Since 2025, Reform UK has been incredibly successful at winning local elections. What it’s struggled with is holding on to its new councillors. The below clip from ex-Reformer Robbie Lammas gives you an idea of why that is:
‘They’re not a professional political party… it’s mafia-esque.’
@RobbieLammas explains why representing Reform UK as a councillor was ‘the biggest mistake of his life’. pic.twitter.com/UYqxI0pI0e— LBC (@LBC) August 23, 2026
Defector to Reform
Unlike many of his now-ex-colleagues, Lammas didn’t win on a Reform ticket. Instead, he defected from the Conservatives in late 2025. He wasn’t the only one to do so either, with many big names like Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick following the same path. The difference between them and Lammas is he wasn’t willing to put up with the nonsense.
In the above clip, Lammas says:
Reform is a bit like the person who sells you DVDs in a pub in Clacton, okay? They promise you things that you want. They offer you a price… and you’re quite happy to do the deal, but when you get home and it’s rubbish quality, you really resent it…
Lammas also said:
It was the biggest mistake of my life. They’re completely unprofessional in every way, shape, or form. And that is the reason why Kemi is saying what she’s saying.
Lammas is referring to the following comments from Kemi Badenoch:
Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, has described the prospect of a coalition government with Reform UK as “monstrous”.
Again ruling out the prospect of a deal between the two parties, she said any agreement would “put off” as many voters as it would attract
… pic.twitter.com/1P1ea4xHFN
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 23, 2026
Both Reform UK and the Conservative Party have defined themselves by how they differ from one another. As such, Badenoch is correct to think a merger could do just as much damage as good. We actually have some proof of this too, because Reform’s polling has worsened since it began accepting ex-Tories. This is worth bearing in mind, because despite what Lammas is publicly saying, one of his underlying concerns could be that unlike when he first defected, Reform is no longer the obvious next party of government.
Not normal
Lammas continued:
They’re not a normal alternative conservative outfit which you can do deals with. They’re not even a professional political party. They are a power unto themselves. They run themselves more like some corrupt, strange, mafia-esque situation. They don’t make up policy properly. There’s no professionalism. So there is no talent to do a deal with.
Lammas isn’t the first ex-Reformer to make such claims. As we reported, several councillors have claimed that Reform HQ stopped them acting in the local interest. As Durham councillor Nick Brown said:
When we took control [of Durham Council], I believed the messages from Nigel Farage that we would make big changes for people living locally.
But really, whenever we had a local issue, we were told to follow the party line. Not to rock the boat, bring press attention on the council. We all turned into Nigel’s yes-men – ordered to be on best behaviour to help him get to power.
In fighting
Lammas finished by talking about infighting:
There’ll be nothing to gain for the Conservative Party in doing any kind of deal with them, and it turns out they absolutely hated Conservatives when you got to the inside. And then i saw the infighting. It made everything that I experienced in the Tory party look like playground politics.
You’ve got the different camps warring with each other constantly. I described it… unlike a family – like the Conservative Party – Reform is like a HMO, where you have strangers living in the same building, despising each other.
As we’ve reported, Reform politicians are currently denying that the national party is a hotbed of infighting.
By my reckoning in the past week senior Reform figures have claimed journalists from the Spectator, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Sun, the Times and the I Paper have all independently invented broadly the same stories about internal infighting within the party…
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) August 22, 2026
According to Lammas, this infighting seems to exist at every level of the party. Which probably isn’t good, is it? Not if you have hopes of Reform successfully running the country.
Unstable Reform
Reform UK has what may be an unsolvable problem. The party’s driving engine is the politics of division, and as a result it attracts divisive politicians. This works when they’re in lockstep, but frequently they won’t be, because they’re not the sort of people who think about the greater good; they’re the sort of people who simply want to get their own way.
Featured image via Belinda Jiao / Gareth Fuller
By Willem Moore
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