Reform UK has been cold calling members of the public – including people who have done nothing more than sign up to the party’s email newsletter, and in at least one case a journalist for a rival publication – asking them to become “paper candidates” in the May 7 local elections, in what critics say exposes the gap between the party’s electoral ambitions and its actual organisational capacity.
The calls, which have come to light as parties race to meet Thursday’s candidate registration deadline, involve Reform representatives contacting people with no known connection to the party and asking them simply to provide their name and address so they can appear on a ballot paper – with the explicit assurance that they would not be required to do anything else.
What the calls involve
The approach is strikingly casual. Those contacted have been told that becoming a paper candidate requires no campaigning, no public appearances and no commitment beyond having their name listed on the ballot. Prospective candidates are asked whether they are bankrupt and whether they have any criminal convictions, then offered a candidate application pack.
One Reform mailing list message sent to anyone who had signed up to receive email updates from the party read: “Even if you just want to assist by being a ‘paper candidate’ please help Nigel and our team by signing up as a candidate today.”
A Guardian journalist who received one of the cold calls reported being asked: “Will you come in to become a paper candidate today and help us to win the election?” The caller added: “Just have your name on the ballot and maybe you will actually win the election.”
The Conservatives released a recording of a similar call from a Reform representative targeting a person in Birmingham, in which a stilted message asks whether the recipient would like to stand in a local ward.
Among those apparently contacted were members of other political parties – a further indication that the calls were being made to anyone on a mailing list regardless of their political affiliations or suitability as candidates.
What paper candidates are – and why this matters
The practice of fielding “paper candidates” is not itself unusual. All parties regularly ask members to stand in seats they have no realistic chance of winning, for a variety of reasons: to demonstrate a full slate of candidates, to gather data on voter preferences, or to support the broader party effort without the expectation of actually winning.
What makes Reform’s approach notable is the method. Paper candidates are normally recruited from a party’s own known membership – people whose political views, background and basic reliability have at least been broadly established through their involvement with the party. Cold calling strangers, or anyone who has subscribed to a marketing list, is a fundamentally different proposition.
The risk is not merely reputational. With five parties now closely bunched in many parts of England, the predictability that once governed paper candidacies has evaporated. A candidate who puts their name forward in a ward where Reform has never previously stood, assuming they have no chance of winning, could – in the current political environment – find themselves unexpectedly elected to represent thousands of constituents with no preparation, no knowledge of local government, and no commitment to actually doing the job.
Farage’s response
Nigel Farage pushed back on the characterisation of the calls as cold canvassing of strangers, insisting the party had only been contacting paid-up members. Speaking in Warwickshire on Tuesday, he denied that Reform had been “begging” people in Birmingham to stand, saying such an approach would be “very, very fruitless.”
“Have we called paid-up members of the party to see if they want to get engaged? Yes, but of course every party does that,” he said, adding that all parties were “running very fast” to fill candidate slots before the 9 April deadline.
He also used the occasion to make a broader political point: “These elections would not even be taking place if it wasn’t for the fact that we’d applied and been granted a judicial review in the high court, and the government caved in. There are 4.6 million people, including many in the West Midlands, who only have a vote because we pushed legally for it to happen.”
The recording released by the Conservatives, and the account of the Guardian journalist who was contacted, suggest the calls went beyond the party’s paid membership – though Reform has not acknowledged this.
The broader context – all parties do it
It would be misleading to present this as exclusively a Reform problem. The Conservatives have also been actively recruiting paper candidates ahead of the deadline, with one email in Tameside explicitly stating there would be “no requirement to run a full campaign or commit large amounts of time” – that the only requirement was being named on the ballot paper. The Greens and the Liberal Democrats have published guides to becoming paper candidates in previous election cycles.
The difference, critics argue, is one of degree and method. Established parties typically recruit paper candidates from within their existing membership and activist base. Cold calling strangers – or anyone who once clicked on a mailing list link – takes the practice into different territory.
The structural argument
The episode has prompted renewed debate about what the paper candidate phenomenon reveals about the British electoral system.
Dr Jess Garland, director of policy and research at the Electoral Reform Society, said the practice was a direct consequence of first-past-the-post: “As the first-past-the-post system means many votes often don’t count, we regularly see parties fielding ‘paper candidates’ that are deemed to have no real chance of winning. This is a morbid symptom of our outdated two-party voting system, which is now also struggling to cope with the new multiparty politics and producing increasingly erratic and unrepresentative results.”
She added: “The danger here is that this leads to further disillusionment in voters, who feel their vote counts little towards the outcome on polling day, but also could end up with town halls that don’t properly represent how an area voted. This only strengthens the case for moving to a fairer, proportional system for elections that ensures far more votes count and that town halls and parliaments better represent what people expressed at the ballot box.”
That last observation carries particular weight in 2026. With five parties polling within striking distance of each other in many English wards, the results of May 7 are genuinely unpredictable. The comfortable assumption that paper candidates in certain wards are standing for form’s sake alone may not survive contact with the actual results.
What it says about Reform’s readiness
The cold calling story lands in the same week as a string of other unflattering stories about Reform’s operational capacity – from the chaos at Kent County Council to the failed Maldives stunt to the housing chief’s Grenfell comments. A party that has styled itself as a government-in-waiting, and which is expected to make significant gains in May, is fielding candidates who are strangers contacted by phone and asked to put their name on a ballot in exchange for doing nothing.
That gap between the scale of Reform’s electoral ambitions and the depth of its organisational infrastructure is one of the central questions hanging over the party as the local elections approach. Winning council seats is one thing. Governing with the people you actually elect is another.
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