When Lincolnshire councillor Ingrid Sheard decided to switch to Reform UK last year, she found the application process far more rigorous than she had anticipated.
Three rounds of interviews were followed by a contract requiring a £1,000 charity donation to Help for Heroes if she switched parties again, she told the FT on the sidelines of a meeting of Reform members in Spalding.
People within Reform point to the process as evidence it is transforming from a scrappy, insurgent rabble into the “election-winning machine” promised by Nigel Farage.
Yet despite its professionalisation drive, Farage’s party is a long way from having fully cleaned house: at the Spalding meeting, also attended by mayoral candidate Andrea Jenkyns, one activist suggested putting immigrants in “concentration camps”.
As it heads into Thursday’s local elections with a poll lead over both Labour and the Conservatives, the party has been fighting a rearguard action over evidence of racism and extreme views among its council candidates.
Its modest rank of current councillors also includes several people who have been disciplined for sharing far right content online, including posts about jailed agitator Tommy Robinson.
In Doncaster, local Reform candidate Howard Rimmer posted on Facebook in 2020 that foreigners were coming “from shit countries and want everything we have built, but not us and our culture”.
In 2023 he posted an image with the words “whatever you may run out of tomorrow, go next door and borrow, beg or steal. Don’t use an 8 til late uncouth unChristian corner shop.” Both posts remain online.
Rimmer was among multiple candidates unearthed by campaign group Hope Not Hate to have expressed support for Robinson.
This is despite Farage having made clear that Robinson’s backers were not welcome in the party.
Joe Mulhall, research director at the campaign group, said that “even the British National Party would have balked” at some of the material his team uncovered.
Another Doncaster candidate, Steve Plater, reposted a lengthy message from the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative, which remains online.
A third Doncaster candidate, Mark Broadhurst, last year posted an image of Hitler, accompanied by the words: “If I had chosen Muslims I would have been a fucking legend.” This post is no long publicly accessible.
In North Durham, branch official and local election candidate Steven Biggs posted a since-deleted message in 2015 that “Islam has no place on this earth. One big nuke bomb needed!”
Reform did not respond to the FT’s requests for comment on the posts.
People within the party say it has been working hard to improve its selection process, after it was forced to suspend several candidates in last year’s general election.
Farage has been clear on the need to widen its appeal for the next parliamentary election. Research shows that people who are curious about voting for the party are far more moderate than its traditional cohort of backers.
“They were absolutely adamant not just anyone was going to be able to go across,” Sheard told the FT, about her experience of jumping to the party.
Alex Wilson, a former Conservative councillor and now Reform’s only London Assembly member, said that no vetting system was “perfect”.
A third of applicants for candidacy at this year’s local elections were rejected, he said, after a vow by Farage to kick out “totally inappropriate” hopefuls.
“There is a much more rigorous process than there was,” said Wilson, adding the selection of extreme or otherwise unsuitable candidates had probably cost the party a million votes last July.
Of racists and supporters of Tommy Robinson, he said: “We don’t want that kind of person applying in the first place,” adding that he wished they would stop doing so.
While vetting may be seen as the litmus test of Reform’s professionalisation since the general election, the party has also set up other processes and structures more akin to a traditional party, unlike the more ad hoc arrangements that were in place in Farage’s previous outfits, Ukip and the Brexit Party.
Since last September, Reform has published a constitution, created hundreds of local branches, and recruited paid regional organisers.
“There wasn’t a local campaign structure last summer, so it was all air war,” added Wilson. The party had learned a lot “from the Lib Dems” who focused their volunteers on specific target areas, he said. It had also recruited a number of experienced Conservative organisers in recent months, including at its headquarters.
Reform’s branch manual, seen by the FT, contains rules for appointing local officials, while allowing national organisers to intervene on a wide range of pretexts. All branch officials have to sign non-disclosure agreements, the manual states.
Mulhall said there was still wide variability among different branches, from ex-Tories who “know how to run a branch . . . a political party, a campaign” to less experienced people that could lead to “problems”.
In some areas, the party has quickly established the sort of grassroots techniques traditionally used by smaller mainstream parties such as the Liberal Democrats and the Greens to get a toehold in local government.
One Labour MP in the former “red wall” of post-industrial northern and Midlands seats — in which Reform polled strongly last summer — said the party was already holding street surgeries in his constituency despite not yet having any councillors there.
Elsewhere, campaigners told the FT that Reform remained much stronger in its social media presence and direct mailing than in door-knocking and canvassing.
Simon Henig, former Labour leader of Durham county council and now head of government relations at communications consultancy Stephenson Mohl, said he had seen a huge increase in campaign resources already.
He added: “What we’re seeing, definitely in the case of Durham, is an intensity of campaigning which is comparable to the intensity of their campaigning in the general election, which is unusual for a local election.”
Yet for its improved “ground game” to translate into widespread appeal, the party may need to banish the memory of its more problematic councillors — several of whom have histories of supporting Robinson or far-right groups.
Earlier this year, Oxfordshire councillor Kevin Bulmer joined Reform after being suspended by the Tories for reposting material from Britain First.
He told the FT he was “a backbench councillor with no formal media training and no backup support” who had “no idea at the time who Britain First was or their views”, which he said was “possibly a failure of due diligence on my part”.
He added: “I’ve never expressed written or otherwise support for racist or far right views and to be clear do not support such views or organisations.”
In February, former North Somerset independent councillor Stuart Davies was barred from remaining in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats after sharing the claims that resulted in Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, being jailed for contempt of court. Davies joined Reform a week later.
Meanwhile, Hampshire councillors Vicky Rhodes and Sharon Collings who were elected for Reform last year were immediately suspended after it emerged they had supported Robinson online — though both are still listed as Reform councillors on the authority’s website.
Collings said it had been a “privilege” to serve as a councillor for the past year, adding: “I wish all Reform UK candidates the best of luck in the upcoming elections.”
