Reform UK are once again furious at Restore Britain after the party lost a council by-election to Labour by a margin of just two votes.
It’s becoming quite the regular occurrence for Nigel Farage’s party as once again Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain has split the hard-right vote in a tight by-election, allowing Labour to swoop in and win.
Of course, this is simply called democracy, and Labour could make a similar argument about Green candidates standing and splitting the left-wing vote.
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But that doesn’t matter to Reform, who are fuming with Restore after events in Dudley.
On Thursday, a by-election took place for the St James ward on Dudley, after the incumbent Reform councillor stood down for personal reasons in September.
in a dramatic vote, Labour’s Caroline Reid regained the ward she lost in May’s elections. Reid won 874 votes, just two more than Reform candidate Chris Chivers’ 872, BirminghamLive reports.
Sam Firmstone for the Conservative Party finished in third place with 317 votes while Restore Britain – who hadn’t stood in the seat back in May – received 159 votes for their candidate.
The result does little to affect the makeup of Dudley council, where the Tories are still the largest single group with 27 councillors and Reform UK are the largest opposition group with 22 elected members.
Labour now have 16 councillors, whilst the Lib Dems have four.
Reacting to the result, Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice wrote on X: “Vote Restore, get Labour.”
It was only last week that a very similar thing happened in Leicestershire, where Restore carved out enough of the hard-right vote to torpedo Reform’s chances of holding onto a seat.
And at the start of October, there were two more races in which Restore split the vote to open the door Labour.
It spells bad news for Reform, who now seem to be haemorrhaging support to all sides. For weeks, Labour have been pulling clear of Reform in the polls, and now the Tories seem to be winning back voters as they return to second place.