Reform won control of 10 councils outright in May 2025 and emerged as the largest party in a few others. They won 677 seats in the 2025 local elections, but within six weeks that number had fallen to 668 due to five suspensions and four councillors stepping down. The haemorrhaging has continued since, with Kent alone dropping from 57 councillors elected in May to just 48 by late October.
That’s a significant chunk of their representation gone in barely six months.
Kent: The “Shop Window” That’s Become a Showcase for Chaos
Kent County Council was meant to be Reform’s flagship operation. Council leader Linden Kemkaran described it as the “shop window” to show the country that Reform can govern competently. That hasn’t quite gone to plan.
The whole thing blew up spectacularly in October when The Guardian published leaked video footage of a Reform group meeting where Kemkaran berated her colleagues, telling them to “f***ing suck it up” if they disagreed with her decisions. She threatened to mute one councillor for simply asking questions about local government reorganisation.
Her response? She called the leak an act of “treachery” and announced a hunt to find those responsible, describing them as “weak” and “cowards”. Four councillors were promptly suspended, with five eventually expelled from the party altogether.
It gets worse. Expelled councillors are now threatening legal action – one is taking the party to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal, another is considering a libel suit over allegations made about him in a party press release. Opposition leaders have called for Kemkaran to step down, saying the council is “in chaos now and it is really starting to damage Kent”.
The Liberal Democrats claim the chaos has even caused the council’s Director of Adult Social Care to leave, and say meetings have been cancelled affecting school transport decisions.
There’s also the small matter of Mick Barton, the Reform leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, banning the local newspaper from talking to any Reform councillors – which rather suggests they’re not handling scrutiny terribly well.
Cornwall: Locked Out Entirely
In Cornwall, Reform won the most seats (28) but fell short of a majority. The Liberal Democrats, Labour and independents refused to work with them, forming a coalition instead. Reform cried foul, calling it a “total stitch-up” and claiming the democratic will of voters was being subverted.
The Lib Dem response was fairly blunt: “Reform’s vote share was 32 per cent. So 68 per cent of the people of Cornwall did not vote for Reform. So the democratic will of the people of Cornwall is not to have a Reform-led council”.
The group leader in Cornwall has since resigned, adding to the general sense of disarray.
Warwickshire: The Teenage Leader and the Pride Flag
Then there’s Warwickshire, where 18-year-old George Finch became the UK’s youngest ever council leader after his predecessor resigned for health reasons just five weeks into the job.
Within days, Finch was embroiled in a public row with chief executive Monica Fogarty over a Pride flag. He ordered her to remove it; she refused, telling him that flag-flying decisions were her remit, not his. Reform’s then-chairman Zia Yusuf responded by accusing Fogarty of a “coup d’état” and calling her the “monarch of Warwickshire”.
Opposition councillors were unimpressed. One said it was “appalling that when he couldn’t get what he wanted he cried off to his national party to get them to launch a full bloodied party political assault on a civil servant”.
These aren’t just isolated personality clashes. There are deep structural issues at play.
Inexperience: Many of Reform’s new councillors have no experience of local government or politics whatsoever. The established parties have long experience of selecting, vetting and preparing candidates for office. Reform rushed through masses of candidates without that infrastructure.
Unrealistic promises: Farage laid out plans to reduce local government to “providing social care, providing SEN needs for kids, mending potholes” – but that’s pretty much all councils can afford to do already after years of austerity. Last year, the majority of the £127bn spent by councils went on education (33%), adult social care (19%) and policing (11%) – all statutory services that can’t simply be cut.
The DOGE problem: Reform’s attempt to replicate Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency at local level has hit legal snags.
A letter sent to Kent staff demanding cooperation with the DOGE initiative was signed by Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf – neither of whom has any legal standing to instruct council staff.
Clashes with officers: Farage now complains of “obstructionism” from council staff, with Warwickshire being singled out as the “worst example”. But as legal experts have noted, new councillors may not understand that implementing policy takes time – you need to consult, go through scrutiny committees, get legal advice, and proposals can face judicial review.
Working from home: Reform’s pledge to end remote working for council staff could backfire badly. Most councils have rationalised office space – if all staff returned, many wouldn’t have a desk. And forcing this could worsen recruitment problems and make neighbouring councils with flexible policies more attractive.
A Precedent Worth Noting
In May 2015, Reform’s predecessor UKIP won control of Thanet Council in Kent with 33 seats. Less than three years later, they lost control after 12 of their remaining 25 councillors split to form their own group.
History may be rhyming.
What This Bodes for a Reform Government
The local government experiment is raising some serious red flags about what a Reform government might look like.
Governance by confrontation: The pattern is consistent – confront officers, blame “the blob”, cry foul when procedures don’t allow instant implementation of policy. How will councillors who see themselves as outsiders seeking to change the system react when they realise the limits of what they can achieve? An optimistic scenario sees them becoming champions for devolution; a pessimistic one sees them blaming establishment stitch-ups for any failure.
Legal constraints matter: A Reform government would face the same constraints – the civil service, judicial review, statutory duties, employment law. Councils have fiduciary duties to act in taxpayers’ best financial interests; drastic cuts that impact services could be challenged. The same principles apply nationally.
Vetting and discipline: In January 2025, ten Reform councillors resigned saying the party was being run in an “increasingly autocratic manner”. The party has struggled to maintain discipline, with constant suspensions and expulsions. Scale that up to hundreds of MPs and thousands of appointees, and you’ve got a serious problem.
Managing expectations: Reform has made extravagant promises about what it can deliver. Some are simply outside the powers of local government – Kent County Council can do very little to “stop the boats”. The same gap between rhetoric and reality would open up in government, probably with more severe consequences.
The coalition problem: In places where Reform doesn’t have an outright majority, other parties have teamed up to keep them out. That’s a warning sign. Even if Reform won the largest number of MPs, they’d need others to govern – and nobody seems to want to work with them.
Essentially, what we’re seeing at local level is a party that’s very good at winning elections but much less good at actually governing. They’ve discovered that the “establishment” they’ve railed against includes things like legal constraints, proper procedures, and staff who have to follow the rules regardless of who’s in charge.
The question is whether they can learn fast enough. So far, the signs aren’t encouraging – the response to every difficulty seems to be to blame officers, expel dissidents, and double down on confrontation. That might play well on social media, but it doesn’t actually fix the potholes.