Cheshire councillors reveal why they ditched their old parties to join Nigel Farage's Reform UK

Reg Kain and Mandy Clare are from starkly contrasting political backgrounds

There was a certain familiarity to proceedings for Reg Kain as he and 28 other local councillors shuffled out to be presented to the waiting media at a press conference held by Nigel Farage and Reform UK last week.

The 61-year-old, who combines his elected position on Cheshire East council with a part-time teaching job, says: "Being a school teacher, you are used to assemblies and stuff like that and standing up, so I was quite comfortable."

A school assembly did come to mind while watching the event at London's Royal Horseguards Hotel, where Mr Farage unveiled the 29 councillors who've recently shed their previous political allegiances to defect to his party.

But it was notable that seven of the defectors are from different parts of the North of England, including two from Cheshire.

Read more: 'Classy' and 'prestigious' Cheshire towns among best places to live in UK

And this week The Northern Agenda politics newsletter has spoken to three of them, all from starkly contrasting political backgrounds. While each has very different reasons for joining, all three seem convinced their new home represents their varied concerns in a way their previous parties failed to do.

Reform will be hoping 2025 is a decisive year in its efforts to break through with the electorate, perhaps aided by financial support from tech billionaire Elon Musk.

With the right-wing party poised to win more council seats than any other in May's local elections - and potentially beat Labour in the by-election to become the next MP for Runcorn and Helsby - is the flurry of defections we've seen so far merely the tip of the iceberg?

And with Mr Farage embroiled in a bitter war of words with one of the party's former MPs, will Reform be able to transition from a vehicle of protest against the status quo and mainstream parties to a fully-fledged political operation with actionable policies?

Arguably the biggest of Reform's new signings this week was Stephen Atkinson, who until this weekend was Conservative leader of Ribble Valley Borough Council in Lancashire.

His former Tory colleagues in Lancashire were shocked when he broke the news but he says his beef was not with them but with the national party, who in his resignation letter he accused of 'governing as social democrats' rather than as proper Conservatives.

Elaborating on his biggest concerns, he talks about the UK's economic stagnation of recent years which has seen our gross domestic product per person left behind by the USA, meaning the average Briton is now much poorer than their American counterpart.

He says the move to get to net zero on carbon emissions by 2050, started under Theresa May's government, means "we're de-industrialising and those skilled jobs, those generational skills that you need will be lost forever".

Cllr Atkinson's other big concern is free speech and the controversial use of 'non-crime hate incidents', records kept by the police about actions or speech perceived to demonstrate hostility towards a person's race, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.

In 2014, the College of Policing set out guidelines for such incidents which critics say have a chilling effect on freedom of expression (as well as being a waste of police time). "Those two pillars, free speech and a prosperous economy, are really important to me," Cllr Atkinson says.

"So when the Conservative Party, which I've always supported, lost the General Election, I thought this is time for them to say 'we've got it wrong, we're going to bring some policies forward' and start to be what I would regard as Conservative.

"When Kemi Badenoch came in as leader and said she wouldn't bring any policies for two years, I just thought, 'wow, why is that? I cannot understand why you would say that'."

Ms Badenoch - who this week said it was "impossible" for the UK to meet its net zero target by 2050 - won her party's leadership last autumn on a promise to return the Conservatives to "first principles" before setting out detailed policies.

Cllr Atkinson waited until this month to defect to Reform as he first wanted to see some local issues in the Ribble Valley through to their conclusion.

"I had decided I was going to retire at the end of this year. I'm the second longest leader in Ribble Valley's history, and I just wanted a quiet life. But if we don't resolve these issues, I'm really fearful for the future of the country."

He's now standing for Reform in May's Lancashire County Council elections but faces a tough task in what is the third-safest Tory council seat in Lancashire.

"I'm standing in the seat I live in, and it would be very difficult to win, but I feel the country needs a shock. It needs to wake up to these two issues of prosperity, which is primarily linked to energy costs, and having a thriving economy with lower regulation and free speech, and I believe both are under threat."

With a policy platform dominated by cuts to tax, net zero subsidies and immigration, Reform is described as a 'right-wing populist' party on Wikipedia (and in many other places). But Cllr Atkinson rejects this label.

"I don't like the word populist. I think it's patronising to the electorate to say that if you have these views, you're not serious. And I really don't think it's right wing to want people to be prosperous. I think it's common sense."

The view held by many in the North is that the move to net zero will actually help reindustralise the region, with major investment in technology like carbon capture bringing thousands of jobs and billions in investment to the North.

But he believes that the cost of buying raw materials in the UK means "these great new green jobs will just be assembly plants for components that have come in from low-cost countries [like China]".

Seemingly at the other end of the political spectrum is Mandy Clare, a Cheshire West and Chester councillor who since being elected in 2019 has represented the Labour Party, Socialist Labour Party and the Party of Women.

After a spell as an independent, she's now become a convert to Reform UK after being encouraged by friends and colleagues who thought the party would be a good fit with her work on women's rights and child safeguarding.

And at this week's press conference Nigel Farage specifically introduced her as "an ex-Labour councillor who led a campaign against transgender ideology eroding women’s rights".

Reform UK puts issues and arguments around gender on the first page of its “contract" of policy proposals. And within the first 100 days of government, it pledges to ban what it calls “transgender ideology” in primary and secondary schools.

"I've only really heard about Reform through what other people have said, or media headlines and things like that," said the councillor. "So I read through the contract, and I couldn't find anything that I really hated. In fact there were a few policies that I thought were really great."

Cllr Clare says her position on immigration has changed over the years. "Because I'm from the left, I've traditionally thought any mention of immigration or uncontrolled immigration automatically equates with some form of racism."

But she says that "as time has gone on and I've had a look more at the evidence, the degree to which that's become uncontrolled", she now feels that "looking at it from all perspectives, it doesn't feel like it's a healthy situation."

Cllr Clare says that as a mum who's raised her children mostly on a low income, women's rights are a "really important issue". She adds: "They're not a secondary issue, they're not a side issue, they're not a culture war issue. It's women's lives and safety and how civilised we are as a society depends on women being able to live as safely as possible."

As the only Reform councillor on Cheshire West and Chester - where she regularly spars with Karen Shore, the Labour candidate in the upcoming Runcorn and Helsby Parliamentary by-election - Cllr Clare insists the idea of Nigel Farage as Prime Minister is a realistic prospect.

"There's a huge amount of work to do, because obviously, it's a party that's growing very, very quickly. The membership is growing quickly. They're having to recruit candidates and vet candidates and try and keep up with the level of demand for what they have to offer.

"And that takes a huge machinery, doesn't it? But there's a few years yet before the next General Election. So the local elections are going to give us an early indication."

She adds: "I think that there's been a tipping point reached in terms of Labour's broken promises, just since the last General Election. In quite a short period of time, we've seen a big shift in public opinion. That level of tolerance has dropped away, and people have lost a lot of hope, and people need hope."

It's not all been plain sailing for Reform of late, with the row between Nigel Farage and former MP Rupert Lowe still making headlines. And up North, a councillor in Yorkshire quit the party and suggested its leadership had a “lack of integrity and resolve” and a “chaotic lack of foresight".

Maria Bowtell, an East Riding of Yorkshire councillor, quit days after hosting a major rally in Hull to unveil the party's mayoral candidate, saying she "increasingly felt unsupported and abandoned in my role".

But asked about the machinery in place to support its councillors, Cllr Clare praises the thoroughness of the conversations she had before joining the party with its official in charge of vetting and defections.

"It doesn't surprise me that there's going to be hiccups and teething problems, because it is growing so rapidly," she says. "You kind of expect that. I think what's encouraging is that their leadership have recognised this themselves. They've said this is something that we're looking at and we're looking at and we're dealing with."

On Cheshire East Council, Reg Kain's decision to move from the Liberal Democrats has meant he's been removed from his role on several council committees, reducing his voice on the Labour-run authority.

But nationally he says his new party "seems to punch above its weight" despite only having five MPs, while he fears his old Lib Dem colleagues struggle to get their message across.

Describing the "gradual process" where he realised he was in the wrong party, he says the Lib Dems under Ed Davey were too supportive of the Labour government and too interested in what was happening in the US.

"And then Ed Davey was coming out with statements like, 'If you don't want another Nigel Farage or Donald Trump in this country, join the Liberal Democrats'. Well, I actually like Nigel Farage. I did vote for Brexit. And that's when it really sank home."

The policies of his old and new parties on net zero couldn't be further apart. The Lib Dems want to reach the target by 2045, while Nigel Farage has committed to saving £30bn a year by “scrapping net zero and related subsidies”.

Cllr Kain says: "The primary objective first is to make sure that we have a population that can accrue wealth and high standards of living before we start to look at making sacrifices, and that's not the case. I like the idea of net zero, but I don't think it's achievable for reducing the amount of pollution we put into the atmosphere."

Opponents of Reform UK point to its lack of experience running big organisations but also the often-controversial rhetoric of leader Nigel Farage, who has praised the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate for being an “important voice” for the “emasculated” and giving boys “perhaps a bit of confidence at school”.

And he was last year accused of Islamophobia after saying "a growing number of young people in this country...do not subscribe to British values, in fact loathe much of what we stand for.”

When the latter comment is put to Cllr Kain, he says that "at this point in time, I have no problem with any pronouncements that Nigel Farage makes". He adds: "And when he speaks, he tends to speak as a conviction politician with a very realistic view."

But he intends to be a "moderating voice" in Reform to balance out the kind of hardliners he says appear in all political parties.

"For Reform to keep growing as it is, it needs to broaden its appeal, and that obviously needs to come through the element of there will be more moderate voices that will allow large sections of the population to look at us and say, 'Yeah we can identify with that'."