{"id":578212,"date":"2026-05-11T14:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/578212\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T14:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:56:08","slug":"reform-uk-councillor-in-essex-quits-after-social-media-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/578212\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform UK councillor in Essex quits after social media claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Prior won the Essex County Council division of Rayleigh West with a majority of 796 votes, taking the seat off the Liberal Democrats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Reform candidate also won Sweyne Park and the Grange on Rochford. Farage&#8217;s party won all 13 seats up for grabs on the district council &#8211; and no one party now has overall control there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A by-election is likely to be held for both seats. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Farage was asked by BBC Essex last month if all of Reform&#8217;s candidates had been vetted in the county.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I know that our candidates will be held to a higher standard than any of the other parties,&#8221; said the Clacton MP.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That&#8217;s because we are the challengers. We are the ones taking on the establishment. Yet we have done a good, thorough professional job&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate, accused Reform of &#8220;a systematic failure with the party&#8217;s vetting&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior won the Essex County Council division of Rayleigh West with a majority of 796 votes, taking the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-578212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578212","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=578212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}