https://anotherangryvoice.substack.com/p/reform-bring-chaos-and-incompetence
Who would have imagined that voting for the "stop the boats" rabble in a landlocked part of West Yorkshire might not have been the wisest move?
Another Angry Voice
May 21, 2026

Reform didn’t win a majority in Kirklees, but around 30% of people from this part of West Yorkshire decided to vote in 29 Reform councillors, which now makes them the biggest political group in the council, despite having had zero councillors previously.

Things have not got off to a great start for the Reform group, with several of them admitting that they didn’t have a clue what was going on.

They managed to sabotage their own efforts to get one of their own elected as council leader by voting no to proportional voting on the council, then they cried that they didn’t understand what they were voting for.

They also voted down having a council debate on the new council leader.

After two failed votes to elect a new council leader, an experienced Tory councillor called Martin Bolt tried to break the deadlock by calling for a suspension of orders, to prevent councillors from abstaining on the vote, which was shot down by the Reform group and branded "undemocratic" by the Reform councillor and wannabe council leader Sarah Wood.

Wood’s extraordinary contributions to the proceedings included the following:

"We don’t understand the rules"

"We voted against it because we don’t understand what is going on"

"I don’t know what standing orders are, nor do I know what an amendment is"

"We might vote for something we don’t understand"

"We are at a disadvantage because we don’t necessarily know what we are voting for"

"We don’t understand the constitution"

And this is the woman that Reform want to lead Kirklees Council!

Other Reform councillors voted against their own party’s interests; spoke to say that they also didn’t understand what was going on; and repeatedly made the claim that they are "new" to excuse their incompetence and unpreparedness.

There was also constant victimhood posturing from the Reform contingent, who repeatedly tried to claim that the procedures were "unfair", "unconstitutional", and "undemocratic" because they hadn’t bothered to read the standing orders, or do the most basic research on how council procedures work!

If people had bothered to even slightly inform themselves about the chaos going in the councils that Reform won last year (especially Kent, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire) it’s hard to believe that they’d have voted to bring this brand of incompetence and mayhem into their own council too.

But unfortunately that’s exactly what’s happened in Kirklees.

Loads of people voted to boot out more than two dozen experienced Labour, Tory, Lib-Dem, and independent councillors, to replace them with a lazy and incompetent rabble who couldn’t even be bothered to research how council procedures work before trying to get one of their clueless ilk installed as council leader.

Kirklees Council has an annual budget of £465 million, and around 30% of the people there decided to put this clueless "stop the boats" rabble in charge of their landlocked part of West Yorkshire!

If Britain had embraced more modern and proportional voting systems, then the worst of this chaos could have been avoided, but such as things are, a minority of voters can inflict unprecedented damage on their own council’s affairs.

Interestingly, Reform used to be heavily in favour of modern proportional voting, but now they’re winning control of councils, and leading the Westminster polls under the old-fashioned disproportional system, they’re suddenly in favour of it, now that it stands to advantage them.

Given the cringeworthy incompetence Reform have displayed in Kirklees, it’s actually quite terrifying to think of the scale of chaos, were they to win a parliamentary majority in 2029, with only around 25% of the national vote.