Four months after Reform UK swept into power across Poole, Labour has taken one of its seats back — and the result is another warning that Nigel Farage’s party may have discovered that winning elections is considerably easier than holding on to what it has won.
The Hamworthy East by-election should not be dismissed as just another local election.
Labour’s Peter Cooper defeated Reform’s John Sheldon by 476 votes to 453 — a majority of 23. Turnout was only 22.54 per cent, so it would be wrong to pretend that one by-election proves a wholesale collapse in Reform support. But the political significance of what has happened is difficult to ignore.
Reform won Hamworthy East in May.
Four months later, it has lost it.
That is the sort of reversal that gets noticed.
Official BCP Hamworthy East result
The May election had produced an extraordinary result for Reform. The party emerged with the largest number of councillors on the new Poole Town Council, winning 15 of its 21 seats. In Hamworthy East, Daniel Bleeze was elected for Reform.
Yet the party’s grip on the seat lasted only months before the vacancy triggered another election — and Labour seized the opportunity.
Official Poole Town Council May 2026 results
That matters because Reform’s entire political story has been built around momentum.
The party’s electoral breakthrough has been spectacular. But rapid expansion creates a problem: suddenly having hundreds of elected representatives is very different from building a stable political organisation capable of keeping them.
And that problem has become increasingly visible.
The Independent reported in May that more than 60 Reform councillors had left the party over the preceding year, following a period in which Reform had made major gains in local government. The newspaper reported that almost 70 councillors had been lost from the party and examined the reasons given by former councillors for leaving.
That is an extraordinary rate of attrition for a party whose political brand depends so heavily upon presenting itself as the insurgent force capable of replacing the established parties.
Then there have been the controversies surrounding individual candidates and councillors.
In May, newly elected Essex councillor Stuart Prior resigned after allegations concerning racist and Islamophobic social-media posts. Reform revoked his membership, while Prior said the allegations were not the reason for his resignation. The episode was one of several controversies involving newly elected Reform representatives.
And the instability has not been confined to England.
In Wales, Reform’s leader Dan Thomas resigned in September after being arrested on suspicion of assault and controlling or coercive behaviour. He has not been convicted and maintains his innocence. Helen Jenner subsequently became Reform’s Welsh leader, while Senedd member Sarah Cooper-Lesadd defected to Plaid Cymru, citing ideological disagreements.
Meanwhile, Reform’s local-government difficulties have continued to generate headlines.
Dorset Eye reported earlier this month on departures from Reform’s Durham County Council group, where the party had won 65 of 98 seats in 2025 but subsequently suffered resignations, suspensions and defections. That example is outside Dorset, but it demonstrates the wider organisational challenge facing a party that has expanded extremely rapidly.
And Dorset itself has already provided another important piece of evidence.
At the May 2026 by-election in Bridport, Reform candidate Jason Holt finished second with 1,164 votes, behind Liberal Democrat Paddy Mooney on 2,190.
Then, in July, Reform’s Philip Leach finished second in the St Leonards and St Ives Dorset Council by-election, receiving 823 votes against Conservative candidate Margaret Goringe’s 928.
Again, none of these results proves that Reform has ceased to be a significant force.
It hasn’t.
Reform remains the largest party on Poole Town Council following the May elections and also has the largest number of councillors on Bournemouth Town Council.
But that is precisely why Hamworthy is interesting.
The question is no longer whether Reform can win elections.
It clearly can.
The question is whether the extraordinary electoral breakthrough of 2025 and 2026 can be converted into durable political support.
There are signs that this is becoming considerably more difficult.
A YouGov poll conducted on 20–21 September found Reform on 21 per cent, level with the Conservatives and behind Labour on 23 per cent. The poll also found that Reform’s support had fallen from a high of 29 per cent a year earlier. YouGov attributed the movement to several factors, including former Conservative voters returning to the Conservatives, the emergence of Restore Britain and controversies surrounding Reform.
Polls are snapshots, not verdicts. Local by-elections are not general elections. And one must be careful not to confuse a setback with a collapse.
But politics is ultimately about what happens when voters get another opportunity to make a choice.
Hamworthy has now given them that opportunity.
And the result is brutally simple.
Reform won the seat in May. Labour won it back in September.
That is not the end of Reform.
But it is a reminder that the political landscape is not frozen in place simply because Reform enjoyed spectacular results earlier in the year.
The party’s opponents have now been given something they desperately needed: evidence that Reform’s victories can be reversed.
That could matter enormously.
Because political momentum is not something a party owns.
It has to be continually earned.
Reform’s May victories demonstrated that thousands of voters were prepared to put their faith in the party. Hamworthy demonstrates that some of those victories can be contested and overturned remarkably quickly.
And the wider record — councillor departures, internal disputes, candidate controversies, defections and defeats in subsequent contests — raises a question that Reform can no longer simply brush aside:
