“We get elected, we do what we say,” vowed Gawain Towler, a Reform UK board member, after the party won more than 677 new councillors at last year’s local elections. Other Reform leaders were similarly bullish about their capabilities. “We’re pretty high-agency people,” said Zia Yusuf, then the party’s chair.
So a year on, what’s happened?
Council tax is increasing in every local authority under Reform’s control, contrary to the party’s election leaflets that unambiguously promised freezes or cuts. In Worcestershire, it is rising by 9%, an amount so large that it required government approval.
Meanwhile, much-needed local services are also being scrapped, such as care homes in Derbyshire, a council tax relief scheme in Durham and a health programme in Lincolnshire. Promises to fix potholes and increase bin collections have also not been met (in Lancashire, collections are in fact reducing from once every two weeks to every three).
From the moment last year’s election was called, the extreme views of Reform candidates were exposed by my colleagues at HOPE not hate, an anti-fascist campaign group. The party had selected candidates whose social media pages had shared Hitler memes, material from the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative and called for Islam to be removed from the planet with “one big nuke”.
Since then, Reform has suffered a series of high-profile scandals involving its elected politicians.
Councillor John Allen in Northumberland was expelled for posting: “I’d shoot Starmer myself if I had the weapon and opportunity.” Two successive leaders of Staffordshire County Council resigned amid racism scandals (although one reportedly quit due to a family bereavement, rather than as a result of alleged racist activity seen on a TikTok account bearing his name), while Reform suspended another senior councillor at Staffordshire who appeared to call Africans “backward” on social media.
And it is not just scandals of bigotry that have beleaguered Reform.
Edward Harris, the chair of Warwickshire County Council, was branded “a rogue landlord” by neighbouring Tamworth Borough Council after he was found to be illegally renting out two unsafe properties with no heating, water or fire alarms. A business owned by Andrew Harrison, the chair of Durham’s Economy and Enterprise Overview Committee, was fined £40,000 for hiring an illegal worker (a finding that Harrison denies and said he will appeal). Doncaster councillors Andrew Knight and Rachel Reed allegedly tried to profit from the publicly funded airport upgrade by founding a company under the same name as the ‘arms-length’ firm the council created to manage the project.
Sian Norris
Reform intended for its local authority governance to be a “shop window” for a national government. At HOPE not hate’s last count, one in ten of the party’s councillors elected in the May 2025 intake have now quit, many of them due to disputes and defections to other parties.
The party’s dysfunctional local politics is perhaps most obvious in Kent. A leaked video revealed bitter infighting, with the county council’s leader, Linden Kemkaran, telling her colleagues to “fucking suck it up” if they disagreed with her. In a subsequent WhatsApp message that was also leaked, Kemkaran’s ally, Peter Osborne, the cabinet member in charge of highways and transport, threatened to punch the leaker “right in the jaw”. (Kemkaran remains in post, and no disciplinary action was taken against Osborne.)
After such high-profile scandals, Reform claimed to have improved its vetting procedures. As far back as October 2025, it was reported that the party had already vetted 4,000 candidates for this year’s local elections. Yusuf, now Reform’s home affairs spokesman, has said its vetting is “the best in the country”.
These claims are belied by reality. At least three candidates selected by Reform once appeared on a leaked list of BNP affiliates, according to joint investigation by HOPE not hate and the Daily Mirror. In addition, Daniel Devaney, Reform’s candidate in Bradford, said he wanted to “blast” Muslims off “the face of the earth”. Andrew Mahon in Blackburn South East said Oswald Mosley, the fascist leader, was “right”. And a social media account seemingly associated with Linda McFarlane in Gateshead called for Keir Starmer and David Lammy to be shot.
What steps, if any, were taken to vet these candidates remains unclear.
Reform’s election campaign this spring is cynical in the extreme. Despite the party’s failure to deliver its promise to lower or freeze council tax, its leaflets have nonetheless claimed: “The only way to stop more tax rises… is to unite behind Nigel Farage.”
This 7 May, make your vote count.
