Reform’s candidate for Mayor of Greater Manchester told her social media followers she is ‘not normally very good’ at rules and regulations shortly after winning her council seat this year.
Sian Astley also told a news site she is ‘really rubbish with money’ during a previous career as a presenter on TV property shows.
Nigel Farage’s party unveiled Astley – whose first name is pronounced ‘cyan’ rather than ‘shan’ – as its candidate to replace Andy Burnham a week after the Makerfield by-election.
She has previously appeared as a property and renovation expert on a number of BBC TV shows, and hosted Half Built Home for Channel 5 in 2012.
Posts on her social media page suggest she knew relatively little about life as a councillor before standing for Reform UK at this year’s local elections.
In a video posted to her page on her induction day, Astley told viewers: ‘Looking forward to hearing all about the rules and regulations – something I’m not normally very good at, rules and regulations.’
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On May 30, more than three weeks after she was elected and became leader of the Reform group on Manchester City Council, she wrote that she had just learned it was a legal requirement to fill out paperwork for election expenses.
And last month she wrote that she was ‘starting to understand how decisions get made’ at the local authority and still ‘getting to grips’ with the work of its committees.
Astley said: ‘It’s a lot to take in and I suspect that I’ll be watching the training sessions a couple of times, but it’s all very interesting!’
In a 2019 interview with news site LoveMoney, she was quoted as saying she was ‘really rubbish with money’.
A Reform spokesperson pointed to comments elsewhere in the article where she describes having ‘big issues being comfortable around money’ as she ‘wasn’t brought up with much’.
They said: ‘Unlike Labour’s Bev Craig, Sian is a successful entrepreneur, turning £1 into a multi-million-pound property and design business.
‘Greater Manchester needs someone like Sian who has spent her life building things, getting things done and cutting waste, not another career politician.’
In the election this Thursday, Astley will face off against Bev Craig, the Labour leader of the council; Green Party candidate Geraldine Coggins; Conservative Phil Eckersley; Lib Dem Richard Kilpatrick; independent Marcus Farmer; and Restore Britain’s Marlon West.
It will be the first big electoral test for Labour under Andy Burnham, a little over a month after he was elected MP for Makerfield – before swiftly becoming party leader and Prime Minister.
At May’s elections, Labour lost all but six of the 30 seats it was defending, with 17 going to the Green Party and seven being won by Reform UK.
Reform leader Nigel Farage has only posted once about Astley to his sizable social media following, with a video highlighting her stance on illegal migration yesterday evening.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Reform activists were being urged to divert away from the Greater Manchester race to campaign for Farage in his Clacton by-election.
The party leader dramatically resigned his seat in order to rerun in the resulting by-election, which he has framed as a ‘people versus the establishment’ fight.
However, his plan appeared to backfire quickly after all the major parties said they would not be taking part, leaving Count Binface as Farage’s top opponent.
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