In a manner reminiscent of Toad of Toad Hall, Nigel Farage, MP for Clacton and leader of Reform UK Ltd, has been tootling and parping up and down the country along the campaign trail, delivering his message of the promised Reform Utopia after the local elections on 7 May.
Up in Shetland he was heckled by angry locals.
But why would he let that bother him – the recent YouGov poll of voting intention for the General Election puts Reform at 27%, with Tories and Greens behind at 17% and Labour at 16%.
Some policies Farage has proposed make sense for a local election – such as free parking on high streets.
Other proposals are irrelevant – such as a review of all asylum application successes in the last five years to reject any deemed to be suspicious (despite the current vetting process). The move would target some 400,000 people, reports the BBC. It’s a proposed national measure that cannot be introduced by local councils.
Despite his efforts, Farage is still not everyone’s favourite person. A poll by YouGov shows that his net popularity rating stands at -38.
Fortune
Still, Farage has made a lot of money. Desmog is mapping Farage’s millions which amount to some £2mn earned in the past two years. That’s on top of his MP for Clacton salary of £93,904 a year.
Backtracking
A job for Farage is maintaining his credibility whilst backtracking on his former claims.
Among them is his former declaration that the NHS should not be financed from taxation but from an insurance system.
We can also watch Farage facing the sharp-as-tacks Beth Rigby as he tries to deny what he already said.
Farage now denies that he said the £350mn saved from leaving the EU would go to the NHS. (It didn’t).
Then there are his links to America’s far right. The London Economic reports that Farage took donations from US far right activist Steve Bannon.
Farage is now claiming he supports the US and not necessarily Trump, despite his appearances on the presidential campaign stage.
Tice’s tax
Another member in the Reform leadership faces scrutiny. Richard Tice, Reform’s Deputy Leader and MP for Boston and Skegness, seems to be having a bit of trouble with his taxes. Two of his companies have not paid £91,000 tax on their profits from 2020-2021 in a period when they were used to donate £1.1mn to Reform UK.
Non-payment of taxes is an issue close to Tice’s heart as he called for Angela Rayner’s resignation over her own tax blunder.
Tice lives in Dubai.
Local scandals in the North East
Farage also has to find a way to control his wayward members. Reformwatch (no relation to us) was set up a few weeks ago to collect information on violations by Reform councillors. Since then the platform has collected over 1,100 violations. Seekers of the truth can find them here.
Here’s a selection of recent scandals in the North East.
Councillor Andrew Husband, Reform leader of Durham County Council, used a homophobic slur three times in a row on social media. His posts were on the North Durham Labour Facebook page. The Chronicle, which reported the news, declined to publish exactly what the slur was.
Hartlepool Reform councillors are planning to pay themselves more, as announced on the party’s Facebook page.
David Prior, a Reform candidate for Saltwell, Gateshead in the local elections, has been expelled from Reform for historic BNP membership.
Reform leaflets for the local elections got the name wrong – printing “North Shields” instead of “North Tyneside”.
Scandals elsewhere
Michael Hadwen has stepped down from his £49,000 a year job as political assistant at Kent County Council to stand for Reform at the Felixstowe Clifflands division by election at Suffolk County Council. (The law bans political assistants from standing in elections.)
According to Reformwatch, Hadwen started working for Reform in November 2024, and by March 2025 he had become director of campaigns and training.
Hadwen is known for his racist tweets such as,
“…many politicians who I have admired for years are not willing to fight against the systemic problems caused by unchecked multiculturalism. Enoch was right…”
Kenneth Morris, Reform candidate for Erdington, Birmingham, runs the UK wing of an international far-right pro Putin network, reports Byline Times.
Lyndon Harrison, the Reform UK candidate in Newquay, has tweeted “WWG1WGA”, the call sign of far-right movement QAnon. He has also served a two-year stretch for drug dealing.
The exodus
Reform is losing popularity among its own members. Cornwall’s Reform councillors have lost eight of their number. They are choosing to sit as Independents or have joined the new Restore Britain party.
Vorderman to the rescue
Carole Vorderman is continuing her one-woman social media campaign against Farage. Now she’s using her superior maths skills to highlight the benefits of tactical voting.
Preaching to the converted?
It seems we are being swamped by news that would tarnish any party’s image especially in the run-up to local elections.
However, the revelations are mostly confined to snippets on local press websites or posts on Facebook or Twitter.
Are we slaves to the social media algorithms that target us with the news we want to hear? While the likely Reform voters know nothing of the scandals but pick up the Reform soundbites from their own echo chambers, to regurgitate later at the pub or at work?
How far the two messages get across remains an unknown until the counts have done their jobs late on 7 May.
