When the Cat Sized Rat Met the Pelsall Tremor
Reform’s rise from Teesside to the Tame, while posh Kemi purred in Manchester
Let’s start with an apology. Most by-elections come and go without anyone noticing. They are the municipal equivalent of a tree falling in an empty park. Nobody outside the ward cares. Normally, neither would we
But these are not normal times. Reform UK are winning seats they have never even contested before. They are peeling away votes from both the Conservatives and Labour. More dangerously, they are waking the non-voters, the great silent bloc that usually shrugs and stays home. That is new. That is dangerous. And that is why this cat sized rat and a ward called Pelsall matter far more than they should.
Posh Kemi and the northern omen
While posh Kemi Badenoch was purring through her Manchester conference speech, all immaculate diction and self-belief, the north was sending up a warning flare.
In Redcar and Cleveland, Reform UK took 65.3 per cent of the vote in Skelton East, their biggest result yet under first past the post. The Conservatives, defending the seat, collapsed to 13.9 per cent. Labour trailed with 19.2 per cent, barely a flicker of life in an area it once dominated.
A few weeks earlier, a photo of a cat sized rat had gone viral. It had been found in a local kitchen and was said to have frightened the dog. It also frightened the council, who were caught flat-footed by the story. The symbolism wrote itself. When the rats get bigger than the promises, something has gone badly wrong.
That image did more damage than any speech. It said, in one grotesque snapshot, what people had been muttering for months. The basics are breaking down. Nobody listens. Everything from refuse to representation has been left to rot.
Pelsall, the West Midlands tremor
Down in Pelsall, on the edge of Walsall, another tremor rolled through the ground. Graham Eardley of Reform edged out the Conservatives by 55 votes. Nothing spectacular at first glance, just 1,231 ballots cast on a 32 per cent turnout. Yet the pattern beneath was extraordinary.
The Conservatives once strolled this ward. They muttered afterwards about “the national picture,” as if Westminster’s woes explained away a collapse that had been building for years. Labour did even worse. From 510 votes in 2024 to a humiliating 125 this time. That is not apathy. That is exodus.
If the Tories cannot hold Pelsall, they are toast. And if Labour cannot beat them there, they are vapour.
The records tell the story. In 2016 the Conservatives drew over 2,000 votes in Pelsall. By 2022 they were down to 1,707. Then 1,395 in 2023. Now 1,176. Labour’s fall is sharper still: 680 in 2022, 510 in 2024, now 125. It is political hollowing, year by year, until there is nothing left.
And like Skelton East, this was not just Tories defecting. Labour’s local support bled away too. Reform fed on disillusionment from both sides.
The voice that no longer connects
All of this points to a deeper malaise. The voice of the old parties no longer reaches the people who once trusted it.
They speak, but the sound is hollow. The phrases are perfect, the smiles rehearsed, the compassion calibrated. The public has learned to spot it. They can hear when someone is talking at them rather than to them. They can tell when a promise is made for effect, not intent.
Part of this collapse in confidence comes from the slow corrosion of influence. People have watched the rise of aggressive lobbying and the capture of politics by think tanks and private networks. They see MPs who seem to speak more for donors than for neighbours. They see consultancies that look suspiciously like payment for access.
The perception is simple. Those with money and proximity now have the ear of government. The rest of the country has the dial tone.
Think tanks dine politicians to persuasion. They buy the round, fund the trip, flatter the ego, and walk away with the policy. The voter, who buys neither lunch nor influence, is left with the bill.
This is why the old party voices sound wrong. They are no longer grounded in the street or the shopfront. They echo from the dining room, the conference suite, the after-dinner panel. They no longer carry conviction because they no longer come from the same ground as the listener.
So when Reform say “we notice,” even if the claim is thin, it lands. The bar for authenticity has fallen so far that mere attention feels radical.
Rats, rot, and recognition
The Cleveland rat became shorthand for decay. The Pelsall count became a measure of collapse. Together they map a shift that the big parties refuse to see. Reform’s victories are not freak accidents. They are the visible cracks in a system that has lost its soundness.
In both places, Reform spoke a simpler language. No Westminster spin. No theoretical renewal. Just talk of bins, roads, noise, and nuisance, the small irritations that mark where the state has stopped functioning.
They sounded real. And in politics, sounding real is half the battle.
The reckoning ahead
From Teesside to the Tame, the message is the same. The electorate is not angry for fun. It is angry from fatigue. The old parties have burned through trust like cheap fuel. They are left with empty tanks and empty words.
Reform may not yet be the answer. But they have found the question. And that is often how movements begin.
Ignore the scratching if you like. Pretend you cannot hear the noise in the walls. But one day you will wake up to find the whole structure moving.
GRIT closing line
From the cat sized rat to the Pelsall tremor, Britain’s discontent is no longer silent. Posh Kemi meowed in Manchester. Reform roared everywhere else.