Where next for Richard Tice and Reform?

The local elections last week proved to be a disappointing night for Reform UK. Prior to polling day, its leader Richard Tice had talked up the ‘huge appetite’ among voters for Reform but the party averaged a mere six per cent of the vote in the wards where it stood. It won just half a dozen seats on on Derby City Council out of 471 hand-picked seats. Ukip, its effective forerunner, lost all its remaining councillors, going from almost 500 in 2016 to zero. Tice’s response was to argue that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and to focus instead on the next electoral test: the London mayoralty.

Petrolhead Howard Cox, the founder of the Fair Fuel UK campaign, is running as Reform’s candidate in the capital. He wants to scrap the entire Ultra Low Emission Zone if elected, in a direct appeal to the kind of ‘white van man’ voters that the Tories need if they are to dislodge Sadiq Khan from City Hall.