“This motion is bizarre to say the least,” said a bemused Doncaster Labour councillor as Reform proposed that the council fly no flags apart from the union flag from its buildings.
It would not just mean no Pride flag on Pride Day, a debate heard. It would mean no white rose flag on Yorkshire Day, no Rovers flag celebrating the football team winning the league, no St George’s flag marking England’s Lionesses’ Euros triumph, and no green flags celebrating municipal park management achievements in the city’s green spaces. The motion was “a waste of time and a waste of resources”, one councillor said.
Meanwhile, at Nottinghamshire county council, climate change was being discussed. Bert Bingham is the Reform councillor now responsible for the council’s environmental policies. He does not believe human-made climate change exists, saying it is a “hoax” and that declaring a climate emergency is “ridiculous and nonsensical”. The media had brainwashed the public about the whole subject, he said.
In Kent, a Reform councillor boasted about ensuring the removal of “trans-ideological material and books” from the children’s section of the county’s libraries. It later emerged the books were not there in the first place.
In Durham, the Reform deputy council leader, a gay man, pledged that Durham Pride “won’t get a single penny from this council next year”. It received less than £10,000 from the council this year.
Welcome to the world of local government in England after the success of Nigel Farage’s Reform party on 1 May this year. The party recently celebrated 100 days in power in local councils with an extensive press release trumpeting its work, including “rolling back the net zero agenda” and “flying patriotic flags”. It boasted of Staffordshire county council’s attempt to stop all solar, wind or battery farms, and Kent council cancelling climate-friendly property modifications, as well as other decisions including not upgrading buses to electric vehicles and scrapping EV charging points.
Farage has been front and centre on the summer front pages, which aides said was part of a desire to look more prime ministerial, holding a press conference every Monday of the parliamentary recess. Here, he has announced a slew of defections, not only of former Tory MPs but a number of key local politicians, including a Tory police and crime commissioner and a member of the Scottish parliament.
Though much of the national party focus has been on small boats and asylum hotels – particularly the controversy over the Bell hotel in Essex – Farage has begun to turn the national spotlight on to houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) used to accommodate asylum seekers. Reform councils are also beginning to emphasise these, setting up another potential national flashpoint. Durham and West Northamptonshire councils have begun crackdowns on the use and conversion of HMOs.
Reform is on a high but how effective is it in power? Has anything changed for residents? Why did people vote for the party and what do they expect?
Reform won outright majorities in Kent, Durham, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, North Northamptonshire, West Northamptonshire and Doncaster. In the Hull and East Yorkshire combined authority, Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxer, was elected as its first mayor.
The party was mostly wresting control from the Conservatives but election night was also terrible for Labour. In Durham, Reform succeeded a coalition of Liberal Democrats, independents and Conservatives in what was once a solid Labour stronghold. This year, Labour won four seats compared with Reform’s 65. To put that into perspective, in 2017 Labour had 94 of the council’s then 126 seats. It now has four of 98 seats.
‘Telling us like it is’
On the streets of Consett, once a proud, thriving steel town in County Durham, it is easy to find people who voted Reform. It is easy to find people who voted Labour at the general election. It is hard to find anyone who says they would vote for Keir Starmer’s Labour today.
Corey Barron, 27, who was recently made redundant, said he used to vote Labour like all of his family. “Up here, all of us were Labour but look what has been done to the country in the past year,” he said.
“Reform are the only ones telling us like it is. Labour have told us about a load of policies but haven’t stuck to them. Reform are the only ones being honest. People can see we need someone different.”
Yvonne Hillier, a McDonald’s worker, said she was “Lib Dem through and through” but understood why so many people were voting Reform.
Her two children, in their 20s, still live with her. “They just can’t afford to get on the housing ladder,” she said. “There are so many problems, so I can see why people voted Reform … but I couldn’t vote for them. I liked Nigel Farage in the jungle. I don’t like him the way he is now.”
It is market day in Consett and there are just two stalls, including that of John Gardiner selling fruit, veg and flowers. “I’ve been coming 20 years and seen this street full, but not now,” he said.
The farmer had always voted Conservative until May, when he voted Reform. “I think they [the Tories] are in a bit of a muddle at the moment, they need to sort themselves out. You just want anyone who gets in to do a good job.”
Julie Walker, a receptionist and former Labour voter, ticked Reform for the first time at the council elections. “I just think we need somebody fresh and new,” she said. “I’m not a fan of Starmer, I just don’t think he cares what the average person thinks … immigration is a massive issue.”
Many people the Guardian approached either said they had no interest or thought every party was as bad as the other.
Of course, not everyone had voted Reform. “Are you fucking kidding me,” said Peter Wood when asked. “I blame the BBC for bringing Farage into the limelight.”
His partner, Sheila Johnson, said she could not believe so many Reform councillors had been elected in Durham. “None of them have any experience. They don’t know what they are doing. God knows what’s going to happen.”
Neither liked Starmer and both were thinking of supporting Jeremy Corbyn’s new party. As was Peter Monroe, a retired secondhand book dealer.
“I disagree with all [Reform’s] policies,” he said. “I’m disheartened. The fact that Reform got in is terrible and it saddens me that it would happen in this strong, working-class area.
“One of the first things they did when they got in at County Durham was ban flying the flag in solidarity with Ukraine at county hall. It was just wrong.”
If an alien were to land in England this summer they would assume the English had an obsession with flags.
Opposition councillors say flag policies have taken up an inordinate amount of debating time, and as how life has changed for residents, the answer is “not much”, they say.
Some Reform councillors also acknowledge that. It will take time, they say.
At the most recent full meeting of Warwickshire council, the Lib Dem councillor Sarah Boad complained of “stagnation … no ideas, no plans, except for silly, silly things that get press coverage but don’t actually help the residents of Warwickshire”.
A clearly exasperated Reform councillor, Michael Bannister, replied: “We’ve been here two months and they want policy, policy, policy, policy.”
The leader of Warwickshire council, an authority with a £2bn budget, is George Finch, a 19-year-old who still lives at home and cannot drive.
Wits have invoked Pitt the Younger, or “young snotty” from Blackadder the Third, when writing about Finch, providing an excuse to repeat some of the character’s best lines: “My three main policy priorities are: one, war with France; two, tougher sentences for geography teachers; and three, a right royal kick of the prince’s backside!”
Finch has called critics of his lack of experience “ageist”. He told the BBC: “All I see is age … I don’t care about my age. Would people be questioning if there was a 70-year-old at the helm? Probably not. Joe Biden, Donald Trump, presidents that are older – no one questions it. But they’re questioning someone who is 19.”
At West Northamptonshire, the Conservatives laid out a formal motion addressing the lack of a corporate plan from Reform. There was “no vision, no manifesto, no plan” from Reform, said the Conservative councillor Daniel Lister.
But the council’s Reform leader, Mark Arnull, told the BBC: “The danger when we write manifestos is that sometimes you have to keep to them.”
‘Doge’ units
The “give us time” plea is one that has been expressed by a number of Reform councillors. Political observers say it is a message that comes from not having had firm plans in the first place.
Colin Talbot, an emeritus professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said: “I went through Reform’s national policy statements and they had no policies whatsoever on local government. Nothing at all. They really haven’t thought about local government and what they want to do with it.”
In speeches before the election, Farage spoke of fixing a broken Britain, which included “broken councils”. On 2 May, he warned that council staff working on diversity or climate change initiatives should be “seeking alternative careers”.
The party has pledged to save money by sending in an Elon Musk-style “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit to examine all council spending in the areas it controls. It would use artificial intelligence, advanced data analysis tools and forensic auditing techniques to “identify wasteful spending and recommend actionable solutions”.
Talbot said he believed there was little scope for any major savings because councils had already gone through more than a decade of austerity. “There is nothing left to cut, basically.”
He said the 10 councils Reform had control of had already agreed to savings totalling £500m because of the extreme financial pressure on local government.
And even if they find possible savings, Reform’s “Doge units” might find it tricky to force through cuts. “These units are not part of the council,” Talbot said. “They’ve not been authorised by the council. They are Reform entities and they’ve got no legal standing with the council. I suspect council officials will put up roadblocks to them getting access to data and so on, unless they’re instructed to by Reform councillors.
“Even then, I suspect they’ll be open to legal challenge if it involves handing over things like people’s personal data about their council taxes and so on. So they’re pretty hemmed in.”
If anything, Reform has been accused of costing taxpayers money because of several byelections being held since May after its councillors stepped down for various reasons. Each byelection is estimated to cost councils £25,000.
In Nottinghamshire, a Reform councillor quit after six days because, a full council meeting heard, “he realised he wasn’t up for the job”. A Conservative won the byelection. In Durham, a Reform councillor resigned after a week for failing to declare he worked for the council. A Lib Dem councillor was elected in his place.
That is not to say the Reform bandwagon has stopped. Its candidates have won other byelections caused by resignations and the party also gained its first council seat at the polls in London – Alan Cook won a Bromley byelection from a turnout of 28%.
‘Wrong side of the tide’
Reform continues to perform strongly in opinion polls, and many on the left and centre are worried.
Talbot, who has experience of many elections over the decades, said Reform’s May victories needed to be treated with caution.
“They have established quite a strong beachhead in local government,” he said. “However, beachhead is probably the right word because they’re on the wrong side of the tide. More than half of the councils they’ve taken over are top-tier county councils, which are due to disappear under the local government reorganisation.”
Talbot said Reform’s success came from protest votes. “They only do well when they are standing for impotent levels of government, so Ukip did well when they stood for the European parliament. But when it comes to central government, actual elections not polls, they tend to do not very well at all.
“Also, there aren’t any local charismatic leaders coming out of any of this. Reform isn’t the sort of party which would encourage that anyway … it’s Farage’s party. You can’t imagine anyone challenging him, whereas you can in the Lib Dems, Tories or Labour.”
More than 100 days into their tenure, Reform councils have faced hundreds of protesters outside full meetings. In Durham, they were casually dismissed by the deputy leader, Darren Grimes, as “the jobless masses”.
Inside council chambers, Reform councillors are going out of their way to present a united front. In Durham, they posed for an awkward group photo wearing “Make Durham Great Again” baseball caps.
How long can they stay united? Will Reform councils go the way of the only Ukip-led council, Thanet, where in 2015 the party lost its majority after less than five months because of splits.
“They are, by nature, a bunch of mavericks and protesters and dissidents,” Talbot said. “They very quickly fall out with each other usually … there is no cultural cohesion to them as a party. They tend to fall apart very quickly.”
