Reform Bottle Their First Big Test in Bradford

Bradford Conservatives Called the Extraordinary Meeting. Reform Didn't.

The Telegraph and Argus have now reported that the Conservatives on Bradford Council have called for an extraordinary council meeting to demand Bradford's inclusion in the National Rape Gang Inquiry. Bradford Council has confirmed the request is valid. The council has until Monday 8 June to publish a notice fixing a date. The agenda will carry a single item.

Call for ‘extraordinary meeting’ in Bradford to discuss grooming gang inquiry

CONSERVATIVES in Bradford have called for an “extraordinary meeting” to cement calls for Bradford to be included in a national inquiry into…

Bradford Telegraph and ArgusChris Young

The Conservatives did this. Reform did not.

Councillor Rebecca Poulsen, leader of the Conservative group, made the case in terms that will be familiar to anyone who has followed my work over the past few weeks. She said the criteria for selection will be decided before the next scheduled full council meeting on 15 July, making an extraordinary meeting imperative as soon as possible. Bradford, she argued, must send a strong united message to victims and the inquiry before that document is published.

The extraordinary meeting Reform claimed was unnecessary after their leader Stephen Place wrote a letter has now been called by the Conservatives.

Reform Was Given Every Reason to Act First

Stephen Place wrote personally to Baroness Longfield on 21 May, and Bradford Council's own statement describes that letter as the first time a Bradford Council leader has made such a specific request. Despite a proven rape gang protecting council promoting the letter as a significant achievement, the Conservatives actions clearly demonstrate that they do not believe that writing a letter was sufficient.

The case made to Place had been clear. Only a formal council motion on the institutional record creates the legal basis for challenging how the criteria are applied, and the extraordinary meeting power under the Local Government Act 1972 could be used by five members at any time without waiting for July. He failed to act.

Reform has 29 members on Bradford Council. Five of them could have called this meeting the day. They did not. The Conservatives, who have spent years bringing motions that Labour blocked, used the power that Reform declined to use.

What Poulsen's Statement Confirms

Poulsen names Ann Cryer, Robbie Moore, Conservative councillors, and local and national campaigners as the people who have consistently demanded a statutory national inquiry. She notes that Labour leadership refused to call for one and said it would not bring anything of additional value. She establishes that the criteria will be published before the next scheduled full council meeting and argues that an extraordinary meeting is therefore imperative.

Every element of that argument was communicated through our work before Poulsen made it publicly. Poulsen perhaps read the argument and acted on it. Reform's response was to double down on a letter.

On Monday They Made Speeches. On Wednesday Poulsen Called the Meeting.

Two days before Poulsen filed her extraordinary meeting request, politicians from Reform, Restore Britain, and the Conservatives lined up in Westminster Hall to speak on the grooming gangs scandal. Rupert Lowe organised the debate and Nigel Farage called for parliamentary committees to use subpoena powers to investigate institutional failures. The speeches were made and the debate concluded.

Bradford’s grooming scandal could ‘dwarf’ that of Rotherham, Rochdale and Oldham - MP

Bradford should be a focal point of the national grooming gangs inquiry because the scale of child sexual exploitation in the district could ‘dwarf’…

Bradford Telegraph and ArgusT&A Reporter

None of it called an extraordinary council meeting in Bradford.

On Wednesday morning, Poulsen did. A Westminster Hall speech costs nothing and changes nothing on the institutional record. A formal council meeting request filed with Bradford Council and confirmed valid by the authority's own statement is a different order of act entirely.

Farage leads a party with 29 councillors in Bradford. Five of them could have called this meeting at any point. Poulsen, whose Conservative motion Labour blocked on 21 January 2025, used the mechanism Reform left untouched.

The people following this are not interested in Westminster Hall speeches. They can see what the difference between performing accountability and demanding it actually looks like. In Bradford, it is the Conservatives that have stepped forward.

The Meeting Must Now Happen Before 13 July

Bradford Council has until Monday 8 June to publish a notice fixing a date. The meeting must take place before the criteria are published, which Longfield must do by 13 July. The agenda carries a single item. This is the formal institutional act that places Bradford's demand on the public record before the scope of any local investigation is fixed.

This is what I argued for and it is now happening. It happened because the Conservatives used the power available to them.

Calderdale and Kirklees Are Still Reform's to Lead

Bradford has been brought to the right position by the Conservatives forcing the issue. The record so far belongs to Poulsen.

In Calderdale, Reform holds 34 of 54 seats, an outright majority of fourteen. Dan Sutherland needs no coalition and no permission from any other group. Five Reform members can requisition the extraordinary meeting today. More than fifty men have been convicted of rape and child sexual exploitation in Calderdale since 2016, six of them jailed in Halifax last week. The institutions that presided over three decades of offending have never been compelled to explain themselves and Calderdale is not on the inquiry's confirmed list. Sutherland can change that before the criteria land and he can do it entirely on Reform's terms.

In Kirklees, the leadership question remains unresolved but the arithmetic is available. Reform holds 29 seats and the Conservatives hold 9, giving them 38 votes combined on a council where 35 is required. The 277 years of sentences announced on 20 May for offences hidden from the public for years make the case without argument.

Five Reform members can call the extraordinary meeting without waiting for the leadership question to be settled. The Conservatives who blocked the leadership vote are the same Conservatives whose votes would pass the motion. It would be electoral suicide for the Conservatives to block a motion in Kirklees.

Reform can still lead in both authorities while the criteria are being written. The window that produced this morning's news is the same window that remains open in Calderdale and Kirklees.

What Reform does with it is the story that has not yet been written.

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