The party has identified County Durham as a battleground region to help grow its popularity and political status in the North East.
Local candidates will join Mr Farage for a campaign day, as political parties of all colours ramp up their campaigning with less than a month to go before polling day.
Reform UK’s County Durham branch received an early boost in December when former Conservative county councillor Robert Potts defected to Reform UK. He was followed by councillors Joe Quinn, Cathy Hunt and Mike McGaun, who also left the Conservative Party.
The Consett-born candidate said: “This is a part of the country where family, community, and country still thankfully mean something – and I’m not prepared to sit back while it’s all destroyed by political cowardice and national decline.”
Last week, party leader Nigel Farage said Reform UK is “on the side of the worker” as he launched its election campaign amid calls to “make Britain great again”.
Mr Farage previously visited the North East in February to drum up support ahead of the local election campaign. Speaking to supporters in Houghton-le-Spring, Sunderland, he said a “disenchantment” with party politics has made Reform UK Labour’s biggest competitor when it comes to securing votes in the region.
“We are now the challengers to Labour in the North East – Conservatives are melting away,” he added. “A big performance in these local elections from Reform UK will put the fear of god into the central Labour government.”
The local elections in May will be the first major ballot box test for the Labour Party and Prime Minister since entering office last July, and will give a sense of whether opinion poll momentum for other parties like Reform UK translates into real votes.
In March, a poll from Electoral Calculus for The Daily Telegraph projected that Reform UK would win outright control of, and hold a majority of seats on, the council following the election.
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The Durham County Council election will take place on May 1 and will decide the authority’s political future for the next four years. Residents across the county will be voting to decide who will be elected as their County Councillors for the 51 electoral divisions within County Durham.
A total of 98 councillors will be elected, down from 126.
At the last local election in 2021, the Labour Party lost overall control of the county council for the first time in 100 years. The current Joint Administration in charge of the authority is made up of Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Independents.
