‘I Set Up a Fake Far-Right News Channel to Interview Reform UK Candidates and This Is What They Told Me’

Nigel Farage vowed to field candidates in every contested ward in next week’s local elections, but this was easier said than done.

The party was forced to resort to increasingly desperate tactics to put Reform names on polling cards: full page adverts in the national press, sending pleading emails to members, and even cold calling journalists (including one Byline Times freelancer) asking them to stand.

Given the national polling, this begs the question of who will soon be running local councils up and down the country, responsible for billions of pounds of public spending.

And do these new candidates know what they’ve signed up to? This last year has seen a string of misconduct scandals at Reform led councils, resulting in over 74 councillors sacked or resigning in 12 months. Is this new crop of recruits aware of their party’s questionable track record?

Finding out wasn’t going to be easy. While Reform has positioned itself as the party of free speech, with Nigel Farage swinging behind X and Elon Musk in the row over AI nudification of women and girls, the party itself is often averse to rigorous scrutiny.

Reform recently withdrew from a BBC documentary filming behind the scenes at Kent council, the Reform leader of Nottinghamshire council banned local journalists from asking questions in 2025, and a candidate has admitted to us that “coming up to the local elections HQ have insisted that all media communications are approved by Reform press office.”

To peer through the cracks, I engaged in some mild subterfuge to see how informed Reform’s new hopefuls are about their new party. I set up a fictional right-wing news channel, Patriot News UK, and filled it with pictures of flags and polemics about the “woke liberal bias” at the BBC.

I got dressed up as a budding reporter in a cheap suit and a £10 tie from Oxfam, and filmed a few hammy news reports with my trademark signoff “Your country, your news!”. I set up a fake X profile and followed a bunch of enthusiastic Reform supporters.

It was quite an eye-opener peering into the misinformation that surrounds these bubbles, with Reformers fuming over a Sikh kebab owner arrested for refusing to sell Halal meat (he wasn’t), championing the Japanese government for banning Islam (they didn’t), and seething over bizarre AI-generated images of a taxpayer-funded water park in Croydon (there isn’t one). I dutifully engaged in the rampant swirl of nonsense circulating on X, and my follower count swiftly rose.

I reached out to around fifty Reform council candidates using their publicly available email addresses and X accounts. Three replied enthusiastically and agreed to take part in a Patriot News item on their campaign. I went along with a cameraman and openly filmed the interviews. I wanted to test how aware these new candidates were of Reform’s record in local government, and whether they would condemn or condone their colleagues’ misbehaviour if they believed it was carried out by their political rivals.

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The Politics UK Guy

Bailey Nash-Gardner is a young, bright former Conservative who now runs the hugely popular ‘Politics UK’ social media accounts, one of which was previously banned from Twitter for gaming the algorithm. He’s standing in his home town of Romford, and we met in a local park. He explained that his recent switch to Reform was triggered by Robert Jenrick’s defection: “He was going to be the last hope for the Conservative party.”

I put to him an instance of a political rival supposedly breaking transparency rules: “There’s a Tory councillor that we found who owned a share in a local business for four years, but didn’t declare it on their members’ interests.” Bailey’s response was unequivocal: “Obviously that’s absolutely wrong”.

However, this was actually about the Reform councillor Leila Cunningham (who is now standing to be London mayor), who hid her shares in a Paddington Hotel from her register until it was exposed by the press. “You are serving the public,” Bailey insisted, unaware he was talking about a colleague. “You should be open and transparent about the interest that you have and what conflicts that could present.”

I gave him another case: “We found a Labour councillor who set up a private limited company in order to profit from an infrastructure project that they helped approve.”

“Again, absolutely wrong,” Bailey replied. “We’re here to serve residents, not serve ourselves.” This was actually relating to a Reform councillor, Rachel Reed, who stepped down as deputy group leader in Doncaster for establishing a company to capture contracts from Doncaster Sheffield Airport.

I then turned to the culture wars, telling Bailey: “There’s a Lib Dem council that spent nearly £100,000 on rainbow flags for Pride Week.” His response was scathing: “This shows where councils are going absolutely wrong. We’re spending more time on the woke agenda… than we do on fixing potholes, cleaning up fly tipping and getting rid of graffiti.” Quite right too – except this was about Reform Nottinghamshire, which has just spent £75,000 on Union flags.

While filming the “walk and talk” shots, Bailey expressed a surprising show of support for Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan: “We don’t want to get rid of him, because he’s a good asset. He’s that unpopular, it’s good to have him.” Which might be news for Bailey’s colleague Leila Cunningham, who is campaigning hard to replace Khan in 2028.

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The ‘Rising Star’

The next interview was with Sophie Preston-Hall, tipped as a “rising star” of the party by the i paper. She’s very active on social media, posting heartfelt videos about important local issues in Rochford, but how much does she really know about her party’s conduct at other councils?

I put to her some instances of authoritarian behaviour by opposition politicians: “A Tory councillor has issued another councillor with a ‘Cease and Desist’ letter, banning them from saying their name in public. There’s another one who’s banned local newspaper journalists from asking questions. This sounds like censorship, doesn’t it?”

“Absolutely,” she replied stridently. “I do believe in freedom of speech. So I might not agree with what you have to say, but I believe in your right to say it.” Would she have been quite so critical had she known these were both the actions of Reform council leaders? (in Worcestershire and Nottinghamshire respectively).

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‘To the Right of Genghis Khan’

The third interview was with Mark Hall, who’s been in local government in Harlow for over thirty years, and joked that he’s often seen as “to the right of Genghis Khan”. This might be why he wasn’t invited to Nigel Farage’s recent visit to the town. “I’ve only waited 12 years to get Nigel to Harlow,” he complained. “Why would I want to see him when he’s here?”

Mark was scathing about the two stories I put to him of rivals’ transgressions. A Labour councillor fined for hiring an illegal immigrant? “They deserve to be caught like every other member of the general public and dealt with probably more severely.” (A business owned by Andrew Harrison, a Durham Reform councillor, was fined £40,000 for employing an illegal worker.)

A Conservative councillor’s business is collapsing owing over a million in taxes and covid loans? “Disgraceful.” (Reform’s Andrew Husband vowed to slash Durham council’s £1.5bn budget while presiding over companies with massive debts.)

When asked about these apparent paradoxes, Sophie Preston-Hall, Bailey Nash-Gardner, Mark Gough and Reform UK all declined to comment.

Their responses all indicate that these Reform candidates are, at best, clueless about their own party’s dismal record in local government over the last year, or at worst, are only happy to condemn political misdeeds when they are the responsibility of rivals.

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