Antony Mullen: Reform UK is not the answer for Sunderland

Cllr Antony Mullen is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Sunderland City Council and a member of the Local Government Association Conservative Group Executive

To the victors, the ruins. Thus spoke a chorus of triumphant Reform UK councillors across England as they took charge of councils they had declared broken. The core campaign message of their party was the readiness of their candidates to take responsibility for running these dysfunctional local authorities and to fix them. Across the country, the proposed antidote to a broken council was the same for each diagnosis (revealing something of a two-dimensional understanding of local government): no increases in council tax, an end to wasteful spending, no DEI officers, scrap net zero, and clear the authority’s debts.

Whilst this was the message, immigration – Reform’s raison d’être – remained their voters’ primary motivation. Although a national issue, it took on a local guise when framed in relation to migrant hotels. One proposal – to house migrants in tents – was so unserious that it did not appear to be even on speaking terms with reality. It is hard to imagine which local community would happily accept a makeshift village of migrant tents popping up on the doorstep, not least because it would make an already contentious issue so much more visible to the public than it already is. Tents, unlike hotels, are mobile, and so monitoring new arrivals would be rendered impossible in such circumstances. The suggestion nonetheless captured widespread attitudes to the understandably unpalatable bill the taxpayer has to foot for accommodation.

Even though some of its successful candidates refused to take up office upon being elected, the public placed sufficient trust in Reform that it now controls 12 councils – including in the former heartlands of both Labour (Durham) and the Conservatives (Kent).

Yet, it is striking how centrally controlled these supposedly local authorities are. Repeated and credible stories from within Reform indicate that party HQ is handpicking its Group Leaders. The very people elected to fix the council are not deemed worthy of voting for its Leader. This is something for which we in Sunderland mocked the Labour Party, when its national politburo blocked socialist Graeme Miller from continuing as Council Leader and replaced him with one more acceptable to the Starmer project.

In Durham, Reform’s Cllr Rob Potts, who defected from the Conservatives during his first term, is likeable, competent, and convincing as a local politician. It seemed an obvious choice, upon his re-election, to make him Leader of the Council. This did not transpire. Instead, Durham’s new Leader is someone with so little local authority experience that he struggled to appoint his cabinet at the Annual Meeting on account of having forgotten his glasses, depriving himself of the ability to read the instructions with which he had been furnished. Cllr Potts remains on the backbenches, whilst the cabinet features two other former Conservatives (one councillor, the other a former staff member) who were previously on separate sides of a serious misconduct investigation I led, in which one gave evidence against the other.

The 48-hour whirlwind which saw the resignation and return of Zia Yusuf and the related comedy surrounding so-called DOGE going into Kent County Council only added to the sense of a party finding its rhetoric colliding with reality. The promise to fix broken councils was ambitious before the 2025 local elections, but amidst such antics it now looks foolish.

Whilst amusing to political observers, it would be wrong to dismiss Reform as an electoral threat simply off the back of its gaffes. This is a point that I have made as Sunderland heads towards its 2026 elections. The context of these elections makes it a more interesting contest still. Sunderland will introduce new electoral boundaries in 2026, meaning all 75 seats on the council will be up for election on the same day. Indeed, this is the case across all of Tyne and Wear (except for North Tyneside, which introduced its new boundaries last year).

Labour councillors tell me that they are worried. Those in Bridget Phillipson’s Houghton constituency look to Durham (which it borders) and see the same fate coming for them. They are preparing to fight – and hard – but some think that Starmer will hand their seats to Reform. Similarly, Labour worries about losing the new Hylton Castle and Redhouse wards; they are more confident in Southwick, where they believe they are more active and popular, but which would be natural Reform territory otherwise. Where Labour is much more certain is in Washington, where it has concluded that the local Reform team is disorganised and incapable of campaigning effectively.

Sunderland politics observers should also keep an eye on what look likely to be Reform vs. Lib Dem battlegrounds. Two wards match this description: the new Deptford and Hendon, which is an amalgamation of a safe Lib Dem ward and a very marginal one they previously held, and Pallion and Ford, presently a safe Lib Dem seat. In ordinary times, both would have elected three Lib Dem councillors, but the intelligence I have received from a now former Labour member is that Reform has significant support (beyond that which Labour itself has) in both.

Local Conservatives will be proudly campaigning on our experience and work locally. It is us, not Reform, that has exposed the Council’s ethically questionable land disposals, sided with families when the Council took respite care away from disabled children, and fought off some of Labour’s craziest plans. It is our budget proposals that set out exactly how to scrap wasteful spending – including everything from the Council’s contract with a PR agency that just so happens to do Sunderland Labour’s PR, to the chauffeur-driven car used by the Labour cabinet – and we did not need to cosplay as Elon Musk in the process.

By contrast, Reform has had a city councillor and a town councillor in our area – and they have no positive record of which to speak. Rather, the city councillor, despite Reform’s national position, voted with Labour to maintain the Council’s net zero budget, whilst the Conservatives and Lib Dems voted to get rid of it. This was one of the rare occasions on which he was present to vote at all; chronic low attendance was his defining feature. Worse still, his town council colleague saw fit to describe a care facility for disabled children an unwanted “social experiment”. Those comments were not made in private, but as a formal submission to a planning consultation. In a recent leaflet, he features – incredulously – as the person they have chosen to speak on matters relating to children’s safeguarding.

Whatever the faults of Sunderland Council, these cannot be the people entrusted to “fix it”.