Reform UK
UK right-populist party led by Nigel Farage; governs 14 English councils after May 2026.
Reform UK has lost 56 councillors since May 2026 to defection, suspension and resignation, while gaining three council seats and holding a fourth across ten by-elections in the same fortnight; the losses are internal, not electoral, ahead of the 13 August Clacton by-election.
Last refreshed: 12 August 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Will the funding scrutiny and the Old Catton loss dent Reform's rock-steady 23-25% before Clacton?
Timeline for Reform UK
Lost the Penistone East ward it had held since May
UK Local Elections 2026: Labour takes Penistone East from ReformLost St Neots Eynesbury despite a 3.1-point rise in its own vote share
UK Local Elections 2026: Reform up 3.1 points, out of St NeotsLost a councillor it had elected in Dalton and Dawdon, with no by-election triggered
UK Local Elections 2026: Durham councillor joins UK Social Democratic PartyGained Harraby South, a ward it did not contest in 2022
UK Local Elections 2026: Reform gains Harraby South from LabourMentioned in: Clacton's non-Farage vote fell by 11,861
UK Local Elections 2026Background
Reform UK is a right-populist political party founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party by Nigel Farage, rebranded as Reform UK in 2021. It holds five Westminster seats from the 2024 general election and campaigns on immigration restriction, NHS reform and opposition to net-zero climate policy.
Businessman Christopher Harborne provides the overwhelming bulk of Reform UK's funding. On 7 May 2026 it returned 1,448 councillors across 14 English councils and entered the Scottish Parliament with 17 Holyrood seats for the first time, though that undershot the PollCheck/YouGov MRP projection of 2,342 seats by 894.
Reform now governs a mix of northern metropolitan boroughs and rural county halls, its first sustained test of translating protest-vote support into stable administration. Nine of its 14 English councils raised council tax in their first budget and eight dropped climate-change language from planning documents, both breaking pledges made before polling day.
Reform's councillor exodus keeps widening
Reform UK has lost 56 of the councillors it won in May 2026 through resignation, suspension and defection, an attrition rate Mark Pack calls unusually high for a party this soon after a landslide. Four of those departures went to Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain; a fifth, Rhys Carr in Wakefield, Left in June and joined the Social Democratic Party on 6 August. The exodus is internal, not electoral: the seats themselves are not flipping to a rival at the ballot box.
In the same fortnight Reform gained three council seats and held a fourth across ten by-elections on 30 July and 6 August, taking Snettisham, Heacham and Long Sutton from the Conservatives and an Independent. That followed the party's first outright ballot-box loss, Old Catton, on 16 July, so its May gains are proving unevenly durable rather than uniformly fragile.
Reform's poll lead is eroding
Reform UK's polling lead began slipping from 7 July, when Nigel Farage announced he would quit Clacton and refight it; the party's average has run at roughly 24% since, down from about 27% before that date. YouGov's fieldwork to 11 August put Labour on 24% against Reform's 22%, its first lead over Reform in eighteen months. The dates line up, though that alone does not prove the resignation caused the fall.
Rival pollsters disagree on how FAR the slide has gone: More in Common had already put Labour ahead at 28% to 24% on 27 July, its first Reform deficit since March 2025, while YouGov's own tracker showed the two level as recently as late July. Reform has not faced a national lead like this since it overtook Labour.
Three funding inquiries stay open
Police investigating at least £500,000 in Reform UK donations, including two £250,000 gifts from Fiona Cottrell, had questioned two people under caution as of 10 July, with no arrests, charges or findings of wrongdoing against anyone named. A separate £1m Cottrell payment to a company run by deputy leader Richard Tice went to the National Crime Agency the same week as a routine anti-money-laundering referral.
The exposure grew again on 24 July, when bank data belonging to Reform figures, including an £80,000 loan and George Cottrell's £1m donation, reached the NCA through a leak; the agency referred the matter to its own Professional Standards Unit rather than an outside body. That runs alongside the paused Standards Commissioner inquiry into Farage's own undeclared gift.