The Worth Valley by-election: what if anything is it good for?
The 2026 local election campaign for Bradford Council has unofficially kicked off. In this exploratory piece, we look at how we got here and what it says about local politics ...
The government, at every level, you can confidently argue, is shockingly but unsurprisingly slow, dysfunctional and anachronistic. The entire system, to quote Ian Dunt, from his calmly scathing How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn’t – which, will being a critique of the central government apparatus, is nevertheless also applicable to the lower echelons of government – appears to have been designed to “reward short-term tactics over long-term strategy, irrationality over reason, amateurism over seriousness, generalism over specialism and gut instinct over evidence”.
These systemic, historical shortcomings and structural defects, which have been allowed to deteriorate, are why, for example, at a local level, a bill for a scheme to introduce 20mph speed controlling measures in Ilkley can remain on the backburner months after work has been confirmed as completed – with a problematic backstory over how implemented to boot – and a nine-metre high Starbucks sign was not able to be erected without permission in the town but also remain in place long after it was found to be found to have been put up without following the proper protocols.
As for the why, you can call it a problem of personnel. It has long been the case that we get the same people from the same parties working in the same environment making the same mistakes time after time after time.
You can also point the finger at the vast, complex and inefficient political framework they operate in. It’s a quirk of modernity that even as the world transforms as technology tears apart long established norms – requiring, for instance, individuals and organisations to passively and actively adapt and evolve – political institutions like our own obstinately refuse to relinquish aspects of the past that ought to have been retired long ago.
It’s no wonder then that when Reform UK rails against the orthodoxy of establishment politics – which had largely managed to keep parties on the fringes of the left and right largely away from corridors of local power until May 2025 – and behaves in a way that doesn’t conform to accepted standards, that critics, threatened and keen to preserve the status quo that has served them so well, go on the attack.
Reform UK are a dangerous, reckless aberration, they say, and they’re not playing by the rules. Noted, a chorus of malcontent voices responds, but what good have your rules done me over the last however many years?
And they’ve got a point. Reform UK has emerged as a legitimate new player nationally and locally chiefly because politics since at least 2007, following a period of stability that has since come to be known as the “great moderation”, governments of every stripe have been unable to create the conditions necessary for the kind of growth that takes everyone with it.
Instead, through bureaucratic mistakes and ideological blunders, they’ve allowed local government to wither away so much that the Institute of Government doesn’t feel optimistic about the impact that Labour’s “sensible” package of reforms will have. “The scale of the issues in local government finances are so extensive that only a few voters are likely to feel any benefit,” reflected Stuart Hoddinott, an associate director at the Institute.
Reform UK’s popularity is therefore a symptom of a long stagnant nation that has run out of ideas with an electorate that has, in turn, run out of patience. “The UK is not a high-wage nor a high-welfare country, leaving millions trapped between low wages and inadequate support, “ the National Institute of Economic and Social Research’s 2025 UK Living Standards Review concluded last year.
The fact that they approach politics differently, you could argue, sets Reform UK apart and gives them at least the perception of being a new kid on the political block, even if they are anything but (it’s simply that they haven’t, until last year, had any real power locally if you take the line that the Reform UK is the latest vehicle for Nigel Farage).
If the system is broken, if it consistently fails to deliver meaningful change, then all bets are off. Everything falls apart, people lose their minds and populists and demagogues seize their opportunity.
The inevitable erosion of social and moral norms like tolerance and respect (see, for instance, the increase in race-related hate crime) gives parties like Reform UK carte blanche to shift not only the Overton Window, but to also push the limits of good taste and decorum. Even more so today with politics disseminated, consumed and seen through the lens of entertainment, where clicks, likes, retweets and comments good and bad reward resentful people who, in turn, feel seen and heard.
Which brings us to the upcoming by-election for Worth Valley. The seat became vacant in early November following the death of Russell Brown who had been a longstanding Conservative councillor for the ward.
With the 2026 Bradford Council local elections at the time half a year away, there was, we assume, an unspoken agreement among the more familiar parties to not trigger a by-election for the simple reason that it would not be financially or practically sensible.
It appears that the local branch of Reform UK, which doesn’t currently have any seats on Bradford Council – they last contested seats unsuccessfully in 2024 – didn’t share the same sentiment. It was in an insurgent mood and decided to shake things up by opting to trigger a by-election instead of waiting it out. This isn’t business as usual anymore.
There has been outrage from all the main political parties at what they see as the brazen opportunism of the party, namely Andrew Judson, Reform UK’s chairman for Keighley and Ilkley and Angela Baker, a local Reform UK activist, whose names we can confirm as being behind the triggering of the by-election having seen them on the third floor of city hall in Bradford in person. To them it is beyond the pale.
Rebecca Paulson, leader of the Conservative group on Bradford Council and now one of two councillors representing the Worth Valley – Chris Herd is the other – was one of the first to denounce the triggering of the by-election.
In a Facebook post she claimed that the by-election would “cost tens of thousands of pounds of YOUR money that could have been spent on local services”, adding that “Labour have a track record of wasting your money now Reform do to”.
Robbie Moore, the MP for Keighley and Ilkley, weighed in, describing Reform UK’s actions as “absolutely ridiculous”, claiming that around £30,000 would end up being spent in getting some elected to “get paid to attend precisely one full council meeting”.
“To me, this looks like cynical and wasteful opportunism by Reform at a time when Bradford Labour are already hiking council tax,” he went on to say on social media.
“And it gets worse … when members of the public called them out, the local Reform party suggested all other parties should simply stand aside and let them win unopposed: ‘it won’t cost anything if uncontested’. No. Representing local people is a privilege that is earned, not an entitlement.”
Matt Edwards, leader of the Green Party on Bradford Council and councillor for Tong, said that he was aware that many in the ward were “very annoyed” by the triggering of the by-election by Reform UK.
“Reform has promised to save taxpayers’ money, yet even before they have a single councillor they are wasting tens of thousands of pounds on a by-election where whoever is elected will barely have time to complete their training before their term ends,” he told The Ilkley Journal.
Brendan Stubbs, Liberal Democrat Group leader on Bradford Council and councillor for Eccleshill, said that his party wouldn’t have chosen to hold a separate by-election so close to the local council elections in May.
“It means voters in Worth Valley will be asked to go to the polls twice, with a cost to Bradford Council of tens of thousands of pounds,” he said. “And whoever wins in February would only serve for around 10 weeks before everyone is back to the ballot box in May.”
Martyn Oliver, chair of the Keighley & Ilkley Constituency Labour Party and one its candidates for Keighley West, said that the decision to force a by-election in the Worth Valley was “irresponsible and unnecessary”, stating that local council taxpayers would end up “footing the bill”.
“At a time when councils are under extreme financial pressure, struggling to protect frontline services and deliver value for taxpayers, it is indefensible to spend tens of thousands of council money on an election driven by party political manoeuvring by Reform rather than the needs of residents,” he told The Ilkley Journal.
“Forcing a costly by-election just weeks before that is impossible to justify. Reform should explain why they believe wasting public money is acceptable when residents are facing rising costs and councils are being asked to do more. It’s hard to see how any party could be supportive of this blatant waste of council taxpayers’ money. The right wing, unpleasant politics of Reform and the Tory party are basically the same, just look at all the failed Tories jumping ship to Reform.”
Despite their protestations, the Conservatives, the Greens, the Lib Dems and Labour have all said that faced with a forced by-election in Worth Valley, they’ll now be putting forward their own candidates to ensure that the seat is at least democratically contested. But that’s not all that’s at stake.
What happens after the polling booths close and the ballot papers are counted has the potential to reveal which way the wind is blowing in the district at a time of peak exhaustion, with many people feeling fed up with what little so-called conventional politics can achieve.
Will it show that there is an appetite for change, whether it’s for provocateurs like Reform – and by association, resulting in ever dwindling support for mainstream parties – or progressive alternatives like the Greens, who have also been one of the beneficiaries of the breakdown in trust of, in particular, the Labour-Tory duopoly?
Or will we all get an unexpected surprise this May with voters, nearly two years on from the 2024 general election and one year on from Reform’s big win locally, revert to type and realign themselves with, up to a point – because, for some, there is no going back – with their traditional party of choice, with enough distance from both sets of elections allowing them to make a more nuanced, less reactionary or emotive decision designed to punish? It might be easier to guess who’s next in the Tory party to jump ship to Reform than answer that question.
From Reform’s point of view, the by-election in the Worth Valley is fair game and well within the rules. There was vacancy, a notice of the vacancy was given and the minimum number of requests needed were made. That’s all. Ironically, then, in a purely practical sense, the party has technically done no wrong and made good use of what the system offers.
We chased the party’s local chair, Andrew Judson, to get their take on the story, as well as their response to widespread condemnation from local councillors but we got no reply. A spokesperson was, however, quoted by the Telegraph & Argus as saying that because the Worth Valley by-election is being held at the same time as a Keighley Town Council by-election (for Woodhouse & Hainworth), the extra cost for the former will be “negligible”.
The spokesperson also added that “residents deserve the best representation” and that Reform welcomes the “chance to honour their democratic right”. Again, if you go by what’s permitted, this response holds up – residents do indeed deserve proper representation (there’s three seats for the ward and only two are occupied).
But, and, it has to be said counterintuitively given the party’s claims that it would (and will) cut wasteful spending locally and this by-election will result in a more than a negligible cost to taxpayers, the argument about representation and democracy in action doesn’t really hold up.
Yes, accurate representation matters. Yes, a council seat is unoccupied. And yes, it isn’t ideal that no one will have been in place since November. All of that is indisputable.
But, in light of the logistics and cost involved and the ultimate timing of the by-election – so close to the main local elections across Bradford, West Yorkshire and England – the whole exercise can be seen to be a fundamental waste of time and money, an exercise in vanity, free PR and, somewhat shrewdly, all etiquette aside, one way of gauging how far the pendulum has shifted in support for Reform UK largely from – but by no means exclusively – the Conservatives, given that they’re increasingly being seen generously as Tory 2.0 or ungenerously as the new home for failed and more extreme Tories.
As for propriety, does it matter anymore? The obvious answer is yes, of course it does, high-mindedness is a virtue worth upholding. Yet, in a tired political landscape that seems to be increasingly antagonistic, partisan, exploitative and, frankly, vile – which has been effectively exploited and fuelled by populists and demagogues online with more and more people experiencing a TV-based reality that is algorithmically constructed (see Derek Thompson’s Everything Is Television) – it’s no longer enough. Because if you’re part of the furniture, then you’re still part of the problem.
Instead, principled politics that doesn’t play dirty – but still gutsy enough to be combative and witty but never bad-mannered or unscrupulous – has to be done with more personality and from a more progressive platform that doesn’t come across as too radical or self-righteous, as Zohran Mamdani has show during his now successful New York mayoral election campaign (while appreciating the reality that local government in its current form is very limited in what it can do but that regardless would still perform much better with more qualified, atypical councillors in control).
Speaking of Mamdani, what was most interesting about his campaign wasn’t his fight with Republicans, it was the way in which he refused to accept the continuity politics of his party.
His entire movement, if you want to call it that, represented, among other things, a “rebuke to the conventional strategies of the Democratic party”, as Moira Donegan, a Guardian US columnist, put it in November after he won the election, which also “vanquished the entrenched Democratic establishment viewed by many on the left as woefully out of touch with their party and their nation”, as Anthony Zurcher, the BBC’s North America correspondent, said at the time.
Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems and even the Greens locally would do well to reflect more deeply to scrutinise every aspect of their machinery to reshape the way local politics is done, who it’s done by, how it’s communicated and how the very people they’re there to serve are made to feel like they’re active participants in it and not merely a collective means to an end at the ballot box.
Save for a miracle, it’s the only way they’re going to hold back the potential storm that is coming in the shape of Reform UK. They now have weeks to respond to the Worth Valley by-election and only a few months to get their acts together ahead of the 2026 local elections for Bradford Council. Everything is to play for and there has never been a time like today where a more modern, ambitious and imaginative agenda and approach to local government is needed
And the talent to go with it.