A worrying, if not surprising, number of Reform UK Ltd’s new councillors have been accused of sharing extreme right-wing posts on their social media accounts. However, it’s not just the abhorrent racism, misogyny and links to cosplay fascists that Reform’s AI-based vetting procedure appears to have missed. While they were checking out potential representatives, maybe they should have asked them if they intended to hang around for longer than a couple of days after the election or even if they were actually allowed to be a councillor in the first place.
The Reform company, sorry party, has already seen four of their new cohort announce that they can’t or won’t represent them in the council chamber, decisions that in some cases will cost local government tens of thousands of pounds.
Leaving the Reform cult
First Donna Edmunds (Hodnet in Shropshire) resigned from Farage’s ranks, suggesting the party headquarters was home to a cult (I think I’ve spelt that right). She’d been suspended by Reform just hours after being elected, not because of her open adoration of Tommy Robinson that they seemed fine with, but because she’d suggested Rupert Lowe would make a better leader than Farage. Then, after discovering electoral rules meant he’d either have to leave Reform or his post with the RAF, Luke Shingler (Galley Common, Warwickshire) chose pounds over principles and announced that he’d be sitting as an independent.
Meanwhile, Reform UK’s promise to slash council waste hasn’t started too well for the good folks of Nottinghamshire or Durham where the councils will have to foot the bill for the by-elections needed after some of the swiftest political resignations on record.
Pretty much as soon as someone told him he was a councillor Desmond Clarke (Newark West) announced that he wasn’t one anymore. We were told that he’d had a change in personal circumstances. The cruel speculation that this change was being kicked out of the family home after his partner discovered he was a Reform member, seems to have little substance. In fact, Mr Clarke said that he couldn’t serve the people of Newark because he needed to focus on his career in social care. It isn’t clear if this career was with Nottinghamshire Council, which would have made him ineligible to stand in the county.
The case of Andrew Kilburn (Benfieldside) however is entirely transparent. Hot on the heels of Mr Clarke and no doubt doubly disappointed to discover he hadn’t broken the record for the shortest ever period in office, he stood down after revealing that his job with the council meant he could not be a councillor.
Breaking electoral rules
There appears to be a theme developing here and rumour has it that there are more similar cases yet to come out.
Cases like that of Andrew Hamilton-Gray (Loughborough, Leicestershire) who promised to serve his constituents with “honour, integrity and transparency”; a phrase he may have remembered from when he was sacked from the police force for discreditable conduct and “breaching professional standards on honesty and integrity”.
You see, there are rules about who can and can’t be elected as a local councillor. They pretty much boil down to ruling out anyone who works in the same council or the armed forces, has served a prison sentence, or has been found guilty of corruption or a sexual offence.
Clearly, it would be wrong to suggest that Reform councillors are more likely than most to be corrupt, criminals or sexual predators (mind you, have you seen some of their profile pictures!?) However, it does seem that in a number of cases they didn’t declare their employment status and are now having to pay the price.
Ignorance or incompetence?
This raises a couple of possibilities. Maybe the strategists running Reform for their shadowy backers are so ignorant of the way local government works that they didn’t know or bother to read up on the rules that regulate it. That’s a worrying thought for the residents of councils where Farage’s acolytes have a say in how millions of pounds are spent.
Then again, perhaps it was thought that checks were unnecessary for candidates with little chance of getting the job and even less desire to do it.
Desmond Clarke’s admission that he was in no position to serve came so quickly after his election that it led to speculation that he didn’t expect or particularly want to win in the first place, a reminder of the controversy surrounding the numerous paper candidates Reform used to garner publicity and public money during the general election.
Andrew Kilburn’s resignation came after days of speculation surrounding several of his new and now ex-colleagues on Durham council and if Reform genuinely didn’t bother to establish whether its candidates could or would take their seats, then more could follow.
More by-elections?
The concern that more by-elections will be needed while council work is delayed is growing in other places where Reform did well.
Scott Dickenson MBE, the long-serving and respected leader of the Labour group in Northumberland, a hung council following the election of 23 Reform councillors, said:
“Some of the candidates who won haven’t even accepted their office yet. Does this show they didn’t expect to win, didn’t want to win or have no interest in being a councillor… who knows?”
He told me that council officials had not been able to contact several of the new councillors:
“It would appear that some candidates are not eligible to stand. So, I understand some may now not take up office, costing thousands of pounds to hold by-elections. This lack of seriousness is really quite worrying. This is not a game, literally lives of residents depend on it.”
More Reform victories?
Of course, simply pointing out the rank incompetence of the Reform party doesn’t address the sense of abandonment felt by many of those who voted for them on 2 May. And while the government’s answer is simply to go further and faster with the policies that alienated Labour’s natural supporters while aping Farage’s rhetoric – saying our country is in danger of becoming an island of strangers is just a polite way of saying foreigners are scary – the voters may just hand them the same result at any upcoming by-election.
