Hillhead Review

I became aware of Councillor Sam Jones seeing a viral TikTok, wherein he publicly calls out Reform council leader George Finch in the council chamber on a refusal to cooperate with fellow councillors: “Look at me when I’m talking to you please, Councillor Finch.” Jones has long documented his incredulity and discontent at the decision-making at play, including free school buses being rezoned out to 5 miles and suggestions of returning money to the government due to disagreement with spending advice, to the extent that I’ve become aware of Warwickshire County Council’s happenings from Glasgow. 

Jones responded to my email asking for an interview quickly, and when I joined the Teams call a few minutes early, he was already in the waiting room. I asked firstly for a background on Warwickshire County Council (for non-followers of @samgreenparty on TikTok), and was told a Reform-heavy north leads to the party holding 22 of the county’s 57 seats. Warwickshire had consistently had a Conservative-led council until the leadership of Reform’s Rob Howard, who in July 2025 stood down for health reasons and thus welcomed in George Finch. The apparent strategy of the Warwickshire Tories, Jones said, was to bide their time for the Reform council to lose favour so they can pick back up the pieces, a strategy I’d argue we see the party employing against Labour currently on the national scale. 

“When they inevitably make mistakes, go wrong, come up with crazy policies, you name it, the Tories are hoping Reform will drop the ball and they’ll be there to pick up the slack. Most of everyone else, we accept that it’s the only card they have to play, but my personal view is that they are rather throwing Warwickshire residents under the bus with that one, but, such is life.”

We discussed the development from populist anti-politics in rhetoric to anti-politics in action, with Jones citing the popularity garnered by Reform among those abandoned by establishment parties. The most passionate of these voters, Jones says, are those he sees becoming councillors, with not only an anti-establishment edge (shared by the Greens) but also a lack of first-hand council experience, leading to missing understanding of political etiquette and decisions baffling enough to warrant social media virality. 

“What the Tories are playing on partly is the fact that [Reform’s] complete lack of experience in local government at all means that they are trying to start from a real standing start. That is a really difficult thing to do in local politics.”

Further discussion revealed the viral TikTok that introduced me to Warwickshire County Council had a happy off-screen conclusion, with party leaders being ushered into a room to ‘sort it out amongst themselves’ and agreeing on a rewording of the original motion. We quickly moved to methods of political recruitment, which seemed natural due to Jones’ social media presence. This presence was a conscious response to controversy with the council’s previous Conservative leadership’s comments on SEND children, which had been a significant part of Warwickshire Greens’ messaging in the following election. Jones aimed not only to hold the incumbent Reform councillors to account, but publicly call out injustice by providing a cautionary tale nationally: 

“It’s not just about explaining to the people of Warwickshire what is going on in their administration… it was about also trying to demonstrate what a Reform council could look like if it came to you.”

This was in acknowledgement of the party’s primary anti-establishment appeal, where Jones believes Reform voters disillusioned by mainstream parties could be persuaded over to the Greens; after all, Reform voters all came from somewhere else very recently. I was inclined to ask whether the emergence of another left party, in Your Party, made him worry about the prospects of this, but Jones maintained that more left voices can only be a good thing. He raised another interesting point here; the next general election is three and a half years away, and the right hasn’t such a solidified unity behind Reform. 

Reform could struggle to maintain popularity for years, with Jones mentioning the threats of UKIP, Advance UK, and Restore Britain, all founded or run by figures who left or were expelled from Reform. 

“We know there are certain areas where the right wing can’t help but disagree with themselves and oftentimes because these organisations are so centralised, you can run into significant personal disagreements inside these parties and it results in a split.”

We discussed Elon Musk’s backing of some of the organisations and figures too far-right for even Reform, and in light of his significant pull during the US election last year determined he has some capability to inadvertently fracture the UK right. Although this is no reason the left shouldn’t be cautious of a far-right half-trillionaire establishing himself as a social media mogul:

“There’s a non-zero risk, for example, the Green Party Twitter [X] account gets throttled and our content suppressed, because god forbid ideas that serve the people are allowed to proliferate.”
 

Jones seemed, overall, cautiously optimistic. Referring to a current “battle of ideas” being prioritised over party allegiance, and highlighting a valuable strength shared by Green leader Zack Polanski and Nigel Farage MP: they both spend all their time campaigning. 

“He’s not spending his time serving Clacton, he’s on the campaign trail because it is always campaign time to Nigel Farage and it is always campaign time for Zack Polanski.”