They’re not reformers. They’re performers. And when it falls apart, they’ll blame everyone else.

Reform came in promising a new way of doing things. Cut waste. Cut council tax. Stand up for local people. It sounded bold. In reality, it’s bluster over substance — the same hollow pattern repeated across every county where they hold power.

Kent was supposed to be the flagship. The model. The place Reform would prove its claim that it could run local government better than anyone else. What’s actually happening is chaos. A five per cent council tax rise looms. Its councillors are publicly at war. The big talk of “waste-busting” has collided head-on with reality: statutory services eat up the budget.

Adult social care, SEND, highways, children’s services. It isn’t “waste” — it’s the legal minimum. That’s the first truth Reform’s discovered, far too late. Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Lincolnshire have followed the same script. Pre-election swagger, post-election silence. All promised lower taxes, smaller government, and no pain. All now face the same grim arithmetic that every administration before them has had to confront. Nothing in their rhetoric has survived contact with the spreadsheets.

Warwickshire is the newest chapter in the same story. A barely-formed leadership, a 19-year-old council leader, a £500 million budget, and already they’ve signed off £150,000 on political advisers after campaigning to slash waste. No one doubts youthful enthusiasm,but running a county isn’t student politics. It’s complex, statutory, often brutal. They’ve started with gesture politics and misplaced confidence. It’s exactly the same hollow template, just with less experience behind the wheel.

And then there’s Leicestershire — the most revealing of the lot. If Kent shows how loudly Reform can shout, Leicestershire shows how fast it folds when tested. Leadership at County Hall looks more like musical chairs than government. It comes to something when Leader Dan Harrison is the only one with any political experience, yet even his own son-in-law — a former Leader of Leicestershire County Council — didn’t trust him enough to hand him a cabinet post. That tells you everything about confidence in the leadership from inside the tent.

On Local Government Reform, he never led a fight. He hesitated, then went straight into private talks with Sir Peter Soulsby, Mayor of Leicester City. Incredibly, he conceded territory before negotiations had even begun. Anyone with a modicum of business nous knows you don’t start by handing over what the other side wants. Some negotiator. Then the opposition clipped his wings and now he’s a full advocate of One County — in public at least.

On council tax, the U-turn is already done. The promised cut has been pushed off into some vague “long term” future, pinned on a team of external consultants — almost certainly one of the Big Four. We all know how this story ends. Big promises. Big invoices.

Savings that never quite arrive. As Harrison himself put it, their work will deliver value to residents “ten times any cost.” The previous administration stripped out £250 million over ten years — real delivery. Reform sweep in, distrust their own officers despite a record most councils would envy, and turn to “experts” who’ll tell them what their own people already know — only for a far bigger bill and a PowerPoint presentation dressed up as a plan.

And what has this administration actually achieved? Three things. It’s fiddled with the flag-flying policy. It’s shifted money from one budget line to another without changing a thing. And it’s handed ground to Leicester City on LGR. That’s it. That’s the record.

Across the Reform-led counties the pattern is unmistakable. Kent makes the noise. Leicestershire folds. Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire drift. Warwickshire stumbles into it all fresh-faced, convinced enthusiasm can replace experience. Reform promised to lead a movement. What they’ve actually created is a travelling roadshow of overconfidence and empty slogans.

They’re not governing. They’re performing. And when it all falls apart, they’ll blame
everyone but themselves.