Suella Braverman vows that Reform UK town halls across England will scrap 'woke' diversity schemes and bring back 'meritocracy'

See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred Source Published: 14:27 EDT, 11 September 2026 | Updated: 14:29 EDT, 11 September 2026 Town halls around the country run by Reform UK will scrap ‘woke’ diversity schemes, a senior MP has pledged.A drive begun by leaders of one county council will become the blueprint for more than 30 other authorities the party now controls around England.Under plans set out on Friday at an event attended by dozens of Reform councillors, those in charge of Staffordshire County Council vowed to completely rid it of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) measures and ideology.They will start by scrapping every EDI training module, then disband staff support groups based on identity.Recruitment will be reset so that it is based on merit rather than controversial positive action measures, while ‘corporate performative gestures’ such as awareness campaigns and branding will also be axed.Council leader Cllr Martin Murray said in a new report: ‘In areas from recruitment and how council employees are trained all the way to the public services we deliver and how taxpayer money is spent, the council moved away from a proper understanding of equality – equality before the law – in favour of the contested political ideology of EDI. This ends now.’Suella Braverman, Reform’s equalities spokesman, told the Daily Mail that the move will restore fairness and common sense. Suella Braverman speaking at Reform UK's conference in Birmingham last week The former Cabinet minister, who attended the launch event at JCB headquarters in Staffordshire, said afterwards: ‘There were several councils there where Reform is the governing administration, and there were cheers in the room to this policy.‘They're all crying out for common sense, and they're looking for solutions as to how to rein in the virtue signalling, the identity politics that's taken over much of local government.‘We want Reform to become the byword for meritocracy, the byword for common sense and Reform councils to be flagship councils for undoing a lot of the nonsense that was started under Labour and perpetuated by the Conservatives.’She admitted that staff employed by councils will try to resist the direction – but urged the elected councillors not to give in.‘I'm sure there will be officers around the country who will try every trick in the book. And my message to those Reform council leaders today was: hold your nerve and don't give in. They want you to give in, but there's too much at stake to give in.’Mrs Braverman also conceded there are limits to how far town halls can go while the Equality Act, which she has vowed to repeal if Nigel Farage becomes Prime Minister, remains law.‘To a degree, there is a limitation as to what local government can do. But I think they can really set the standard for how people restore some common sense to local government.’She said the 2010 law had the ‘right intentions’ of opposing discrimination against minorities, but had ended up being a ‘disaster for fairness’ and ‘corrosive to the functioning of our public sector and much of our private sector’.