Graham Eardley: Building Reform, Brick by Brick

In recent years, the old parties tricks have looked tired. Slogans that vanish. Reshuffles that go nowhere. Attack ads that fall flat. Every move seems only to strengthen Reform’s hand.

By-elections are usually the ghosts of politics: faint, fleeting, forgotten almost as soon as the ballots are counted. Under normal circumstances, no one outside Walsall would have given Pelsall’s by-election a second glance.

But this one mattered. Reform UK’s Graham Eardley edged out the Conservatives by just 55 votes. A little over 1,200 people put their cross next to his name, hardly a revolution, but enough to shake the local order. A turnout of 32% gave the victory heft: in an age where many council “landslides” are built on turnouts in the low twenties, Pelsall’s result looked positively robust.

For the Conservatives, Pelsall was supposed to be stitched into their DNA. Yet they were left mumbling about “the national picture.” Labour fared worse: their vote collapsed from 510 in 2024 to a pitiful 125 this time, three-quarters gone in 18 months. This wasn’t apathy, it was haemorrhage, straight into Reform’s arms.

Behind it all stood Eardley: a man with decades of political bruises, but also persistence, conviction, and now momentum.

Above ground beginnings

Eardley didn’t begin his life as a career politician. His early working years were in the coal industry, above ground at Lee Hall Colliery. It was the mid-1980s, the height of the miners’ strike. While Arthur Scargill called for solidarity, Eardley stood firm with his local ballot: his area had voted not to strike, so he worked. To some, that made him a “scab.” To him, it was democracy. The vote was binding, whatever the personal cost.

When the pits closed, he retrained at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, determined to build a different life. It was here politics took hold. He joined the Conservatives, stood in Brownhills in 1991, and in 1992 was elected to Walsall Council.

But if politics shaped him, he also reshaped his politics. By the early 2000s, disillusioned with the Conservatives, he defected to UKIP. He stood in seats up and down the country: Aldridge-Brownhills, Watford, West Bromwich West, Wolverhampton North East. Sometimes second, sometimes third, but always there, knocking on the door.

When UKIP swerved towards Tommy Robinson, Eardley walked. He joined Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, then Reform UK, and has been part of the movement almost from its inception. For the past five years he has chaired Reform in Walsall on an interim basis, laying the groundwork for the local party machine.

Pension politics

What sets Eardley apart is not just persistence, but where he now finds himself. He has been nominated to the West Midlands Pension Fund, one of the largest local government pension schemes in the country.

That might sound dry. In fact, it’s a powder keg. The fund has faced sustained criticism: employer contributions are high, annual fees top £100 million, and some academics argue it is draining councils already on the brink. One Birmingham leader even demanded refunds. Pensioners have complained of delays and administrative chaos after bungled upgrades.

Traditionally, councillors nominated to the fund are “passive agents,” expected to nod through decisions while officers and managers run the show. Eardley is not passive. He is, in his own words, a “principal agent.” That means confrontation is inevitable.

And Reform is watching closely. Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, argues that bloated pension funds are forcing up council tax and draining public money. His claim: if funds were leaner, the average British household could save £350 a year. Now, with Eardley on the inside of one of the most controversial funds in Britain, Reform has an institutional foothold. For officials used to rubber stamps, that’s a threat. Indeed Eardley isn’t alone as he tells me “I’m one of two Reform UK members on the funds Labour dominated committee.” That sounds like a challenge. Yet take a look at the calibre of councillors traditionally on the pension fund. Sadly, if they were gunpowder, few hats would be blown off, to mix a metaphor.

One man, one party, one movement

Ask Eardley now and he speaks with unvarnished confidence. He believes Reform could take Walsall Council in 2026. He intends to stand again for Aldridge-Brownhills at the next general election, convinced he can topple the Conservatives. And he insists that this time, unlike in years past, the tide is with him.

That confidence isn’t just his. Local Reform members, he says “as keen as mustard”, talk of building something, not for one election cycle, but for the long haul. It’s the sense of pioneers laying the bricks of a new wall, one ward at a time.

And perhaps that’s why Pelsall mattered. It wasn’t just a protest vote or a freak result. It was the beginning of structure.

The bigger picture

Look at the wider numbers. The Conservatives once racked up more than 2,000 votes in Pelsall. That figure has shrunk year by year: 1,707 in 2022, 1,395 in 2023, 1,176 this year. Labour’s collapse is even more terminal: from 680 in 2022 to 510 in 2024, now just 125. The two-party contest has been hollowed out.

Reform isn’t just winning disillusioned Tories. It is drawing in people who stayed home before. That’s what makes it dangerous. The major parties build their machines on turnout assumptions. If Reform shakes those assumptions, all bets are off.

And it’s not all about Westminster fireworks. In Pelsall, Reform talked about motorbike nuisance, planning rows, transparency at the council. Small stuff, maybe, but the kind of stuff that drives people mad in their own streets. Tie that to national fury and you have dynamite.

Old dogs, new tricks?

Labour and the Conservatives aren’t finished. They are old dogs with plenty of tricks left. But in recent years, their tricks have looked tired. Slogans that vanish. Reshuffles that go nowhere. Attack ads that fall flat. Every move seems only to strengthen Reform’s hand.

Meanwhile, Eardley and his allies just keep stacking bricks.

Brick by brick

One man. One ward. One seat on a pension fund. On their own, perhaps small things. But put them together and they form the outline of something larger.

That is the story of Graham Eardley. He has gone from the pits, to the ballot box, to the pension fund boardroom. And in each place he has stood firm, whether it made him popular or not.

For Reform, he is more than a councillor. He is a proof-of-concept. A sign that persistence pays, that structures can be infiltrated, and that a wall can be built one brick at a time.

The tremors are here. The quakes may follow.