Reform Party Utilizes AI Tools to Target Wasteful Public Spending
The Reform party is deploying artificial intelligence tools to analyze public data in a bid to identify savings, particularly focusing on fraud, procurement, and expenditures deemed wasteful. Areas under scrutiny include transportation services for schoolchildren, funding for asylum seekers, and payments to management consultants, which party leader Yusuf labels a “gravy train.”, reports 24brussels.
Yusuf describes the members of the DOGE team as largely apolitical individuals motivated by patriotism. “Most of these people have not been politically active,” he states. “It’s patriotism. It’s people who can see the way the state is being run has gotten worse and felt quite helpless to be able to do anything about it. For the first time, they can see something which has got some political teeth.”
Government Engagement
Although Yusuf emphasizes the significant funds allocated to social care, which councils in England are mandated to provide, he recognizes that DOGE’s influence in this area is limited. Nonetheless, he considers the collaboration with local councils an effective pilot for their broader policy goals.
“We want to look at the way in which councils actually go about providing these services… It is helping us with the work that we’re doing in terms of our national policy platform, so that we can arrive in government and quite quickly start to implement these changes and tear down the blockages that are preventing, for example, local government from providing these services,” he adds.
Yusuf, who made his fortune in 2023 by selling the concierge app Velocity Black to Capital One for £233 million, switched his political allegiance from the Conservatives to Reform in 2024. Since then, he has been focused on broadening the party’s appeal as the next general election approaches, all while stressing the importance of reducing local budgets.
“If Britain doesn’t sort this out, then the IMF [International Monetary Fund] will force it to,” he asserts. “The country is on a fast track to bankruptcy. The country is in a doom loop where the people with the broadest shoulders in terms of tax are fleeing the country. The pie isn’t growing in terms of revenue and so all of that’s going to be shouldered by the next wealthiest people. Predominantly, these are working people. There’s a real urgency about this. That’s my motivation.”
