AIBU to think Reform councillors don’t know what they’re doing?

[Wouldcou]

Reform councillor saying that she doesn’t understand the process. This is the reality of what people voted for.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNRnRo3eg/

Also see the amount of Reform Councillors who have quit or defected.

Reform UK has shed 22 councillors and counting in the two weeks since the local council elections on 7 May, triggering a series of costly by-elections.

While Reform won over 1,400 seats in the recent local council elections, Nigel Farage’s party is also shelling councillors to defections, suspensions and lost seats.

Stuart Prior, who was elected as a Reform UK councillor for Essex County Council and for Rochford District Council resigned on Monday 11 May, just days after winning these council seats.

Before the elections, it was revealed that Prior had shared racist posts on social media referring to white people as “the master race” and suggesting white people have “larger brains”.

Less than a week after being elected, Glenn Gibbins, a Reform councillor on Sunderland City Council was also suspended for posting racist comments Gibbons said that the Nigerian population in Sunderland should be melted down to “fill in potholes”.

On the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme on 10 May, Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, was asked if he was happy for someone with these views to represent Reform.

Tice refused to condemn Gibbins’ comments and instead accused the media of “smearing” and “sneering” against Reform.
Ben Rowe, who was recently elected to Plymouth City Council has also been suspended for anti-Islam and antisemitic posts.

The posts were unearthed before the local elections, prompting Reform to say it was investigating the claims.

Another Reform councillor, Barry Martin, who said that the job of a councillor was “so dull and boring” resigned just a year after taking his seat.

Reform Party UK Exposed has published the full list of Reform councillor departures so far:
Lost seats on 7 May

• Mike Morris
• Clarence Mitchell
• Alan Cook
• Mark Shooter
• Kira Gabbert

Resigned

• Daniel Devaney
• Stuart Prior
• Jay Cooper
• Barry Martin
• Stephen Mousdell
• Andrew Harrison
• Kenny Hope
• Danielle Cavanagh

Defected

• Nick Farmer
• Ashley Monk
• Jo Monk
• Matthew Jones

Suspended

• Ben Rowe
• Glenn Gibbins
• Paul Heyward
• Nathaniel Menday
• Laura Newham

Dr David Bull, Reform’s former party chair has also been replaced by Lee Anderson, the Reform MP for Ashfield. In a post announcing Bull’s departure on Facebook, Reform said it was “delighted” that Anderson has become the party’s new chair, adding: “David Bull has overseen unprecedented growth in his time as Chairman and will still remain heavily involved in the party”.

The party should be made to pay all the costs of a by election for every councillor who resigns within three months of election, or is sacked, suspended, found not to exist or just fails to up for anything.

To be fair @cheezncrackers I would also say that critical thinking was not a strong suit of my local green candidate or many people in my village!

On our village FB page, someone had stupidly shared a front page of an apparantly local newspaper which was claiming some outlandish stuff apparently said by the Green Party.

Particularly strange considering that paper doesn't exist in our village....

So that person was quite frankly a bit of a prat.

Compounding the problem, the local green candidate started kicking off publicly, saying it was fake news, how dare people not come to him to ask him to comment etc. He then started arguing with people (really helpful two days before an election!)

It took me less than three seconds to look at this particular front page, and deduce that it was very clearly about Australia. There were constant references to Melbourne, Bendigo, Sydney and the front cover price was in dollars.

So it wasn't fake news - it was just a local newspaper from Australia, not rural Suffolk! And bizarrely, no person on the entire post had noticed! It's genuinely worrying how poor critical thinking is, especially now that AI makes things look so realistic and much harder to tell.

I'm sure they don't. Nor do recent Green councillors, of whom a large number have also left, been found to be frothing racists and so on. However, there won't be sanctimonious threads about how thick Green voters are for electing those horrendous people in what may be proportionally higher numbers - there's even a link to hate organisation Hope Not Hate (misnaming to say the least) upthread that has gone totally unquestioned because it fits into the prescribed worldview of the Good People of Mumsnet™️.

As an aside, my local Labour councillors in the family councillor business who have been in for years and just held on by a couple of % don't have a clue what they're doing either.

There is a thread on Green councillors as well.

For balance, the Greens have withdrawn their Makersfield candidate after his posts that Golders Green was a false flag were publicised.

I posted the Hope not Hate. Feel free to challenge it. Other publications have covered the same.

https://www.markpack.org.uk/176832/how-many-councillors-have-the-greens-lost-since-the-may-2026-elections/

Good analogy.

@Alltheprettyseahorses

https://www.thenational.scot/news/26125494.reform-uk-defend-robert-kenyon-friends-fascist-leader/

This any better? Kenyon is not denying the posts he made/shared then deleted. Reform spokesperson says none of it matters because it was before Kenyon entered politics. So Reform not denying any of it either, just excusing it.

Reform UK's Makerfield candidate faces social media allegations - BBC News share.google/DyyGoq5cBRMSsS1Ey

The Greens have very little relevance to the matter currently at hand. Which is will AB become the next Labour leader and enable Labour to win popularity back from Reform.
The only role the Greens may play in this process at present is to support or obstruct AB in gaining Makerfield. So what their councillors are up to is very much a peripheral issue. Unlike Reform councillors who's misdeeds are very important to highlight.
The fact the Greens are adding a little to the risk of a Reform win in Makerfield is disappointing, but other than that I'm not sure what 'green bashing' at this point brings to the table.
(Though I suppose flagging up their failings could be marginally helpful to Burnham if it puts off left wing potential support for them . So, on reflection, do your worst!)

They campaigned on national policies so they could post out leaflets with Nigel on them that don't have to count under the rules about how much can be spent on local campaigns. The publishing of the date of the local election on the leaflets was just by the by, they don't legally have to account for that cost. Nothing dodgy there.

I have never believed in party politics in local councils, I would much rather all councils were independent people standing on what they personally believe for the local area but I can't see that ever happening.

I can't help thinking the rise of Reform will go the way the rise of the BNP did about twenty years ago. The BNP won a lot of councillors back then, and got representation on the Greater London Authority as well. They had enough vote share for Nick Griffin to get on Newsnight, but as I suspected, he just came across as completely ignorant, and probably did his cause a lot of damage.

Not a single BNP candidate ended up getting re-elected.

I'm hopeful that Reform's dismal performance at local level will trash their chances nationally. It's easy to carp from the sidelines, but when you actually have to do something, the simple rhetoric won't cut it.

Plus - let's be honest here - in three years' time, a huge chunk of Reform's current voter base will be dead.

Some of the people posting here are obviously trying to encourage people to vote reform - because calling reform voters thick and similar such comments do just that.

I imagine most new councillors dont know what they are doing, the question is whether they will learn. If they dont so much the better as it increases the chance they wont win a national election.

I suggest you listen to your own councils podcasts. It's endemic across the parties. The quality of our councillors will surprise, amuse and depress some of you.

Our independent ones are the smartest.

The Greens have just stood down their candidate because he posted anti-semitic conspiracy theories about the attack in Golders Green. Apparently they are are now having a debate on whether to stand a candidate at all as they don't want to be blamed for Reform getting in.

TBF to Reform Councillors there's plenty of councillors from the other parties who have done their job for years not understanding jack shit and have made a mess and that's why we have Reform Councillors in the first place due to a lack of competence.

None of this is ok.

Most new councillors don't stand up at a meeting where they want to take lead and say they don't understand 99% of it to the point the meeting has to be rescheduled. It's unacceptable and doesn't fill me with any confidence.

I saw last night the candidate had stood down 'for personal reasons' and did wonder what might be behind that. That's awful.
Yes, I've been following their debate about whether or not to stand. I genuinely can't fathom why they would. Nothing to win and so much at risk.

Well yes of course. I’m neither a Labour nor a Reform voter - but that seems to be the options in that binary choice.

That makes no sense. The only people who will be offended by people being called thick Reform voters are...Reform voters..? So they're not being encouraged to do anything they're not already doing.
Or are you suggesting that Labour voters would vote Reform in solidarity, because they don't like people calling Reform voters thick?
Or that if everyone started saying it's really intelligent to vote Reform, Reform voters would stop voting Reform?
Or something else...?

This is what the Guardian has reported:

The Times reported it had approached Kennedy about a series of social media posts he had shared about an attack on Jewish ambulances in north London in April. An Instagram video shared by Kennedy described the arrests of two men over the incident as “total bullshit to keep the false flag flying”, the paper reported.

He also reportedly shared a post by a user named Hugh Anthony, a self-described “proud ethno-nationalist”, which said the response to the Golders Green arson attack in March made “no sense”.

It is awful.

Fits in with their defence of Farage's school days racism and the £5m.

'he wasn't a politician then'

As PP have said, your second paragraph is spot on - except then they shouldn’t be asking to LEAD THE COUNCIL.

I didn’t turn up on my first day at work, with absolutely no knowledge of the job (including knowledge I could have obtained had I wanted to turn up prepared - there’s been nothing stopping them attending those AGM meetings for years ahead of standing for election) and then put myself forward as the best candidate for CEO. It’s absolute delusion to do that, and I genuinely worry for anyone who thinks that it was an appropriate move.

They also voted against their own proposals. What the hell were they doing making those proposals in the first place if they didn’t understand them or the process?!

In other news, unemployment is the highest it’s been in decades. Youth unemployment is at disastrous levels. GDP per capita continues to slide. Taxes have never been higher. Highest rate taxpayers are leaving the country in their tens of thousands. Inflation is a disaster. Government borrowing is 25% higher than this time last year and bond yields are higher now than it was under Liz Truss.

Perhaps look beyond the soundbites and propaganda that your beloved Labour government feeds you. And apply a bit of critical thinking.

I’m not, and never will be, a reform voter. But I think calling Reform voters “thick” is offensive and makes me question the person making that comment and their ability to think critically from different perspectives.

I know many intelligent Reform voters (many of which who would likely be better off under a Reform government). They’re not thick, but they probably could be accused of lacking empathy or consideration for others…

I’d argue that the Labour lot running our council also haven’t a clue.