There have been plenty of Westminster whispers lately suggesting that Reform UK had peaked and was proving to be a flash-in-the-pan. Well, the whisperers have evaporated. We have shattered their delusional worldview once again.
In Thursday’s local elections in England, Reform UK stormed to success both in areas that have been run by the Conservatives for generations and those that Labour has dominated for a century. We won the biggest national vote share for the second year running, gained more than 1,450 seats and took control of 14 councils.
We won those seats right across the country, from Wakefield to Walsall, from Sunderland to Suffolk, and everywhere in between. And in Wales we came from nowhere and finished a close second, winning 34 seats in the Senedd and ending 27 years of Labour rule.
As I predicted before the elections, Reform UK is now a truly national political party. Meanwhile, the Conservatives, despite their bold talk, have ceased to be a national party and have been reduced to a rump. The Tories lost well over 500 seats on Thursday. We routed them in their heartlands, most notably in Essex, where their party leader and many of their shadow cabinet members are MPs. If these results were repeated at a general election, they would all be wiped out. Nothing says “We’re back” quite like losing your seats!
So Thursday was an historic day, signalling the end of the old establishment’s two-party system. But now that the campaign is over, we are looking ahead to the next step.
On Friday night I gave a victory speech to supporters in Essex, where not only did Reform UK take the county council, but also, in the unitary council of Thurrock, won over 90% of the seats. I said that whilst we should be celebrating, we must also accept that these victories now come with a great deal of responsibility. People have placed their faith in us, in a political system where faith is rapidly collapsing.
We can certainly point to the good work done in the county councils where we won majority control in May 2025. One year on, the nine councils where we have majority control have saved more than £300 million so far by cutting waste and putting frontline services first. We’ve managed to keep council tax rises lower on average than comparable councils run by any other political party.
That’s just a start. Now we have to show people around the country that, when you elect Reform UK, you get real change. Take Lincolnshire where, in recent weeks, Reform UK has sought to take the government to a judicial review to stop Labour’s Net Zero zealots from covering good agricultural land with one of the largest solar farms in Europe.
In Lancashire, the Reform-run council has launched a bold initiative by declaring that it will leave the government’s migrant resettlement programme. The council made clear that there are real problems facing the people of Lancashire - including ex-servicemen living rough - which ought to take priority over spending more millions on illegal immigrants.
At our victory party in Essex on Friday, a journalist asked me what Reform UK would do differently in the county we had just won from the Conservatives. I told him, for starters, we were strongly against the local government reorganisation that would divide Essex into five amorphous districts.
That would mean, in the case of my Clacton constituency, the town hall closing and the area being run from Braintree or Colchester. Nobody voted for or was even consulted about these impositions. Reform UK will fight them in the same democratic spirit that saw us take the government to court to stop Labour from conspiring with the Conservatives to cancel Essex’s local elections.
I said we would certainly fight against more of Essex’s good farming land being covered with solar farms. And we will look very hard at leaving the government’s migrant resettlement policy. We will do whatever we can to cut wasteful expenditure and keep people’s council tax rises as low as possible, as Reform-run councils have done elsewhere.
Whilst I am not going to tell our new councils exactly what policies they should and should not prioritise, there are of course some broad principles that come with running a Reform UK council.
The first is always to put the needs of local people first. Our councillors should make sure they act in a disciplined way and keep their disagreements behind closed doors. The voters, I do believe, deserve that. More than that, our new councils need to run their areas professionally and take advantage of the experience we already have.
We’re building a team of experienced professionals in local government to help our new councils through what is not an easy job. Reform UK will soon launch our local government unit. Its members will include a long-serving former Labour mayor of an inner London borough, and a former Conservative who was both a mayor and led a county council.
We have not promised at any point that we can wave a magic wand. Indeed throughout the election campaign, I was at pains to say that we must not over-promise and under-deliver. But we will do our very best to make a difference in all those areas that have voted Reform UK for real change.
Whilst our voters put us in control of these councils at the local elections, the truth is that many will have voted Reform UK with an eye to the next general election. Winning on Thursday was another big step for us on the road to winning that election.
We know that how we perform in the councils that we now control will count when it comes to people electing a Reform UK government. We take that responsibility very seriously.
In Thursday’s local elections in England, Reform UK stormed to success both in areas that have been run by the Conservatives for generations and those that Labour has dominated for a century. We won the biggest national vote share for the second year running, gained more than 1,450 seats and took control of 14 councils.
We won those seats right across the country, from Wakefield to Walsall, from Sunderland to Suffolk, and everywhere in between. And in Wales we came from nowhere and finished a close second, winning 34 seats in the Senedd and ending 27 years of Labour rule.
As I predicted before the elections, Reform UK is now a truly national political party. Meanwhile, the Conservatives, despite their bold talk, have ceased to be a national party and have been reduced to a rump. The Tories lost well over 500 seats on Thursday. We routed them in their heartlands, most notably in Essex, where their party leader and many of their shadow cabinet members are MPs. If these results were repeated at a general election, they would all be wiped out. Nothing says “We’re back” quite like losing your seats!
So Thursday was an historic day, signalling the end of the old establishment’s two-party system. But now that the campaign is over, we are looking ahead to the next step.
On Friday night I gave a victory speech to supporters in Essex, where not only did Reform UK take the county council, but also, in the unitary council of Thurrock, won over 90% of the seats. I said that whilst we should be celebrating, we must also accept that these victories now come with a great deal of responsibility. People have placed their faith in us, in a political system where faith is rapidly collapsing.
We can certainly point to the good work done in the county councils where we won majority control in May 2025. One year on, the nine councils where we have majority control have saved more than £300 million so far by cutting waste and putting frontline services first. We’ve managed to keep council tax rises lower on average than comparable councils run by any other political party.
That’s just a start. Now we have to show people around the country that, when you elect Reform UK, you get real change. Take Lincolnshire where, in recent weeks, Reform UK has sought to take the government to a judicial review to stop Labour’s Net Zero zealots from covering good agricultural land with one of the largest solar farms in Europe.
In Lancashire, the Reform-run council has launched a bold initiative by declaring that it will leave the government’s migrant resettlement programme. The council made clear that there are real problems facing the people of Lancashire - including ex-servicemen living rough - which ought to take priority over spending more millions on illegal immigrants.
At our victory party in Essex on Friday, a journalist asked me what Reform UK would do differently in the county we had just won from the Conservatives. I told him, for starters, we were strongly against the local government reorganisation that would divide Essex into five amorphous districts.
That would mean, in the case of my Clacton constituency, the town hall closing and the area being run from Braintree or Colchester. Nobody voted for or was even consulted about these impositions. Reform UK will fight them in the same democratic spirit that saw us take the government to court to stop Labour from conspiring with the Conservatives to cancel Essex’s local elections.
I said we would certainly fight against more of Essex’s good farming land being covered with solar farms. And we will look very hard at leaving the government’s migrant resettlement policy. We will do whatever we can to cut wasteful expenditure and keep people’s council tax rises as low as possible, as Reform-run councils have done elsewhere.
Whilst I am not going to tell our new councils exactly what policies they should and should not prioritise, there are of course some broad principles that come with running a Reform UK council.
The first is always to put the needs of local people first. Our councillors should make sure they act in a disciplined way and keep their disagreements behind closed doors. The voters, I do believe, deserve that. More than that, our new councils need to run their areas professionally and take advantage of the experience we already have.
We’re building a team of experienced professionals in local government to help our new councils through what is not an easy job. Reform UK will soon launch our local government unit. Its members will include a long-serving former Labour mayor of an inner London borough, and a former Conservative who was both a mayor and led a county council.
We have not promised at any point that we can wave a magic wand. Indeed throughout the election campaign, I was at pains to say that we must not over-promise and under-deliver. But we will do our very best to make a difference in all those areas that have voted Reform UK for real change.
Whilst our voters put us in control of these councils at the local elections, the truth is that many will have voted Reform UK with an eye to the next general election. Winning on Thursday was another big step for us on the road to winning that election.
We know that how we perform in the councils that we now control will count when it comes to people electing a Reform UK government. We take that responsibility very seriously.
(This is a slightly edited version of an article published in the Sunday Telegraph on 10th May.)
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