Eight months. That’s how long it took Medway councillor Robbie Lammas to work out that jumping from the Conservatives to Reform UK had been, in his own words, “the biggest mistake of my life.”
He left the Tories in October last year. His defection was announced with the usual fanfare – press release, coverage, a useful signal to voters in Medway that Reform was making inroads into traditional Conservative territory. He was, as he now puts it, useful. Then the cameras moved on.
What Lammas found on the other side of the announcement was a party that had mastered the art of generating noise but hadn’t quite worked out what to do with power once it arrived. Speaking to BBC Kent, he was blunt about it.
“I’m going to leave Reform, I’ve had enough, it’s not what I signed up to, and I feel I’ve been misled,” he said.
On how the defection was handled: “I think at the time I was used for a news story.”
On the party itself: “I find with Reform they’re good at spin, but struggle with good governance.”
He was asked directly whether he felt embarrassed. He didn’t dodge it. “Yeah, I am embarrassed about it. It was a huge mistake.”
There’s something almost refreshing about the directness of it. Politicians don’t usually admit this stuff. They drift away quietly, issue a statement about wanting to focus on local issues, and hope nobody writes the follow-up. Lammas went on the radio and said he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. That takes a certain kind of nerve.
The detail that makes it more than just one man’s regret is what he said next. “Lots of others from Reform have told me they too feel it was a mistake to defect but they’re not in a position to publicly admit it,” he said. “But for me I’m happy to admit I’ve made a big mistake.”
So it’s not just him. There’s apparently a quiet chorus inside Reform of people who got what they wanted – a rosette, a seat, some coverage – and then had to live in the reality of what the party actually is. They’re staying. He’s not. The difference, as far as he can tell, is that he decided the embarrassment of admitting the mistake was preferable to the embarrassment of carrying on pretending.
He’ll remain on Medway Council as an independent.
It’s worth being honest about the context this fits into. Reform has had an extraordinary year at the ballot box – the local elections produced historic gains, councillors elected across the country in numbers that nobody predicted. But the party that followed those councillors into office hasn’t always looked like one ready to govern.
Jeremy Corbyn noted earlier this year that many of Reform’s newly elected councillors seemed to think the job was about the flags outside the town hall rather than the work inside it. Seventeen Reform councillors left or were removed within a single month. In Sunderland, a councillor who said Nigerians should be “melted down to fill potholes” was investigated and then reinstated with a written warning. In Bootle West, a councillor who called the Holocaust “a hoax” won a seat.
Then there’s the parliamentary picture. When Richard Tice went on GB News to attack Labour over the defence resignations, the network’s own political editor asked who Reform’s defence spokesman was. Tice suggested Farage. “He’s meant to be your Prime Minister,” came the reply. “That says everything about the seriousness of your party.”
Good at spin. Struggle with good governance. Lammas arrived at the same conclusion as GB News’s political editor. He just got there from the inside.
The broader defection story is worth remembering too. It’s not just councillors who’ve crossed the floor. Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman both left the Conservatives for Reform at cabinet level – and both are now in a party that describes Conservative immigration policy as “treacherous” despite having run that policy themselves. Jenrick was Immigration Minister. Braverman was Home Secretary. Both arrived with significant media coverage. Neither has said it was the biggest mistake of their life.
Whether that’s because they believe in the project, or because the political cost of admitting otherwise is too high, is something only they know. Robbie Lammas, at least, made his choice clear.
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