Reform demand by-election after councillor defects - the wrong way

Conservative councillors defecting to Reform are ten a penny these days – but one representative has just made the road less travelled in the opposite direction, having belatedly realised Nigel Farage’s mob are a rum bunch.

James Buchan, who won a seat on Dartford Council for Reform in a July by-election, said he could no longer represent the party after its announcement to abolish indefinite leave to remain.

He said he wanted to be able to “look my family in the eye and say, ‘that’s not who I am’”. Buchan also criticised the policy, saying it creates a “huge amount of fear and anxiety” and accused Reform UK of having “a pretty unfortunate way of treating people”.

Leaving aside that 30 seconds of Googling might have given Buchan an inkling into how Reform treats people before signing up, it’s curious that the straw that broke the camel’s back was a policy in an area where the Tories are arguably even more extreme than Farage’s party. Last month, Katie Lam, the shadow Home Office minister tipped as a future party leader, vowed to deport large numbers of legally settled UK immigrants in order to ensure the country is mostly “culturally coherent”. The party has since pulled back, but for how long?

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Buchan’s defection has sparked calls from Reform for another by-election in his ward, with a spokesperson saying it was “disappointing that Councillor Buchan has decided to betray the voters” who elected him “just a few months ago”.

Alas for Reform, they’re on shaky ground here as not a single one of their defecting councillors, or indeed MPs, has put themselves up for by-election following their switch (although a number of its councillors elected in May have sparked fresh polls, at an estimated £25,000 a pop, after deciding on balance they couldn’t be arsed to do the job).

Danny Kruger, the Tory MP who defected to Reform in September and is now leading the party’s plans for government, flatly refused to put himself up for election, having been elected just a year previously.

And the party’s chief whip in the Commons, Lee Anderson, said it would be “quite foolish” to call a by-election when he made his own move from the Tories last year, despite having previously voted for Anthony Mangnall’s Recall of MPs (Change of Party Affiliation) Bill, which said it was “clearly a breach of the spirit of the contract between ourselves and our constituents” to change political party. The legislation would have meant that any defecting MP would become subject to a recall petition