WE HAVE been warned about the real agenda of Reform UK following that party’s substantial gains in last week’s English local elections.

They now have the councillors, the councils — they rule 10 and comprise the largest party in four more — and the mayors to try to implement it.

Nor should we underestimate the striking similarities between some of Reform UK’s local government policies and parts of the US Trump-Musk agenda.

Understandably, party leader Nigel Farage is no longer quite so keen to be seen kissing President Donald Trump’s posterior, while Elon Musk has made clear his disdain for Farage’s leadership abilities.

Nonetheless, Reform UK leaders have been quick to reaffirm their enthusiasm for taking a Musk-style chainsaw to public services and jobs.

Farage wants to see “a Doge in every county,” in other words a US-style “Department of Government Efficiency” to slash costs and jobs. He has  warned council staff in posts dealing with climate change, equalities, diversity and social exclusion to apply for jobs elsewhere.

Newly elected Durham councillor and former GB News presenter Darren Grimes echoes the call to “send in the auditors” to stop councils spending “fortunes” on “net-zero pet projects,” “rainbow crossings” and “diversity managers.” Previously, Farage has attacked local government pension arrangements as “Ponzi schemes” (a favourite Doge-speak term for worthless scams).

Clearly, our multimillionaire “man of the people” attaches far less value to a lifetime of public service than to the invaluable work done by, say, a City metals trader or a part-time member of the European Parliament.

Not to be out-Trumped, new Greater Lincolnshire mayor and former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns wishes to see at least one of the local councils in her new jurisdiction slash staffing by 10 per cent. She also proposes accommodating asylum-seekers awaiting a decision on their status in tents rather than low-end hotels and hostels.

We ignore these threats to local people of every age, to council employees and people fleeing war, famine and destitution at our common peril.

And then along comes Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf, one of the four multimillionaires who occupy the four top posts in the party. He revealed his concern to Sky’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday that UK schoolchildren were being “indoctrinated to hate their country.”

In particular, he blamed the campaign of “character assassination” waged in schools against “the great Sir Winston Churchill,” presumably by all those woke teachers. Putting right this dastardly drive would be part of a “remoralisation” mission, Yusuf declared.

It is not known whether the young Zia Yusuf suffered any such vile indoctrination during his own boyhood days at the fee-paying Hampton School in west London. Certainly, Key Stage Three of the National Curriculum proposes that children in the state sector be taught “the second world war and the wartime leadership of Winston Churchill.”

Perhaps those lefty teachers are brainwashing their young charges into thinking that the defeat of fascism was a bad thing for which Churchill must bear some guilt.

Other sections of the curriculum deal with the rise of trade unionism in Britain and the history of the British empire in India. Any treatment of Churchill in those matters might be a little more tricky for Yusuf and other Churchill worshippers.

As home secretary, he played a blood-thirsty role in the 1911 railway strike that appalled some of his closest colleagues and friends, while his failure to act decisively against the Bengal famine in 1943-44 leaves a dirty stain on his reputation to this day.

Best leave that out, eh, Mr Yusuf?