Stephen Atkinson is the Reform UK leader of Lancashire County Council – another name party bosses have high hopes for.<\/p>\n
A self-taught engineer who set up a business that makes school furniture, Atkinson rose through the ranks of local politics with the Conservative Party in north-west England.<\/p>\n
Then the Brexit years came, and like an increasing number of Reform UK’s new joiners, Atkinson quit the Conservatives after becoming disillusioned with the party.<\/p>\n
Since becoming council leader in Lancashire in May, Atkinson says he has focused on the “huge financial challenges” facing his Reform UK administration, alongside bread-and-butter issues such as fixing potholes.<\/p>\n
In the future, he says, it would be a “great honour” to be a parliamentary candidate for the party where he lives in the Ribble Valley, if he was selected.<\/p>\n
“But that’s a decision for other people,” he adds.<\/p>\n
If Reform does manage to get into government, and four years out from a general election it is still a very big “if”, some of the party’s would-be MPs may find fewer opportunities to rise to the highest levels of politics.<\/p>\n
Farage and Zia Yusuf, the party’s new head of policy, have talked about appointing dozens of new peers to take up roles in a Reform UK cabinet.<\/p>\n
Could former Conservative cabinet minister Nadine Dorries – unveiled this week to much fanfare as Reform UK’s latest Tory defector – be drafted into the Lords?<\/p>\n
Former Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry was also doing the media rounds in Birmingham, and was seen walking into Friday night’s afterparty in the main hall, where US pop legends the Jacksons made a surprise appearance on stage.<\/p>\n
Like one of the back-up singers, Berry may be one of those called upon to make up the numbers in one of the many elections Reform UK wants to win.<\/p>\n
In his conference speech, Farage said the party was taking the London mayoral election “seriously”, as well as polls in Wales and Scotland next year.<\/p>\n
He said Reform needed 5,000 vetted candidates to fight those polls, which he called “an essential building block as we head towards a general election”.<\/p>\n
As he closed the Birmingham conference, he called for volunteers in the audience to get to their feet if they wanted to stand in next year’s elections.<\/p>\n
“This is the people’s army in operation,” Farage said.<\/p>\n
In a symbolic gesture, some in the audience did stand, but the actual process for selection is designed to be far more rigorous.<\/p>\n
Candidate selection has always been a thorny issue for Farage’s various electoral vehicles, with election campaigns blown off course by scandals.<\/p>\n
Party insiders like to describe Reform’s rapid expansion – while ensuring candidates are properly vetted – as being like assembling a jumbo jet while flying it.<\/p>\n
They insist they have improved their vetting system since last year’s general election, after some candidates were ditched or suspended over offensive comments on social media ahead of the general election.<\/p>\n
The party now has assessment centres, where candidates are put through their paces, and a centre for excellence, where activists are caught how to campaign effectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Atkinson is the Reform UK leader of Lancashire County Council – another name party bosses have high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-404181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115160717965045023","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}