Next month, voters go to the polls for a Kent County Council by-election which will be the first electoral test of Reform UK’s time in charge since the party swept to local government power last May.
It was sparked by the jailing of former Reform UK councillor Daniel Taylor for coercive behaviour towards his wife. Local Democracy Reporter Simon Finlay visited the seaside division of Cliftonville to test the water…
The green expanse beside Princes Walk above the cliffs that run from Palm Bay to Botany Bay is a favourite for walkers, many with dogs, joggers and mobility scooter users.
Many of the roads leading down to the sea are neat, wide and tree-lined. Some houses sport union flags billowing resolutely in the wind.
The residents here are, by and large, older, pensioned home-owners – people who have worked hard, saved up and provided for their retirement somewhere near the sea.
Yet Northdown Road’s parade of independent shops, bars, eating places and trendy second-hand and vintage emporiums hint at changing times and a younger feel. Four years ago, Time Out declared Cliftonville the eighth coolest neighbourhood in the world.
Politically, it has nearly always leaned to the right.
As the Kent County Council by-election looms on April 9, the 15,000 or so voters who live here will be either reaffirming commitment to Reform UK, which won the seat in May 2025 with 40% of the vote, or choosing an alternative.
Down near the coffee shop at Palm Bay, sitting on a scooter, Janet Hopper, who is nearly 85 and in poor health, is not exactly a floating voter.
“I always read the Daily Mail,” she declares, “and I always vote Conservative. But there’s something about Nigel Farage that draws people in, he’s got ‘charisma’ or whatever the word is.”
Her friend Sue Fry has turned away from the Tories to Reform mainly over immigration and because the country “needs a change”. Both say a lack of buses and public toilets and too many potholes will be the big local issues on polling day – although toilets are dealt with b y the district council rather than county level.
Out walking his dogs, Dublin-born Ben Shaw, 46, is a relatively recent arrival to Thanet and desperately wants to believe in the Conservatives once again.
He says: “I completely get why people have gone to Reform but I am pleased the Greens won the by-election up north but down here I feel like a bit of a lost soul.
“The Greens are what the Liberal Democrats once were but I don’t know what they stand for or if they can run the country.”
Despite Margate’s apparent gentrification and massive house-building programme, Mr Shaw acknowledges there are pockets of deprivation in the area.
Someone who understands this better than most is Dario Colombo, an Italian who has lived in Cliftonville for ten years and runs a Sunday soup kitchen.
“The rise of Reform UK and the far right,” he says, “is because people are feeling lost. They follow them because it makes them feel safer and have a sense of community and because they want to blame other people.”
The Labour Party is “far away from the people”, he adds.
A few yards away, self-confessed DFL of a decade ago, Alex Ratcliffe, has been running his Afterparty Margate mobile coffee shop since last year down on the seafront near the tidal pool.
Business is good, even at the tail end of winter, and especially so on the first warm and sunny day of the year, resulting in a steady stream of punters.
A Labour supporter all his life, he now confesses he has “lost faith in the system”.
Mr Ratcliffe has been looking at the Green Party’s policies and likes what he sees.
“Maybe it’s a good thing that it’s not a two party market any more. I think we have to be brave and realise it’s broken.”
For seven years Turkish-born Allattin Ergin has run the Palm Bay Fish Bar but it has been clobbered by the rising price of his raw ingredients and the cost of cooking oil and utilities.
He runs the place pretty much single-handed these days and has noticed his best customers no longer visit as frequently or buy as much.
He says: “A lot of shops are giving up or up for sale or closing down. In the last 18 months, the price of fish has gone up by more than 100%, gas and electricity up 35%. I can’t afford extra staff to help out when it’s busy and sometimes I have to take zero wages.
“The government does nothing for small businesses – we are just not making the money.”
The winner of last year’s KCC election, Daniel Taylor, was jailed last month for a year for coercive behaviour towards his wife, sparking the election.
Reform UK took all seven seats in the Thanet district, although with Taylor’s departure to prison and Amelia Randall’s defection to UKIP, that is now down to five.
Conservative Lesley Game had won handsomely for the two previous terms in 2017 and 2021 but, prior to that, in 2013, UKIP picked up a seat (in the old Margate and Cliftonville division) on its march to becoming the largely unremarkable opposition at County Hall.
Barbara Woodrough sits on her mobility scooter outside the Palm Bay Co-Op store and says Taylor’s behaviour is “not Reform’s fault”.
The Reform voter lives a couple of doors down from Taylor’s former marital home and his behaviour disgusts her.
“Bloody awful, to be honest with you.”
Mrs Woodrough, 86, who moved to Thanet 40 years ago, say she is worried about ‘illegal’ migration: “I don’t mind immigration but it has to be controlled. You don’t know who’s coming in on small boats – murderers and rapists – and I think it’s something that worries everybody.”
The Labour Party, which came second in Cliftonville in 2025, the Conservatives, the Greens and Labour all scent a possible victory.
Restore Britain, set up by former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, could split the Reform vote if they too field a candidate.
The Conservatives are prepared to throw resources at it, as are the Greens. Labour is convinced that an improving economy and Reform’s record at KCC could make Cliftonville winnable. The other parties think Labour is deluded.
But as one observer notes, if a left-leaning anti-Reform candidate is going to win through a tactical vote, the parties better decide which one, sharpish, and spread the word.
How much effect Restore could have will depend on whether it can field an official candidate or an independent endorsed by the party, as it may not be registered to fight elections by the time nominations close on Wednesday.
Walking his beagle Darwin along Princes Walk, retired consultant John Wright seems to reflect the research conducted by the More In Common pollsters recently who concluded people are now “exhausted” by political volatility and crumbling public services.
He voted Labour last time and is now intending to back Reform UK.
He said: “I vote in every election and I tend to vote based on the national level. I would vote for Reform simply because they are not Tory or Labour.”
The April 9 poll will be run by Thanet District Council.
Residents who are not registered to vote can do so by midnight March 20 at www.gov.uk/register-to-vote.
Voters must bring a form of personal identification, such as a current driving licence or a passport, to be allowed into the ballot booths.
to the person that wrote this yarn about cliftonville , i have never read so much piffle in my life , its a well known fact that after dark its a no go area , unless someone is looking for drugs or a lady of the night . as for its world rating – please , is this a joke
Even some of Cliftonville’s ladies of the night aren’t all they seem!
Nonsense
Two for the price of one.
Dumb and dumber.
Another World and Checkers.
Ah Janet and Sue, GB news 2 and only viewers
Quick question: What are Reform’s plans to improve Palm Bay bus services? Or are they obsessed with just one issue?
Just not Reform!
Any result will be materially irrelevant. Until any local authority reorganisation in Kent Reform will still have a massive majority in County Hall.
This by-election is just another bureaucratic squandering of public money for the sake of “The Rule of Law”. It’s pointless! It is unwise. It is performative nonsense for appearance sake. I say this living within the ward myself and having the opportunity vote.
So, how should they replace someone who’s gone to prison?
I’m saying that it is both unnecessary and pointless.
Leaving an area unrepresented because of one person’s criminality is hardly democratic.
I do love a bit of naivety.
Although at election times there’s so much of it about.
I don’t do faith.
Naive because I believe in democracy?
OK.
Join him there!
Eh?
I dont mind who people vote for, so long as they vote, I am also not in to slagging people off and calling them names because they have a different poltical opinion to me. Everyone has a right to their opinions and free speach and if your only method of argument or debate is to personally insult people that dont agree with your views then you are not worth voting for in my opinion.
I will be voting for Reform as usual.
But you didn’t usually vote for Reform, did you?
Why not? There have been other elections (including a national one) since Reform began.
Down near the coffee shop at Palm Bay, sitting on a scooter, Janet Hopper, who is nearly 85 and in poor health, is not exactly an intelligent voter.
“I always read the Daily Fail/Heil as I love racist & bigoted propaganda,” she declares-they were the supporters of Hitler & Fascism back in the 1930’s under Lord Rothermere & are still doing the same hate the darkies front pages nearly 100 years later, “and I always vote Conservative, as they attack the disabled & poorest like me the hardest.
Good Old warmonger Maggie would have joined Reagan in flattening the Middle East & overthrowing any democratically elected government to install their own stooges in the 1980’s, if the CIA needed help doing it all the times he did so. I worship her & Trump’s portraits every day & hope Trump wins the Nobel Peace Prize next year by starting WW3 by dropping bombs on everybody.
But there’s something about Lord Haw-Haw The Second that draws people in, he’s got ‘charisma’ or whatever the word is, & despite my poverty I bought his Nigel PLC signed football shirts-probably made in Bangladesh sweat shops like his Save Britain T-Shirts are for 349 quid for my son & grandson.”
Her friend Sue Fry has turned away from the Tories to Reform mainly over immigration and because the country “needs a change-the change being the same Tories (many of whom born overseas that migrated to the UK or whose parents did) who messed the country up for years & promised to deal with immigration while it hit record levels, jumping like rats off a sinking ship”-but if they talk about the Queen & Queen Mother, wave Union Jack flags & post images about red phone boxes, bowler hats, red double deckers, the colonies & red double decker busses of the imaginary golden era of England that never existed enough, I just let my totally irrational brain & cognitive dissonance block out that reality.
Both say a lack of buses and public toilets and too many potholes will be the big local issues on polling day–even though both are too dense to wipe their own jacksies & Reform would do nothing about any of it, although toilets are dealt with by the district council rather than county level, where Reform have as expected made a total mess of thing-but when did reality get in the way of race grifters stirring up the gullible into thinking Johnny Foreigner & the unemployed are the cause of all their woes & not rich millionaires fleecing the system like themselves, pig ignorance & fantasy land?
Walking his brain cell Darwinism in action along Princes Walk, retired consultant John Wright seems to reflect the research conducted by the More In Common pollsters recently who concluded people are now as thick as two short planks & “exhausted” by political volatility and crumbling public services, so just put the party names in a bag & draw one at random, or choose what is getting the most publicity.
He voted Labour last time and is now intending to back Reform UK-stating, I have no political belief system-last time I voted for what I thought was a left party but turned out to now be the Tories because they had a lot of momentum & now I will vote for the far-right of all the Tories that have jumped ship because they grab all the headlines.
He said: “I vote in every election (scary thought) and I tend to vote based on what is trending on Twitter from Elon Musk, or GB News tells me to do lately-why the country is always in a mess, because there are millions of people like me voting.
I would vote for Reform simply because they have a leader who creates incredible amounts of publicity for them, do the phony patriotism for personal gain the most & are not Tory or Labour-even if it looks just like the Tory Party that screwed up the country for 14 years, claim they want to get rid of all human rights, make the poorer like me poorer & give what they take from us to the super rich & line their pockets even more than Liebour.”
Out walking his dogs, Dublin-born Ben Shaw, 46, is a relatively recent arrival to Thanet and desperately wants to believe in Fairy Tales once again & vote for the people that made him poor for 14 years & his parents poor in the 1980’s & 1990’s.
He says: “I completely get why people have gone to Reform-like most of the Tory Party jumping off the sinking ship for personal gain, but I am pleased the Greens won the by-election up north but down here I feel like a bit of a lost soul-you know I mean I voted Tory & want them back as I love masochism, but I am apparently now cheering on a far left party, can you explain it to me please as I seem to be very confused.
“The Greens are what the Liberal Democrats once were but I don’t know what they stand for or if they can run the country.” Even though I have always voted far-right, but am now talking about parties on the left.
Maybe I am admitting that the Tories proved they cannot run the country anywhere other than into the ground, Reform is the home of the same Tories who did so & just look at the mess they have made of KCC & Labour have cosplayed as the Tories & cannot run the country either. Oh dear, maybe I will just write the parties names on a dartboard & vote for the first one I hit.
Someone who understands this better than most is Dario Colombo, an Italian who has lived in Cliftonville for ten years and runs a Sunday soup kitchen.
“The rise of Reform UK and the far right,” he says, “is because people are feeling lost. They follow them because it makes them feel safer and have a sense of community and because they want to blame other people.”
The Labour Party is “far away from the people”, he adds.
Yes, they found an intelligent person in Cliftonville who understands the reality-one of the very people Reform & the Tories promote hatred against-for personal gain of course, odd seeing as Farage has imported all of his wives & girlfriends from the EU he fleeced for decades, despite claiming he hates everything about it & of course his deputy Tice who keeps popping out the the UAE he claims to hate because his ‘journalist’ partner who also hates Muslims moved there to avoid paying tax & because of how dangerous the ‘migrants are making the UK’ now whining about her heroes Trump & Benji’s missiles whizzing over her head-while still blaming it all on Iran of course.
How to shut up a politician.
Reform: ask what they’re doing to improve local buses.
Labour: ask if they agree with Mahmood’s changes to immigration rules.
Green: ask them about anti-Semitism (best to include a link to the Jewish Greens sit)
Conservative & Lib-Dem: who?
You’re welcome. 😉
Barbara Woodrough sits on her mobility scooter with her dog Walkies! outside the Palm Bay Co-Op store and says Taylor’s behaviour is “not Reform’s fault”. Even though the party is full of Neo-Nazi’s, woman beaters & convicted football hooligans. Just one bad apple she stated-totally ignoring MP (now independent) James McMurdock being selected despite his assault conviction on his former girlfriend & a whole host of Reform councillors behaviour all over the UK. He may be a violent thug-but at least he is a white, British born one! Plus he might come down & put me windows in if I say too much-seeing as he lives a few doors down, much easier to attack the non-white ones a long way away!
Mrs Woodrough, 86, who moved to Thanet 40 years ago, says she is worried about ‘illegal’ migration: “I mean I am not a racist but… I don’t mind immigration-as long as it is the post office workers who give me my pension, keep me fed at the corner shops & look after my health at the doctors & the hospital-my honourary whites, but it has to be controlled-we don’t want none of them people fleeing from the wars the US keep starting in the Middle East that we join in & help bomb their homelands to pieces.
You don’t know who’s coming in on small boats–people being persecuted, raped, having their homes & livelihoods destroyed by us, randomly pulled out of their taxis, the ones who worked with us in fighting the Taliban, people locked up & tortured at places like Abu Gharib despite knowing naffin, we don’t owe them naffin & I shall carry on voting to keep bombing them & then whining when they try to flee!
Murderers and rapists–I mean I avent seen any locally, but you read the Daily Mail, Express, Sun & watch Gbeebies like wot i duz talking about all these bleedin Muzlims in Lahndon, Notts etc, Halal in supermarkets, ow we will be the minority in 5 years time-despite whites being 82% of the population-Oi mean the KKK ave been saying the same thing in America for 100 years plus and I think it’s something that worries everybody with am easily manipulated, bigoted, tiny brain that lives in a small, rundown 95% white area it doesn’t have any bearing on anyway.
At least the Reform hooligans, nonces rapists & wife beaters are white.” Why we poor disabled people keep voting for the people that vilify & take more money away from us the most! I guess we are all the same for propaganda to the Tories, Reform, Murdoch etc-white millionaires & billionaires using us all as propaganda to make more money by calling us scum, well at least we are white scum!
Thank you Mrs Ben Dover ,your , correct superb observations have really cheered my day .
They walk among us ( especially in Thanet )
Thanks, I did invent an imaginary interview with a Tory/Reform ‘patriot’ at Palm Bay-but one or two of the words I used must be those that trigger a review/blocking of it being published. Had one on another ‘contentious’ subject matter recently-Powell Cotton Museum gender identity tours to kids, masquerading as biology/science education that didn’t make it either.
Having recently picked up his pension from Mr Patel’s post office, bought food & drink & Mr Ali’s corner shop & having affixed a St George’s flag to a flagpole at Palm Bay-while trying not to kill himself doing so like hooligan brain of Britain Paul Lumber last year, 75 year old retired black cab driver Gary Gammon, now munching on Mr Ali’s strawberries (picked by Grigitor Stoichkov-knackered after his daily 12 hour minimum wage fruit picking shift, in forty degree tropical heat at a polytunnel farm) gave his views to us-
Well ya know innit, all these bleeding immigrants come here with a personal escort all the way from France by the lifeboats & then get ferried by limo to the dole offices to claim millions of quid a week at our expense, as Nige & his other impartial tells us happens! They offer nothing to us & they all grape our women as well-taking the jobs of hard working white sex offenders!
Like these bleeding blackbirds that keep nicking all the pies I leave on the windowsill to cool down-never white ones, they are honest innit? These bleeding ginger cats that keep attacking you whenever you try to fuss them-got that Latin temper int they? They are just like them Latinos-violent.
I voted Conservative all my life-but now I am going to vote Reform. Nigel tells it like it is-he told us Brexit would be good for us & stop all them foreigners arriving & it would have-if not due to softy wet toffs like Cameron, Boris & May & those bureaucrats in Brussels that no longer controlled us-er, innit.
All those good Tories that tried but were blocked & put down like 30p Lee-love the way he makes all those white & non-white lefties sit far away in the pretend pub corner on Gbeebies having to shout to be heard while he calls them shouty aggressive liberals, while he interviews his mates sitting next to him in his ‘balanced’ debates, Mad Nad, Pavarotti Jenkyns & Nazi Jenrick.
Plus of course all those true Tories like Cruella, Zahawi, lovely Egyptian Laila & Yusuf rightly saying how bad immigration to the UK is! Thought that Habib was good as well-but he double crossed Nige though & we saw his true colours! Ad that Enoch Powell in the back of me cab in London once-lovely fella!
At this point Mr Gammon began to froth at the mouth while waving a Union Jack flag upside down like all ‘true patriots’ do, he was assisted by passing Nurse Blessing Zondeki-who rushed him in her car to her job at Margate Hospital A&E- to be seen by Dr Syed Ahmed & his team. He later recovered after several hours of watching the GB News schedule of Dewbs, Farage, Patrick Christys & Matt Goodwin, while also listening to the state of the union audio CD’s of Paul Dacre & reading the Daily Express.
So pensioners who vote reform are not worried about reform policies, like cutting welfare benefits including state pensions and charging people to insure themselves against ill health to replace our nhs
Mrs Ben Dover, I bow with great honour to your wonderful use of the art of British Sarcasm. The craft of which our greatest comedians are made. I can make no further comment.
It’s not surprising that this KCC by-election brings up more national and international issues for voters rather than County concerns.
But Reform started at KCC in a mess, suspending and expelling their councillors at a great rate. Their leader shouting and swearing at meetings. Raising council tax when they promised not to. Throwing the PIE Factory under the bus (one if the few that runs) when they promised to save it. Spending thousands on free parking for their councillors, spending more on “consultants” to help their councillors do what they were voted in to do!
And Reform, please note, are not a political party but are a private company run by Farage who, to date, gave failed to submit their documentation to Companies House.
The support they get is not about wanting life to get harder (worse health an welfare services for us and more dosh for them) so what is the attraction?
Listening to people in Cliftonville the draw is the national issues which, if you examine them, are lies built in falsehoods in a structure of pomp and bluster.
I asked a few people, as they had worries, about protecting our children. There is a conspiracy of silence and protection in the UK that allows rape and abuse of young people. But Rotheram it is not. Why aren’t Reform and their street fighting gammons not assembled outside Canterbury Cathedral, HQ of the C of E and home of so many historical abuses and cover-ups? Or Buckingham Palace?
And, lastly, why do they think the nastiest, most divisive and awful Tories find a home at Reform?
Don’t you like them?
Until a few weeks ago, Yates, the green candidate was a Labour cabinet member, failed to get selected as their parlimentary candidate and quit. The Reform candidate was a Conservative councillor until a few days ago. Voters may feel if they vote for either of them, they dont really know what they are getting.
David, why were Labour TDC discussing Mahmood’s proposed immigration reforms at a cabinet meeting recently (source: Ms. Whitehead, facebook)? Would you be happy if Reform (or anyone else) had similar discussions when they could be sorting out local promlems in their remit?
https://peterchecksfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image001.png
The same thing as usual with modern politicians-opportunists that are only interested in themselves more than ever. The same as the ones that put up/tacitly endorsed all of Starmer’s Tory behaviour & corruption for ages until they weren’t selected/an election was due with the ratings in the toilet & some even still going to bat for them-until just before the elections were due & then suddenly jumped/became independents when they saw the Labour calamity in the polls & talking them down suddenly-not sure what they expected after only benefiting from the Tories behaviour.
They just want that MP salary, their face in the paper/on websites & whatever perks they can get out of their position.
If Labour are tanking & the old boob whisperer who as Private Eye exposed will be left or right depending on what he thinks will benefit him the most is getting loads of publicity, appearing on every tv show going like Farage did then just jump from Labour. If the Tories are dead in the water & Reform is the hot thing polling well & getting the headlines, then jump to them.
More respect for the ones that just stayed with Liebour pretending they are socialists & environmentalists while working for pollution giants as lobbyists, while most of the Labour top brass filled their pockets, voted to freeze the elderly to death, starve children, voted against investigating grooming gangs, attacked the disabled etc-until all these backfired at the polls, as they cut ribbons to get their name & picture up again-at least we know they are Tories cosplaying as Labour & will go down with the sinking ship. The others are total opportunists-kept saying how great the party was until they weren’t picked & then jumped off & bad mouthed them, if selected of course they would still be there cheering them on.
I like walking the seafront along Princes Walk just wish there could be a decent cafe and someone could get rid of the weeds, is that too much to ask.