Reform won 29 seats but couldn’t elect a leader. Newly-elected councillors admitted they didn’t understand standing orders, amendments, or the constitution. What Kirklees council shows about insurgent politics.
On 7 May 2026, Reform UK won 29 seats on Kirklees Council. It was the party’s best local election performance yet, sending shockwaves through Westminster and validating Nigel Farage’s claim that Reform had fundamentally reshaped British politics.
Thirteen days later, on 20 May, Reform was the largest party on the council, but it could not actually govern. At Kirklees Council’s first full meeting since the election, newly-elected Reform councillors admitted on camera, in the council chamber, that they did not understand basic council procedures. One of them, Sarah Wood, stood up and confessed: “I do not understand the constitution. I have not had sufficient time to read that as yet.”
The meeting descended into chaos. It had to be adjourned. Reform could not elect a leader. The council remained paralysed. And as the video spread online, what should have been a triumphant moment for an insurgent political force became an embarrassing symbol of something worse than failure: incompetence.
This is what happens when a party wins by running against government. It has not thought about what it would do if it actually won.
WHAT HAPPENED AT KIRKLEES
The numbers seemed clear. In the May 7 local elections, Kirklees Council (a metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire with 69 seats) saw Reform UK win 29 seats, more than any other party. Labour dropped to 23 seats. The Conservatives held 16. Greens had 4, with the remainder split among Lib Dems, Independents, and other parties.
To have overall control, a party needed 35 seats. Reform had 29, six short of a majority.
This meant the council was “hung”, meaning no party could govern alone. Coalition politics would be necessary. Either Reform would have to negotiate a coalition with the Conservatives and/or Independents, or the opposition parties would form a coalition to exclude Reform.
At the Annual Council Meeting on 20 May, two candidates for leader were put forward: Sarah Wood from Reform UK, and Andrew Cooper from the Green Party. If all the opposition parties (Greens, Lib Dems, Conservatives, Independents) voted together, they had the numbers to elect Cooper, and lock Reform out of power despite being the largest party.
So Reform and the Conservatives faced a choice: either support Wood as leader, or allow a Green-led coalition to take power.
The Conservatives refused to do either.
What followed was procedural chaos that exposed a fundamental truth: Reform UK’s councillors did not know how local government actually works.
THE BREAKDOWN: WHAT COUNCILLORS DIDN’T UNDERSTAND
According to reports from the meeting, Reform councillors were confused by basic council procedure:
Standing orders. When procedural rules were referenced, Reform councillors objected, claiming opponents were “playing political games” and “exploiting” their lack of experience. Sarah Wood and others simply did not know what standing orders were, or why they mattered.
Amendments. At one point, a councillor attempted to propose an amendment to a motion. Reform councillors became bewildered, one reportedly said: “I do not understand what an amendment is.” This was not a sophisticated procedural objection. It was a confession of fundamental ignorance about how local government debates function.
The constitution. When asked to vote on constitutional matters, Wood stood up and said: “I do not understand the constitution. I have not had sufficient time to read that as yet.” This was not a rhetorical flourish. It was a genuinely confused councillor admitting she had not bothered to read the basic governing document of the council she now sat on.
Head-to-head voting. When someone proposed a “head-to-head” vote to break the deadlock, Reform councillors did not understand what this meant or why it was being proposed. The explanation had to be repeated multiple times.
Eventually, the council voted on whether to hold the proposed head-to-head vote. Reform and the Conservatives voted against. The motion failed. With no mechanism to break the deadlock and no agreement on who should lead, the meeting was adjourned. The council had to reconvene on 28 May, the final day of the legal deadline to elect a leader (within three weeks of the election).
THE SYMPATHY TRAP
To Reform’s credit, some councillors and observers have argued that newly-elected councillors deserve “breathing space” to learn the ropes. After all, the council said, they have only been in post for two weeks.
This argument has surface appeal. Learning local government procedure takes time. No one expects perfection on day one.
But there is a critical difference between making procedural mistakes and not understanding the basic rules of the institution you have just been elected to. Learning procedures is fine. Not reading the constitution before showing up to your first meeting is not a learning curve, it is contempt.
More significantly: if a Reform councillor is not yet competent enough to understand basic standing orders, how is she competent enough to be council leader? That is the question that Tanisha Bramwell, a Labour councillor, posed directly in the chamber. She said: “They should also acknowledge the fact that if they’re not there yet in meeting the requirements of being a basic councillor, surely they are not meeting the requirements to be the leader of our council.”
She was right. And Reform had no answer.
THE DEEPER PROBLEM: INSURGENCY VS. GOVERNANCE
The Kirklees chaos reveals something uncomfortable about insurgent politics. It is much easier to run against something than to run something.
Reform UK’s entire electoral strategy has been defined by opposition. It opposes the Conservatives for being too soft. It opposes Labour for wokery and economic failure. It opposes the Lib Dems for being irrelevant. The party’s appeal is entirely negative, it is what you vote for when you are angry at everyone else.
But anger does not teach you how to manage budgets, negotiate coalition deals, chair committees, or understand standing orders. And anger does not prepare you for the reality that local government involves unglamorous work: sitting through planning committees, managing pothole repairs, balancing budgets with insufficient resources, dealing with conservation areas and building regulation.
Reform won Kirklees by running against the local Labour government’s “incompetence” and “negligence.” But when it came time to actually govern, Reform’s newly-elected councillors did not even know how to structure a vote.
This is the fatal weakness of anti-establishment politics: it can win by being against everything. It cannot govern by being for nothing.
THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS
For Reform UK nationally, Kirklees matters because it exposes the party’s core problem: it has no infrastructure.
The Conservatives and Labour have deep organisational networks. They have experienced councillors, party structures, training programmes, and institutional memory going back decades. When a new Conservative or Labour councillor arrives in a council chamber, they have been prepared. They have been mentored. They have read the papers.
Reform has none of this. It is a party that exploded electorally in May 2026, winning hundreds of new seats across the country, but it has not had time to develop the institutional capacity to absorb and train that many new councillors.
The result is exactly what Kirklees shows: victories that turn into embarrassments. The party can win seats. It cannot yet govern effectively.
For Labour, Kirklees is a gift. The party lost 1,496 council seats nationally on 7 May and faces an internal reckoning. But Kirklees shows what happens when voters swing to an alternative without considering whether that alternative is actually capable of governing. The chaos in the council chamber is a vivid visual reminder that competence matters.
For the Greens, Kirklees is a missed opportunity, but also a statement of principle. Andrew Cooper, the Green leader who would have taken over if the opposition coalition had held, lost because the Conservatives refused to back him. That decision cost the Greens control of Kirklees. But it also showed that, in hung councils, principle often loses to partisan advantage. The Conservatives preferred chaos to a Green-led council.
THE DEADLINE AND THE QUESTION
The council’s legal obligation was to elect a leader within three weeks of the election. That deadline was 29 May 2026.
At the time of writing, Kirklees Council is due to reconvene on 28 May to try again. The chief executive, Steve Mawson, is acting as leader in the interim to ensure basic council functions continue.
The question facing the council is: what happens if it cannot elect a leader by the deadline?
Technically, the council would be in breach of law. There are mechanisms for the council to seek extension from the Local Government Association or the Secretary of State. But practically, if Reform, the Conservatives, and the Greens cannot agree on a leader by tomorrow, the council will be in prolonged suspension, unable to make decisions, unable to function, trapped in limbo.
This is the best-case scenario for Reform. It is also, in a sense, the most honest outcome. A council that cannot elect a leader is a council that has been failed by all the parties in it. And in this case, that failure is most directly attributable to Reform’s complete unpreparedness to govern.
THE BROADER STORY
Kirklees is one council. But it is not alone. Reform UK won seats on councils across England in May 2026. There will be other councils where similar scenes play out. There will be other newly-elected Reform councillors who do not understand procedure, who have not read the constitution, who are genuinely bewildered by how local government works.
For each one, voters will ask: is this the alternative I was voting for?
The answer, increasingly, is no. Voters were voting against incumbent governments. They were not necessarily voting for competence.
The challenge for Reform is to transform electoral support into institutional capacity. That requires building party structures, training councillors, developing policy on unglamorous issues like bin collection and planning permission, and most importantly, reading the bloody constitution before you show up to your first meeting.
Until Reform does that, scenes like Kirklees will keep happening. And each one will remind voters that insurgency and governance are not the same thing.
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