Reform Is Yet To Decide How It Will Run Councils
Reform UK is hoping to convert its high polling numbers into council seats
3 min read
Reform UK has not yet finalised how it will run councils if it wins them on 1 May, after the person asked to complete the work resigned.
Each political party creates its own rules for how it runs councils, including how it elects council leaders and deputy leaders, as well as how it maintains party discipline.
With Nigel Farage's right-wing party expected to make significant gains at next month's local elections, the party headquarters had recently asked one of their councillors to put together a rule book for how Reform would run local authorities they lead.
However, Maria Botwell, who was a Reform councillor at East Riding of Yorkshire Council at the time, resigned from the party last month.
In a post on social media, Bowtell, now an independent councillor, said she had been "abruptly" asked to produce the rules "with less than eight weeks" until the 1 May local and mayoral elections.
"In August, I asked our party chairman what support would be provided to existing and prospective councillors and whether a Councillors’ Association was in development.
"I received no meaningful response until over seven months later, when I was abruptly asked to chair this initiative and draft group rules — with less than eight weeks before local elections where we could potentially secure majorities," she said.
PoliticsHome understands that Reform is continuing the work and hopes to complete it soon.
There are around four weeks to go until elections are held for 23 county councils, unitary authorities and metropolitan boroughs, as well as six mayors.
Reform plans to contest all 1,641 council seats that are up for re-election as it tries to translate its recent rise in opinion polls into electoral success.
Farage's party won over 14 per cent of the vote at the July general election, resulting in five House of Commons seats.
Since then, Reform's popularity has increased significantly, with the party leading both Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour and Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives in many opinion polls.
Reform is expected to perform strongly in areas including Lincolnshire, where Andrea Jenkyns hopes to become the party's first elected mayor, as well as in the East Midlands, Kent, Durham and Northumberland.
The party is expected to benefit largely at the expense of the Tories, who are going into 1 May defending hundreds of seats.
Badenoch recently warned that these elections would be "extremely difficult" for her party after it suffered a devastating defeat at last year's general election.
Polling expert Lord Hayward recently expressed doubt over just how well Reform would do on 1 May.
In mid-March, the Conservative peer shared an analysis showing that since July, Reform had won 12 council seats compared with the Tories' 23.
“Reform could quite easily reasonably argue that they have only got themselves organised in the last few months, but there is no question that that argument only holds water up to a certain point," he said.
