Many had been privately, or publicly, expecting Reform UK to do well in this set of elections in Essex. <\/p>\n
With party leader Nigel Farage already an MP in the county, the party could smell the scent of success and had been campaigning hard to secure it. Leaflets, doorknocking and canvassing were a common sight amongst Reform hopefuls over the last few weeks.<\/p>\n
In the end, their efforts paid off. Of the 78 Essex County Council seats up for election, just over two thirds were won by Reform. The party went from having just one county councillor – Jaymey McIvor, who defected to Reform in 2024 – to 53.<\/p>\n
It’s meant the number of Conservatives has taken a battering. The Tories had 54 Essex county councillors before these elections, and now have 13.<\/p>\n
Labour went from six councillors down to one – Colchester Abbey division’s Lee Scordis did manage to retain his seat.<\/p>\n
Peter Harris, who was elected to the county council and is also deputy leader of the Reform UK group on Tendring District Council, said he was “absolutely over the moon” with how the results had gone for his party.<\/p>\n
“People wanted change, and they’ve voted for that; they’ve given us a clear mandate to make the changes necessary now,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many had been privately, or publicly, expecting Reform UK to do well in this set of elections in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":947756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-947755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116543269917955992","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947755","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=947755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/947756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}