Ten Reform UK councillors in Derbyshire say they have resigned in protest over Nigel Farage’s leadership.

The group said Reform was being run in an “increasingly autocratic manner” and “has lost its sense of direction” since Farage took over as leader last June.

But Farage told BBC Newsnight the councillors who had quit were put forward by a “rogue branch” of the party and that “none of them passed vetting”.

The Clacton MP also said he and Elon Musk had patched up their relationship after the tech billionaire posted on the X social media platform that Reform needed a new leader.

“We had a rogue branch putting people up and I think you’ll find, in many cases, there will have to be by-elections because they were not legitimately put forward,” Farage told Newsnight.

The Derbyshire group’s leader, Alex Stevenson, was suspended as a member pending an internal investigation in December.

The 10 signatories include Stevenson and nine others, who hold a mix of seats at county, town and parish level.

Nine of the 10 appear to stand on Heanor and Loscoe Town Council in Derbyshire.

Stevenson, who stood for Reform UK in Amber Valley in the general election and came second, did not deny that some of the candidates he put forward for local elections had not passed the party’s vetting process.

“Apparently one of them shared a Tommy Robinson post a few years ago,” he told the BBC. “We have got no issue with that.”

He added the councillor in question, who he did not name, was a “good bloke”.

In a statement seen by the BBC, and first reported by the Guardian, the group added: “We believe that the current party management is either incompetent or malevolent and we have lost all confidence in the leadership and its structures.”

They said they had voted against the party’s constitution adopted in the autumn and that a “lack of internal democracy remains a significant issue”.

The signatories added: “We have seen no meaningful steps taken towards democratising the party, which we were promised.”

The councillors backed the party’s former co-deputy leader Ben Habib who they say was “unceremoniously sidelined”.

In a statement on X, Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s chairman said: “The leader of this group of ‘councillors’ was suspended weeks ago by Reform for nominating candidates that failed vetting [and] fraudulently nominating candidates with an invalid DNO certificate.

“As a result of [the latter], several of these ‘councillors’ are illegitimate and new elections must be held. Reform stands for the highest standards in public life, and those who commit fraud will always be expelled.”

Asked about Habib’s departure from the party, Farage told the BBC: “Good riddance”.

It comes after US tech billionaire Elon Musk said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead the party – but did not explain his reasoning.

Farage told Newsnight that Musk had wanted him to “come out strongly and support [former EDL leader] Tommy Robinson.”

“Whilst many things Tommy Robinson has said have been right and it’s wrong he’s in solitary confinement, I certainly don’t want Tommy Robinson in my party,” he said.

Refusing to disclose the contents of their “private conversation”, Farage said that he and Musk have since made up and “absolutely agree we don’t want to be at war with each other and have very similar aims”.