Local government is about competence, stability and delivering reliable public services — not simply making headlines or winning protest votes. That is why the growing instability surrounding Reform UK councillors should concern voters across England.
Reform UK’s breakthrough in the May 2025 local elections was undeniably dramatic. According to the House of Commons Library, the party won 677 council seats, 41% of all seats contested, and took control of ten councils.
But what has happened since raises serious questions about whether Reform was prepared for the responsibilities of local government.
Liberal Democrats Political analyst, Lord Mark Pack, documented that by April 2026, Reform had already lost 27 councillors elected in 2025 through suspensions, expulsions, resignations, defections or criminal proceedings. That amounts to roughly 4% of the councillors the party had won just 12 months earlier.
The cases included councillors suspended over racist comments, criminal convictions, harassment allegations and individuals abandoning the party altogether.
The instability has continued again after the May 2026 elections. Further newly elected Reform councillors were quickly suspended or condemned over allegations involving racist and extremist content, including Holocaust denial and Islamophobic social media posts.
The issue is not simply the number of councillors lost. It is the speed with which serious controversies keep emerging.
For Liberal Democrats, this points to a deeper problem: Reform UK expanded faster than its internal organisation could manage. That concern is reinforced by Reform UK now advertising for a dedicated “Vetting Officer” to conduct background checks, social media reviews and reputational risk assessments on candidates.
Proper vetting is obviously welcome, the Liberal Democrats introduced it years ago. Every serious political party should ensure candidates meet high standards before standing for election, but the timing raises difficult questions.
Why is Reform only now building a professional vetting system after winning hundreds of council seats and taking control of local authorities across England? What’s more, Reform reportedly now has more than 2,400 councillors nationwide. Can a single vetting officer realistically oversee the checks required for parliamentary, mayoral and council candidates while also monitoring existing representatives?
Proper vetting is not a simple exercise. It requires reviewing years of social media activity, identifying extremist associations, checking reputational risks and ensuring candidates are suitable to represent the public.
Even if Reform appoints someone immediately, building an effective system will take time. Procedures, standards, escalation processes and monitoring systems cannot appear overnight.
That means much of the vetting may inevitably become retrospective, identifying problems only after candidates have already appeared on ballot papers, won elections and taken office.
Local councils are responsible for some of the most important services people rely upon every day: adult social care, safeguarding vulnerable children, waste collection, housing, roads and public health. These are not areas where instability and poor preparation can simply be brushed aside.
Local government works best when councillors focus on community service, competence and accountability, not constant controversy and internal crisis management. Winning elections is one thing. Demonstrating the discipline, professionalism and organisational stability required to run councils effectively is something very different.
* Iain Donaldson is the treasurer of the Rochdale Liberal Democrats.
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45 Comments
Talking about Reform, why doesn’t Sir Ed take up the issue of delays of over four hours in extreme temperatures at Dover due to Brexit Border Controls ?
Vote Reform, what do you get ? Wait four hours in a queue, get sunstroke, no access to toilets, trapped in a car. Imagine being elderly or in a family group with young kids needing a nappy change…… thanks a lot, Nige.
It’s not Protest, its extreme Racism with a big dose of Authoritarian. If Reform Councils cause chaos perhaps that will be a learning experience for those who Voted for them ?
Competent Reform Councils would be much worse.
Thank you for this! I am one of the unfortunates that has been saddled with a Reform Council and it was found our current Council Leader is mates with some very dodgy people.
They are not fit to Govern, here in Suffolk and also Essex they plan on launching a Court Case against the LGR plans that have already been approved and are planning on using tax to fund it while simultaneously cutting bus services. (And our routes already don’t cover enough ground.) It is ridiculous and I plan on running a campaign against it throughout the year.
” it was found our current Council Leader is mates with some very dodgy people.”
You mean one can tell a man by the company he keeps…?
Locally we’ve lost significant resources across the county in the last 15/20 years. Libraries , community centres, sure start centres, bus services reduced heavily or removed completely – especially early and late services and outlying villages, roads in poor state of repair.etc .This happened under various political colours before Reform even existed.
@Rosemary Runswick 23rd May ’26 – 7:41pm…
Here in my Suffolk council area Reform have won 41 seats and have a clear majority..
Regarding accountability. Sadly, we are not dealing with a political party, answerable to criticism; Reform is a cult run by Nigel Farage and, as such, no matter their failings their supporters will find excuses (usually involving minorities) to excuse them..
Expats, I think it would be better to concentrate on why a Conservative area like that chose to elect 41 Reform councillors as opposed to just 2 Lib Dems, ending over twenty years of Conservative rule.
Reform are ahead of Greens in terms of vetting, but I’m not sure either parties supporters/potential supporters question overall competency based on these growing pains. Maybe in 3 years if mistakes still rife.
I think voters want honesty and improvements. Reform sell distraction and a protest vote rather than rolling up sleeves and bringing people forward. Highlight this difference more please.
Chloe 24th May ’26 – 9:23am…….Expats, I think it would be better to concentrate on why a Conservative area like that chose to elect 41 Reform councillors as opposed to just 2 Lib Dems, ending over twenty years of Conservative rule.
Chloe, It’s not rocket science.. Few voters even know the names of their local councillors; they vote for the party and Reform are in the ascendancy..
Most of the ‘Conservative voters’ I know are to the right of the party; it doesn’t take much to ‘go the extra yard’, especially when the current Tory party is so unpopular..
As I wrote on another post, the only party that sent out leaflets or visited my house were the Greens; nothing from this party, Labour, Conservative or Reform. However, everyone knows what Reform promises and, in a right leaning area, they won..
BTW, In my immediate area the Green Party pushed them very close and won one of the seats..
@Chloe I hate to say but it was not Reform the Lib Dem voters in Suffolk turned to but the Greens, we lost two of our four Seats here to the Greens which was frustrating because they didn’t have much of a local campaign and yet still became the opposition!
We are failing to be a progressive voice on the national level, and that is hurting all our efforts on the ground and I feel for all our candidates who have lost on failures that were not their own fault, of whom many are now expressing frustration.
@ Rosemary Runswick “I hate to say but it was not Reform the Lib Dem voters in Suffolk turned to but the Greens”.
Why hate to say it ? I personally would much prefer to have a Green local authority administration to a Reform chaotic and highly prejudiced administration. IMHO I think you’ll find most Lib Dem voters would probably agree with that.
I worry that Reform will win Makerfield by 500 votes and we poll 550 and let them in
@David Don’t get me wrong I also prefer it to Reform, but I feel it should be us filling that space and not the Greens.
@theakes
You are, with respect, assuming that if those 550 people hadn’t been voting LibDem they would have supported Burnham. And I suspect not a few of them would be like my dreadful great aunt who told me long ago “Be a Liberal if you must, but don’t you be a Socialist or I’ll disown you” (She eventually did disown me in a row over her sister’s will, but that’s another story) and if forced to choose between a Farageist and a “Socialist” would unhesitatingly choose the Farageist.
@Neil Hickman 25th May ’26 – 12:01pm…
Anyone who would, “if forced to choose between a Farageist and a “Socialist” would unhesitatingly choose the Farageist.”, should, rightly, be called “Dreadful”
@expats – completely with you there.
Restore Britain, [a party that didn’t exist 12 weeks ago], are going to shock politics to their core. Restore Britain will NOT win Makerfield, but the strength of their vote will shock and restructure the Right of politics. Farage and Reform will weep, and Burnham might sneak through, but at this stage nobody really cares about the false God of Manchester. Voters want the kind of change that Red,Blue and Orange have conspired to deny them for 50 years.
A good issue to focus on, Iain, but you have misread the numbers on the UNDER side.
According to Mark’s tracker, RefUK lost 74 2025 cohort Councillors by 6 May 2026.
The 27 is the number of Councillors already defenestrated since 6 May 2026, comprising around 16 from the 2026 cohort, and a further ~10 from the 2025 cohort. There is a bit of a backlog held over due to the names preserved after election closing date until the election.
The big number is that they lost 1 in 9 of the 2025 cohort in the first 12 months. I have been tipping Mark from time to time over the year as they defenestrate, and it shows no sign of slowing down as far as I can see.
What is most interesting is that this is starting to break through more and more, and has featured in eg both New Statesman and Private Eye podcasts since the election.
It’s a bit of classic blog campaigning – document the facts, put it somewhere the media will look (a Lordly Blog), then some of them will pick up an easy, convenient story. It is one to keep talking about, and a similar thing is happening with some of the more esoteric Greens.
Tom Bailey 25th May ’26 – 3:43pm…..Restore Britain…. are going to shock politics to their core.
Ah, ‘Restore Britain’..
Ref your 22nd May ’26 – 7:34pm post about how your main worry for your granddaughters was “that they will encounter migrants who have adopted a 7th Century belief system from their 7th Century country of origin”, .
I wondered why someone posting on a LibDem site might find that their main concern.. Thanks for enlightening me..
expats, Its your privilege to exclude views you don’t like on LDV, but that way you will sit in an echo chamber, and never know what is actually happening in real politics, on the ground, in the real world.
Truth of the matter is, frankly, no-one cares what Tom Bailey or expats think : its where voters put their [x] that matters, and those votes are going to shock anyone who believes that politics is going to return to the cynical R~B+O uni-party of the last 50 years.
– Tom Bailey
These voters aren’t the silent majority you think they are. They’re a small minority, well outside the mainstream of British opinion. You may feel like you’re plugged into the real world, but you’re in a far right disinformation bubble that mistakes fringe outrage for mass sentiment.
Restore’s ceiling is roughly where the BNP used to sit. When the breakthrough you’re predicting doesn’t materialise, will you revisit your assumptions? History suggests not. This is the doomsday cult problem: when the prophecy fails, the true believers don’t reassess, they find a new explanation and move on to the next prediction.
The ‘Hitler was right’ tendency has always existed in British politics. It has never come close to power, and it won’t now.
Tom Bailey 25th May ’26 – 6:39pm…expats, Its your privilege to exclude views you don’t like on LDV, but that way you will sit in an echo chamber, and never know what is actually happening in real politics, on the ground, in the real world…..
Tom, I don’t seek to ‘exclude’ your views, just to understand where you get your information from.
I’ve read the aims and policies of ‘Reform Britain and I’d summarise them as a group who’d describe the Reform party as a “A bunch of Woke Lefties”
Thank you to everyone who engaged constructively with the article. Many commenters reinforced the central point: local government depends on competence, stability and serious preparation, not simply electoral momentum or protest politics. The issue is not ideology alone, but whether Reform UK built the organisational structures needed to govern responsibly before taking control of councils. Some argued other parties have also overseen cuts and declining services, which is true, but that does not excuse repeated suspensions, controversies and apparent failures in candidate vetting. Voters deserve councillors focused on delivering reliable services and representing communities professionally, rather than continual internal crises and reputational damage.
Andrew, People have deep concerns for the safety of women and children and all that legacy politics can do is to try to shame people with their real fears reframed as a *moral deficiency*. When it comes to protecting their children or wearing a Liberal defined badge of *moral deficiency*, they WILL protect their children and wear your badge of *moral deficiency* with pride.
I don’t know why the lanyard class want to turn Britain into a “Camp of the Saints” , but it will end very badly.
@Tom Bailey: People who have genuine concerns for the safety of women and children know better than to support far-right parties such as Restore or Reform. The far right seem only interested in a particular type of perpetrator (in particular their ethnicity) of violence against women and children, and ignore the vast majority of cases where the perpetrator is known to the victim (as in a close family member or friend). Where is the outrage from Tommy Ten-Names and the like over the lenient sentences given to those three boys who raped teenage girls? I’ve not heard a peep from them. Maybe because the circumstances don’t fit their preferred narrative. At least they haven’t encouraged speculation about the ethnicity of the (anonymous) perpetrators in order to promote unrest. Shhh, better not give you lot any ideas.
@ Alex Macfie Great post, Alex. Well said.
Google’s your friend Alex , TR condemned it very swiftly and continues to highlight it- as his 2 million followers on twitter will testify.
As for Tom’s valid points – progressives are doing themselves no favours in failing to admit that there has been disproportionate levels of assaults on women – but to admit that you’d be flying in the face of – Diversity is our strength mantra…
Not seen anything from Tommy Ten-Names about that incident. And frankly, his followers are more likely than the average people to be perpetrators of abuse, so any such comment would be grossly hypocritical. I’ve heard from Charlotte Proudman and Gisèle Pelicot (neither of whom would want anything to do with the far right) about it. Not from people who only care when the perpetrators are of a particular ethnic group.
Oh, and who exactly are the “lanyard class”? Sounds like any kind of office worker would fit into that category. School students as well — in my day they didn’t generally wear lanyards but they all seem to do so now.
Alex; May the 21st @7.29pm on the day of the sentence – he wrote in disgust of the sentences. As I said, Google is your friend.
Obviously your hear only what you want to hear – that’s the problem … Nuneaton, Bournemouth, Epping, Ruby, etc etc …I could go on but it’s an endless list of convictions of assaults on women by perpetrators who should ever have been here…One must wonder if there’s any number before recognising that it’s a serious issue – or is it infinite ?
@Craig Levene: There are also many assaults on women by men who have every right to live here. As I said most such assaults are domestic in nature.
So you’re answer to that Alex is – let’s import some more…
@Craig Levene: That old cliché. There is no evidence that perpetrators of assaults on women are disproportionately of any particular ethnic group or status. Therefore there is no valid reason to suppose that people of any particular ethnic group coming into this country are more likely than people already here to commit such crimes. Any assessment of likelihood of a migrant to commit any crime needs to be done on an individual level and not on the basis of their ethnicity.
Many (surely most) serious violent crimes are committed by people already living legally in this country. Therefore to reduce the incidence of such crimes we should strip everyone living here of their legal right to live here and deport them. That’s the logic of the argument about “importing more”.
To those that haven’t read it, I thoroughly recommend reading The Camp of the Saints. If after reading it you still don’t see what’s coming, then I seriously fear for my grandchildren’s future.
Tom Bailey 28th May ’26 – 5:32pm….To those that haven’t read it, I thoroughly recommend reading The Camp of the Saints.
Just another dystopian novel. As for your reason for reading it, As Orwell’s dystopian ‘1984’ points out, “The best books are those that tell you what you know already.”
expats, I’ve noticed that there are about 25% of folk on these threads that are still *open* and worth debating with. Sadly, many here are so locked-in and closed from the political zeitgeist that they would make Whigs look *eye-rollingly* enlightened. I’m happy to debate here for as long as there might be one person that has the ability to re-calibrate their Liberal *lanyard-ist* views, to accommodate policies to help those troubled left-behind citizens, who are not in their perceived social class.
Good luck on June 18th.
-Tom Bailey
Challenged on facts, you resort to citing a poorly written 1970s novel that even its admirers describe as racist, and which directly inspired far-right terrorists like Anders Breivik.
I’m a software engineer working in medical research. In the building where I work everyone wears a lanyard — receptionists, physicists, cleaners, chemists, clinicians. The research done here has saved thousands of lives. What exactly have we done to deserve your contempt?
Manufactured panics about the danger men of colour pose to white women have been a staple of the far right for centuries. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of rapes and sexual assaults committed in the UK are by white British men. Many of the men loudest in protesting against refugees themselves have convictions for violence against women. Your grandchildren have more to fear from Restore voters than refugees.
@ Iain Donaldson, apologies for the part I’ve played in derailing this thread.
@Alex McFie: You’ve changed the framing to ethnic group. And of course you’re correct in that regard: There’s no reason to think that ethnicity causes a tendency to attack women. But I believe the correct framing is in terms of culture. If you’ve been brought up in a culture that demeans women, or regards women as the property of men, then it’s not hard to see how that could make it more likely that you’ll see nothing wrong with abusing women. Also, being male increases the likelihood quite dramatically, as I imagine would being surrounded almost entirely by other males, therefore gaining no understanding of women: That is relevant considering almost all asylum seekers are male. None of that changes the need to be compassionate etc., but it does indicate we shouldn’t dismiss the risk out of hand.
The discussion seems to have veered away from the content of Iain’s article. I agree with Iain that there does seem to be a serious issue that (quite apart from our disagreements with Reform’s politics) Reform just don’t seem to have the internal structures or stability in place to be form stable groups to run local authorities.
Simon Robinson 29th May ’26 – 6:01am…. But I believe the correct framing is in terms of culture. If you’ve been brought up in a culture that demeans women, or regards women as the property of men, then it’s not hard to see how that could make it more likely that you’ll see nothing wrong with abusing women.
Simon (Tom Bailey), Perhaps you could explain why around half of those arrested at demonstrations against those men of ‘another culture’ have, themselves, been arrested for ‘domestic violence’?
@expats: Around half of people who have been *arrested* at certain demonstrations have previously committed a crime. Wow, who’d have thought….
(And yes, I am aware of the awful irony if previous crimes are for domestic violence, but I don’t think that invalidates anything I’ve said)
I wanted to explain why we haven’t published some comments which purport to “prove” that foreign nationals are more likely to commit sexual assaults. The evidence from a think tank has been misrepresented in the right wing press with lurid headlines.
Basically, only 3% of reported sex assaults in the UK result in people being charged. Of those only about half lead to convictions. Statistically that is a tiny sample so we have no way of knowing whether the demographics of those who are convicted reflect the full cohort.
Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence that ethnic minority / foreign nationals (and they are not the same, of course) are not treated in the same as others by the police and the courts.
Tom Bailey 25th May ’26 – 3:43pm:
Restore Britain, [a party that didn’t exist 12 weeks ago], are going to shock politics to their core. Restore Britain will NOT win Makerfield, but the strength of their vote will shock and restructure the Right of politics.
When the truth emerges about Restore Britain it may shock politics, but for a different reason. You might like to do some, more, research.
Mary;;Fully understand that decision. There are statistics that run contrary ito what Andrew outlined in his post. And it doesn’t give me any satisfaction in saying that the recent tragic events in Hampshire would go unmentioned on these pages , which would be the opposite if the ethnicities were reversed
But what has happened since raises serious questions about whether Reform was prepared for the responsibilities of local government.
They weren’t. In Nigel Farage’s article on the Saturday following the elections he outlined what they are doing to support new councillors…
Why is Reform only now building a professional vetting system after winning hundreds of council seats and taking control of local authorities across England?
Just cut and paste that question into…
https://gemini.google.com
jeff,
I really don’t think Alex Phillips is a valid source of information. Instead of getting into “he said, she said”, why don’t we let the voters of Makerfield make their decision.
By the way Rupert Lowe will be releasing a report about child grooming in a few days, lets see how the media try to attack that
Though political vetting plays an important role it is also essential that councillors of any Party or none are competent, legitimate and responsible. There should be sufficient resources to ensure that any not fulfilling the minimum required leave.