{"id":495926,"date":"2026-03-26T06:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T06:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495926\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T06:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T06:30:10","slug":"council-tax-has-to-go-up-says-reform-uk-leader-nigel-farage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495926\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Council tax has to go up&#8217;, says Reform UK leader Nigel Farage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Farage, who is also the MP for Clacton in Essex, said he believed his party would &#8220;win many, many seats&#8221; in the South East, adding that Surrey and Sussex residents had been &#8220;denied&#8221; an opportunity to vote in local elections. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Elections in Sussex were set to be postponed in 2026 but the government reversed the decision after a legal challenge by Reform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The party hopes to make significant gains in the county.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Reform UK also revealed two defectors from the Conservatives on Wealden District Council, David Greaves and Neil Cleaver.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">BBC South East will be speaking to all the main political parties before 7 May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Farage, who is also the MP for Clacton in Essex, said he believed his party would &#8220;win many,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-495926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}