Another Reform candidate resigns after vetting failure – and councils are forced to pick up the bill

Inadequate or unprepared Reform candidates could cost local authorities over £300,000 - (Reuters)

Just days after being elected, one of Reform UK’s 53 new councillors in Essex, Stuart Prior, was already heading for the door, having handed in his resignation.

Six months earlier he allegedly authored social media posts in which he celebrated a Sikh woman being raped in the Midlands, described Muslim people as “rats” and wrote that white people were the “master race”.