Reform Is Eyeing Up A “Seismic Moment” In Lincolnshire Elections

The county of Lincolnshire, a longstanding Conservative heartland, is set to face council elections in a matter of months, alongside a contest to elect its first-ever mayor for the wider Greater Lincolnshire.

Reform UK is feeling confident and sees the mayoral race in May as a bellwether for the future of the party; its first real test since the election on whether it can deliver. Across the country, the party is running “training programmes” to get people “ready to take control” in the locals. 

The party’s high-profile candidate for mayor, former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, says she wants to bring back public trust in politicians. 

However, she faces several challenges, from questions over how quickly the party can mobilise its ground operation, to local, well-connected rivals, to an electorate that is disgruntled with politics in the round. It’s no wonder that Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader and the MP for Lincolnshire’s Boston and Skegness, tells PoliticsHome a win would be a “seismic moment”.

Place of Contrasts

Greater Lincolnshire — a huge combined county authority born of a devolution deal in 2023 — is full of contrasts. Post-industrial towns like Grantham (Margaret Thatcher’s hometown) and Grimbsy are incongruous with urbane places like Lincoln and Stamford.

Furthermore, the towns and cities within the authority are made islands by the vast swathes of rural county with a drive between urban areas taking you past multiple farms, and even a few signs warning of horse-drawn vehicles and carriages and “tractors turning”.

The rurality of the area, coupled with the ageing population, means a large percentage were left disgruntled by the new Labour government’s farm tax and the winter fuel cut.

But while the constituencies across southern Lincolnshire have historically been a Conservative majority, the northern area of the new combined authority of Greater Lincolnshire has traditionally been Labour.

Despite this, on a council level, North and North East Lincolnshire are currently a Conservative majority.

“There’s an underbelly of conservatism, but, I think it's in flux,” the Labour mayoral candidate Jason Stockwood told PoliticsHome.

The self-made businessman added “there's a lot of uncertainty”, with traditional voting lines not “necessarily a good indication of how this will go”.

There is one thing that most agree on, including Stockwood: “I think traditional politics has let people down.”

Stockwood told PoliticsHome that devolution is part of the solution: “This is why, I think, you know, a traditional politician trying to put themselves as a solution for this—It's like an arsonist trying to run the fire service.”

One Conservative councillor told PoliticsHome “politics has failed Lincolnshire”, while Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader and MP for Lincolnshire’s Boston and Skegness, argued voters “feel they've been taken for granted”.

The Reform candidate for mayor Andrea Jenkyns said that overall, across Lincolnshire, “people are sick of politicians full stop".

She wants to restore public trust, even through local-level decisions like broadcasting council meetings.

Lincolnshire a ‘key target’ for Reform

Locally, the surge of Reform UK is posing a concern for the Left and the Right, with both seeing the party as a serious threat.

Jenkyns said the area is a “key target for the Reform Party, because it'll show what Reform… can do when they get into government."

The most recent national YouGov poll indicated Reform’s wider popularity, revealing a close contest for the top spot between Labour and Reform UK, with the Tories pushed into third place.

But how this will play out on a local level in Greater Lincolnshire is another question entirely.

The Conservative candidate for mayor, Rob Waltham, who is leader of North Lincolnshire Council, also fancied his chances. He is betting on a “local comeback”.

“I think if you only relied on national trends, you would always get a bias towards whatever the national picture is.”

Not all agree with this Conservative optimism. Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester Rob Ford told PoliticsHome that the Greater Lincolnshire contest is “Reform’s race to lose”.

Tice, Reform’s deputy leader and MP for Lincolnshire’s Boston and Skegness, thinks that it’s all to play for.

“We campaign to win. I think we've got an absolutely cracking chance of winning. That will be quite a seismic moment,” he told PoliticsHome.

Away from the mayoral vote the local elections, set to take place in Lincolnshire, have an important part to play too. 

Reform UK is hoping it can strike in the Conservative heartland of Lincolnshire: in the general election six of its eight constituencies saw the Tories cling on despite the dismal results for the party around the country, but there could be a dramatic set of losses in the locals.

“We will stand in every single area…and we think we can win control of the county,” says Tice.

He insisted the party has the numbers, promising a “full slate” of candidates across the board and insisting they have a “surplus”.

Across South Lincolnshire alone, the Conservative MPs who managed to hold the blue fort lost up to 37 per cent of vote share in the 2024 general election.

Speaking about the race for mayor, Tice said: “Momentum builds momentum…people like to back a winner.”

“Nobody likes to back a loser—so we think it could be huge. We obviously want to leverage off that and then move towards the elections in May 2026.”

Profile vs party

Tice told PoliticsHome that Jenkyns has “more profile” than the other candidates, something Reform UK will try to leverage.

But Stockwood didn’t seem impressed: “I don't want to play the game that she's playing: divisive politics, national profile, airing grievances.”

While Waltham does not have the national profile of Jenkyns, he thinks “having local credentials matters”—Waltham was one of the leaders to negotiate the devolution deal and said this will give him an advantage.

He is also a local man, saying that the presence of his cousins in many villages across the county means he often has access to a loo or a sandwich while campaigning. Jenkyns, for her part, has been a councillor in Lincolnshire before.

Waltham told PoliticsHome: “Reform selected a candidate that's not from the area…that will matter greatly for local people.”

Due to the size of Greater Lincolnshire, Jenkyns said the contest will be “a war on the airwaves”.

Speaking to PoliticsHome in a pub in Lincoln, Labour MP and minister Hamish Falconer admitted that Jenkyns is currently the frontrunner in terms of profile.

But Falconer said this could change.

“[Stockwood is] an interesting guy to be running in politics and I think people will be interested in someone who has made their own money, co-owns their local football club, grew up on the council estate…I think he will get profile.”

Falconer also said that a Labour mayor would not mean an easier ride for the government.

“It's obvious that he will be putting Lincolnshire before Labour,” Falconer said.

Stockwood echoed this, saying he would be “a critical friend to Labour”, adding “I certainly don't agree with everything on the national level”, although he added that he did think they are “well-intentioned”.

Gearing Up The Machine

The other question for Reform will be whether they can mobilise in time for May.

A recent email sent by the Reform UK Grantham and Bourne branch chairman Mike Rudkin and seen by PoliticsHome admitted that other parties in July last year “had immeasurably more resources, finance, and publicity opportunity”. 

This new seat was won by the Conservative Gareth Davies, who held the seat of Grantham and Stamford before it was abolished in 2024.

The Rudkin email claimed that the party “still need county council candidates” for 1 May, urging recipients with “a "clean" social media presence” to apply, adding “there is absolutely no experience necessary”.

The email also stated that while member numbers are “decent” in the area,  it is “not one of the areas of greatest membership”, with donations “still minimal”.

“There is no central funding for us in this constituency as yet,” Rudkin explained.

Jenkyns said: “The party is doing a lot to get these councillors ready, we've got a whole training programme going on in the party."

On her campaign, Jenkyns refused to reveal budgets, but said “all the stuff I want to do, I can do”.

Labour’s candidate Stockwood told PoliticsHome he had a budget, but also revealed little—other than the fact that some of it would be self-funded.

Unimpressed Voters

One disgruntled pensioner in Skegness told PoliticsHome that while they weren’t aware of the upcoming mayoral election and had lost faith in the main parties, they were a fan of Reform’s leader Nigel Farage.

Whether this would lead to them voting for Reform in the mayoral election was unclear.

PoliticsHome found a quiet Skegness on a Tuesday lunchtime, with the boom of bingo numbers being read out from the arcade permeating the otherwise sleepy atmosphere by the pier, itself a ghost town in the winter.

The majority of locals PoliticsHome spoke to did not know who their MP was, or that they would have the opportunity to vote for a mayor come May.

Overall, there was a sense of disillusionment with politics, a perfect breeding ground for a party such as Reform UK.

Lack of awareness about the upcoming vote will be a concern, not just for Reform, but all the candidates. Excluding London, the average turnout for mayoral elections last year was just 29.5 per cent.

There are certainly a range of issues that people across the county care about—Stockwood said the issue is “trying to dilute it into a pithy sound bite”.

He named the usual suspects of “cost of living, energy prices, schooling, the NHS.”

One woman who spoke to PoliticsHome in Boston said that she’d lived in the area a long time and had witnessed the high street and shops shut, something she said was a “bit of an eye opener”.

Another local barely stopped but when asked about the main issue facing voters, gestured over their shoulder and said “the foreigners here”.

Polling shared with PoliticsHome in December revealed immigration to be a major concern in Greater Lincolnshire.

Stockwood conceded that immigration is an issue, but was reluctant to focus on it too much.

“Of course it's an issue. It’s a national issue...but the reality of it is the mayoral responsibilities is not for immigration policy nationally”.

“The idea that [problems like housing and health] it's just down to immigration, is simply not true.”

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