taken over \u2013 potentially a big indicator of what could happen if Nigel Farage\u2019s party were to get into Downing Street. She was keen to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[419,515,1664,838],"class_list":{"0":"post-37618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-happened","9":"tag-podcast","10":"tag-power","11":"tag-reform"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}