Grifter-in-chief Nigel Farage is not the only Reform Ltd figure to have announced his resignation this week.
Grifters united: school teacher Ben Flook at his campaign launch earlier this year with multi-millionaire Nigel Farage (far right)
Ben Flook, the Reform candidate in May’s Croydon mayoral election, has handed in his notice, too.
Flook works as a senior member of staff at Wallington County Grammar School, the boys’ selective school on Croydon Road where he teaches… checks notes … politics!
Parents were advised yesterday in a note from the school that “Mr Flook” will be leaving at the end of the summer term.
Flook has retained his position at the school throughout the time he was Conservative Party candidate in Chesterfield at the 2024 General Election, and then this year, when he was the controversial and somewhat chaotic third-choice pick (at best) as Reform’s candidate for Mayor of Croydon.
Flook is allowed to be an active, albeit unsuccessful, politician while teaching impressionable young boys because his human rights to freedom of expression, and others, are protected by, among others, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010. The ECHR and Equality Act and others are “woke” reforms which Reform Ltd want to scrap, repeal or exit.
In May’s local elections, Flook and Reform finished only fourth in the poll for Mayor, with 14,467 votes, 12.4% of the votes cast.
Hedging his bets, perhaps, Flook was also a council election candidate in Bensham Manor ward – where Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s niece, Ellie Sandover, was a candidate for Labour. Flook did even worse here, receiving just 396 votes and finishing 12th of 15 candidates.
For now, at least, Flook has removed any political dilemmas from his Wallington school’s management by resigning to go full-time into politics, and to be paid by the state for a role as head of office for “Honest Bob” Jenrick MP.
Not shifty-looking at all: how the BBC website reported the news of the Met investigation into dodgy donations to ‘Honest Bob’ Jenrick’s Tory leadership bid
Jenrick, Inside Croydon’s loyal reader will recall, very nearly became an MP for Croydon, but bailed out of the Croydon South selection process for the more attractive prospects (apparently) of Newark, leaving us with Chris Philp. Thanks for that, Bob!
Flook makes his move at a turbulent time for the grifters of Reform, with their party leader reduced to a summertime, end-of-the-pier show farce as he takes on a bloke with a bin on his head in a Clacton parliamentary by-election (a blatant ruse to pause the Commons investigations into two dodgy donations of £5million received by Farage), and with Honest Bob also now subject to a police investigation.
It was reported yesterday that the Met are looking into a £37,500 donation given to Jenrick’s Conservative leadership campaign in 2024.
Foreign donations to British politicians are banned under electoral law.
Jenrick has said the “allegations are entirely false”.
A Met Police spokesperson said: “We have launched an investigation following a referral from the Electoral Commission on Tuesday, 6 January concerning donations connected to a political party’s leadership campaign. The investigation remains ongoing.”
There could be an interesting couple of weeks answering the phones in Jenrick’s Westminster office for Flook when he starts his new job in a few weeks’ time.
Croydon has been badly let down by politicians of all parties, and of none, over the years. Perhaps never more so than by Count Binface, the intergalactic comedy superstar and election candidate in Clacton, who in an Under The Flyover podcast interview with this website in 2024 promised to stand in the 2026 Croydon mayoral election. Of course, he never did, leaving Croydon with Jason Perry as its supreme leader.- Click here to hear the biggest challenge to Nigel Farage’s political career in our interview from almost two years ago (free for Inside Croydon subscribers)
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Hope he likes crypto gaming and transporting brown envelopes in his new role with Russian Bob. It will all be another notable acheivement for Wallington Grammar.