More than 60 of Reform UK’s council candidates standing in this year’s elections are defectors from the Conservative party, according to research from the Labour party.
People interested in politics change the brand they stand under.
Absolutely no one, ever, has stood for SWP, CPGB and the rest and then stood for Labour later in life, have they?
For some people the desire to tell other people what to do is irresistible.
The desire for lots of money for the rest of your life just for walking through a building is pretty irresistible too…
I’m surprised how many Town/Parish council candidates Reform has. Do they not understand what being a parish councillor is? It’s unpaid, you collect rent for the local allotments, and plant daffodills on the local roundabout.
I’m sure the guardian is aware that Lee Anderson was a member of the Labour Party who defected to the Tories and thence to Reform.
jgh, they are looking for a less arduous existence and responsibility for a lot more money…
Reg Prentice’s switcheroonie remains impressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_Prentice
60 out of 1630 are ex-tories? That’s a cool 3.7%.
I bet there are more standing for the illiberal fucking antidemocrats that used to be tories.
Indeed BiW – I give you Chukwuka Okuchukwu as an example. He abandoned LAB membership as they took away winter fuel payment from people who didn’t need it, and now standing as a Lib-Dem candidate in a council election next month.
General question: most candidates don’t disclose their personal address on nomination papers, but does the personal address have to show on the ballot paper itself?
I’d like to dig up a Councillor’s garden, create a 1m rectangular hole on one side and raise the level 1m on the other, because the c*nt declared an ecological emergency on the area and my belief that topology gardens have more biodiversity than flat.
There are unusual people in all parties.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2xey4m2ygo
One Reform UK candidate was saying some odd stuff about Saville
There was even a Labour MP and government minister who switched parties, Sir Oswald Mosley
“I bet there are more standing for the illiberal fucking antidemocrats that used to be tories.”
There’s an awful lot effectively standing for the illiberal fucking antidemocrats who are, right now, duly nominated official Tories.
I strongly suspect one reason Boris, with a majority of 80, governed as if he were in coalition with the LDs is that his whips told him at least 80 of his MPs were LDs with blue rosettes.
Boris was a LD with a blue rosette, his natural home was in the Bow Group, as most of his policies show (apart from Brexit, and he was initially lukewarm about that). The idea that he was some fire-breathing ‘far right’ character was promoted by the BBC and their print wing, the Guardian, because in their odd world, anyone who supported Brexit was automatically ‘far right’.