A week spent at Reform's first full council meetings

When Nigel Farage held a victory lap of England after his mammoth local elections win on 1 May, he was characteristically bullish about Reform UK's plan to shake up town halls.

- Josh Halliday Diane Taylor Ben Quinn

The party would send in Elon Musk-style budget-slashing units, he said, while promising to turf out asylum seekers and any civil servants working on climate change or diversity. Anyone who "thinks they can go on working from home," he warned, "I think you better all be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly."

Yet three weeks into power in nine of England's cash-starved local authorities - where Reform UK runs £8bn-worth of public services - Farage's "Reform-quake" has so far been limited to smaller, but symbolic, acts of a so-called "war on woke".

In Kent and Durham, councils with a combined £1bn of debt, one of the party's first actions was to take down the Ukrainian flag - hoisted to show support with the war-besieged nation - and Reform vowed not to fly rainbow-coloured flags in support of LGBTQ+ residents.