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