After seizing control of ten councils this month, the Reform party has dramatically reshaped England’s local politics. The insurgent party, which won 677 council seats out of roughly 1,600, as well as the mayoralty of two combined authorities, now commands billions of pounds in public services in areas that are home to some 10 million people. The councils under the hard-right, populist party’s control are among the largest in terms of budgets and the number of constituents they serve.
Reform has very clearly signalled that its approach will be confrontational. Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, has announced what he calls a “war” against renewable energy projects and diversity initiatives. He has even declared he will be writing to Lincolnshire businesses personally about these matters—never mind that it was former Tory minister Andrea Jenkyns, not Tice, who was elected the Reform mayor of Greater Lincolnshire. The party also declared that its councils will only fly “the Union Jack, St George’s flag and county flags”, banning shows of solidarity with war-torn Ukraine, for instance.
More importantly, perhaps, the party is on a collision course with financial reality. The savings likely to materialise from, say, sacking officials responsible for diversity or inclusion are nominal (especially as Lincolnshire County Council, for one, has confirmed that it doesn’t actually employ anyone to run DEI initiatives). But the costs of picking fights with unions or stalling job creation and investment in solar tech will undermine the credibility of Reform councillors. Some Reform-controlled authorities already have no budgetary breathing space. A look at the financial accounts of Durham and Lincolnshire reveals that they are already operating at their minimum reserves threshold.
Reform might also meet resistance from council officials. If so, that resistance will not be partisan: council officers, the local equivalent of civil servants, exist to serve elected representatives. Some officials, however, such as the Section 151 Officer—a financial guardian who has legal powers to impose spending controls when elected councillors make financially unsound decisions—may find themselves navigating aggrieved Reform representatives. Indeed, in their attempt to uphold what officers understand to be good governance or procedural correctness, they may inadvertently confirm Reform’s simplistic view that bureaucrats and the “establishment” cannot get anything done. Plenty of councillors who your correspondent has served with have articulated similar concerns about bureaucracy. This seems an opportune moment to note that institutions charged with spending public money have to adhere to procedures, policies, legislation and standards for good reason.
Whether those intra-council clashes come or not, Reform does appear to be preparing for confrontation with Whitehall. The party has said it will challenge government policies on asylum accommodation through local judicial review or planning processes. This might be easier said than done, however. In the not-too-distant past, the High Court highlighted the legal obligations of local authorities to house asylum seekers. In July 2023, for instance, in a case brought by children’s rights organisation ECPAT UK against Kent County Council, the court ruled that the Home Office’s failure to distribute unaccompanied asylum-seeking children evenly across England had overwhelmed public services in local authorities. But the court also concluded that Kent had failed to accommodate asylum-seeking children once they arrived, something that the local authority is legally required to do. If councils saw any victory in the court noting the Home Office’s failings, surely it was pyrrhic.
Taking central government on via the planning system would not be cost-free, either. The Planning Inspectorate or the deputy prime minister could overrule councils. Still, such action could slow down the accommodation of asylum seekers in Reform-controlled areas, even if it doesn’t stop it indefinitely. That might seem a worthwhile political reward to Reform.
For the most part, over the last four decades Labour or Tory-run local authorities have avoided direct confrontation with central government. It was the Conservatives who last weaponised local resistance by dubbing Labour councils the “loony left” in the 1980s, a strategy that Labour thought was politically counter-productive. The party's leader at the time, Neil Kinnock, publicly criticised Labour-run Liverpool City Council for taking on Whitehall too directly. That has left an indelible mark on the psychology of local governance among the main parties. Councils have not exercised that level of resistance since.
And, while the government does retain powers to remove councillors or even abolish the councils they serve—as Margaret Thatcher famously did with the Greater London Council in 1986— exercising such powers is risky. It could make a martyr out of Reform.
It is too early to tell what form any divisions among Reform’s newly elected councillors could take. The party's rapid expansion has attracted a broad spectrum of defectors, including former Tories and Lib Dems. Plenty of politicians have defected from political parties in the past, but the number in Reform’s ranks does seem disproportionately high. In one striking example, a Reform candidate in Shropshire publicly expressed a desire to defect from Reform during the local elections campaign, only to win election. Donna Edmunds was suspended by the party within 48 hours of her victory. She has since resigned, having described Reform as a “cult”. (The Covert Councillor refuses to be drawn on whether they are one of these defectors to or from Reform).
Polling by More in Common reveals that, while immigration was driving much of the party’s support, the policies that Reform councillors will actually be administering are less salient. The electorate is not intimately familiar with the labyrinthine nature of local government, and, according to More in Common, few people decided to support the party in the local elections because they actually liked a Reform candidate running in their area. Once Reform voters learn that councillors cannot stop immigration, will the fault lines between Nigel Farage and locally elected Reform representatives start to emerge?
History provides a telling lesson. When smaller “anti-establishment” parties have people elected into local office, their members do not always see eye-to-eye. Ukip, Reform’s earlier incarnation, faced similar challenges when it gained a foothold in the London Assembly. The political discipline of those elected representatives was poor. They were embattled, suffering defections out of the party before their term was out.
Reform is now vying with the Greens to be the fourth-largest party in England. In 2026, it will likely surpass the Green party. Further Reform-friendly authorities such as Essex are at risk of changing hands.
The party has, in theory, already secured seats at the top of the local government table. The Greater Lincolnshire mayor, Andrea Jenkyns, and the Hull and East Yorkshire mayor, the former boxer and Olympic gold medallist Luke Campbell, are both now members of the Council of Nations and Regions—the political body whose membership includes the prime minister, the first ministers of the devolved nations, and all the combined authority mayors. This means they will have a direct line to the cabinet. Will this platform enable Reform to amplify its message and directly challenge government policy?
After Reform’s big win on 1st May, much of the focus has been on whether this is a watershed moment in UK politics, or a momentary blip in a volatile system that will soon lurch back to being a two-party contest. Such matters are above the Covert Councillor’s pay grade, but if Reform councils systematically obstruct central government, as they seem to be promising to do, public trust in local governance could erode. Progress on devolution could stall, too.
In Cornwall, Leicestershire and Worcestershire, Reform is likely to have to go into coalition with another party, so even a handful of councillor defections or a breakdown between those coalitions could topple Reform administrations. Those coalitions may struggle to remain united if Reform insists on the path Farage and Tice have suggested. The next 12 months will determine whether Farage’s political project can translate electoral success into better local public services. While wishing Reform’s representatives well, the Covert Councillor is sceptical—and before too long anticipates a column or two on their failings.
