Mick Jenkinson

Sam Journet is the Reform UK group leader on Basildon Council and was confirmed as Mayor of Basildon for 2026/27 (a largely ceremonial civic role, distinct from council leader). Journet was arrested at Basildon Council offices in September 2025 on suspicion of stalking, harassment and a public order offence, following complaints from council staff and fellow councillors about disorder and trespassing in restricted areas. Essex Police took no further action, though bail conditions were imposed and later extended. In April 2026, Byline Times reported he'd faced complaints for wearing the pervert/Meta-style smart glasses to film council staff and residents during meetings and doorknocking, which multiple sources described as intimidating. His own campaign material leans heavily on an anti-establishment, "fight for the people not developers" framing, which is interesting because two of Reform's most senior figures (deputy leader Tice and treasurer Nick Candy) have built their careers and considerable personal wealth in property development, which sits awkwardly next to messaging that casts "developers" as part of a self-serving establishment working against ordinary people (the framing Journet used in his own candidate bio, and one that recurs a lot in Reform's local campaign material generally). Robert Jenrick, while not really a "developer" himself, is a multi-property owner: a Grade I-listed manor house in Herefordshire (Eye Manor, bought for £1.1m in 2009), a Westminster townhouse (~£2.5-2.6m), and a second London property, plus dormant-company links (Vincent Square Properties) tied to past renovation activity. As Tory Housing Secretary in 2020 he was also embroiled in the Westferry Printworks scandal — overruling his own department to grant a developer planning permission with reduced affordable housing just before a new levy kicked in, two weeks before that developer donated £12,000 to the Conservatives. So he combines personal multi-home wealth with a direct record of favourable decisions for developers. An analysis of Land Registry data found former MP Nigel Farage and his partner Laure Ferrari own properties in Surrey, Kent and Essex worth at least £4m combined, including his former marital home in Kent, two beachfront properties on the Kent coast, a five-bedroom woodland home in Surrey, and his constituency home in Clacton. He's only declared two of the five on his register of members' interests — the Surrey property and one of the two beachfront homes. Two of the beachfront/coastal properties are held through his company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, and he's currently under a separate Parliamentary Standards investigation over an undeclared £5m payment from a crypto billionaire. His Clacton constituency home, which he initially lied about and said he'd bought, was bought for £885,000 in his partner's sole name without a mortgage, which avoided the stamp duty surcharge that would have applied had he owned it as a second home, raising tax-avoidance-structuring questions rather than developer conflicts of interest. So the pattern across Tice, Candy, Jenrick and Farage (all privately educated multimillionaires) isn't identical — Tice and Candy are developers by trade, Jenrick is a multi-homeowner with a developer-favourable ministerial record, Farage is a multi-homeowner with a transparency/tax-structuring problem — but all four sit uneasily next to Reform's "we're not the developers, we're not the establishment" messaging. Overwhelming evidence strongly supports the view that Senior Reform UK figures are very precisely the 'self-serving establishment' they claim to oppose. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?