Reform UK has announced 20 councillors have joined the party in England, including defectors from the Conservatives and the Green Party.
There are 14 former Conservatives, five independents and one Green among the new batch of Reform UK councillors, who represent areas such as Stoke-on-Trent, Thanet and Bolsover.
The new intake include a former BBC journalist, a man who was held hostage by Iraq, and an engineer who has quit the left-wing party led by Zack Polanski to join Reform UK.
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice MP said he was “thrilled to welcome 20 new councillors from across the political spectrum”.
Reform UK has significantly boosted its ranks of councillors in recent years, but still trails far behind the number of council seats held by the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives and Labour.
Nigel Farage’s party performed well in last year’s local elections, taking control of 10 councils and gaining hundreds of councillors.
The party is aiming for a similarly strong showing in this May’s local and national elections across England, Wales and Scotland, as it consistently leads in countrywide opinion polls.
The arrival of the 20 councillors comes after former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi became the latest senior Conservative to join Reform UK.
Zahawi was one of about 20 former Tory MPs to defect to Farage’s party, which currently only has five sitting MPs in the House of Commons.
The Conservatives said Reform UK was “fast becoming the party of has-been politicians looking for their next gravy train”.
The new Reform UK councillors announced on Wednesday came from local authorities in Horsham, Middlesbrough, the Wirral, Reading, Thanet, Suffolk, Gravesham, Bolsover, St Helens, Havant, Waltham, Somerset, Stoke-on-Trent, West Suffolk, Calderdale and Waltham Forest.
One of the Tory defectors was Reading councillor Clarence Mitchell, a former newspaper and broadcast journalist who runs a PR consultancy business.
Mitchell said: “Having been a member of the Conservative Party for 16 years, I now believe that Reform UK is the only party that can truly represent and fight for the authentic values that are fundamental to our country’s recovery and its restoration of pride.”
Another defection was that of David Hawley, a St Helens councillor who quit the town’s Green Party to become a Reform UK member on the council.
“I voted for Brexit to take back control of Britain’s borders and lower immigration, yet the government failed to do so,” he said.
“It is time for me to join the party which best represents the views of myself and the people of St Helens in order to act on the improvements I have long strived for.”
Barry Manners was originally elected as a Conservative in Thanet, but he left the party in May last year and sat as an independent until announcing he was joining Reform UK.
He said his experience of being held captive in Kuwait as Iraqi forces invaded in 1990 had “taught me the importance of resilience, responsibility, and strong leadership”.
The Conservative Party and Green Party have been approached for comment.
