THE NIGHT THE LIES CAUGHT UP WITH OLDHAM REFORM

NEW LEADER MARK WILKINSON PROMISED OLDHAM NO DEALS BEFORE HE WAS EXPOSED

The Reform committee in Oldham, the committee that saw a record number of Reform councillors elected, has been disbanded, and some of its members have left in utter disgust. Six Reform councillors have openly rebelled against their new leader, Cllr Mark Wilkinson, and his Failsworth mob of former independents. Multiple sources have confirmed that Wilkinson and his team have threatened to walk if anyone keeps questioning the deal they did with Labour.

Reform Oldham has no functioning local campaign organisation and no approved candidates for May 2027, and its councillors are at war with each other. A party that won so much in May 2026 has torn itself apart in a matter of months because of the deal Wilkinson swore he would never do.

WILKINSON TOLD OLDHAM THERE WOULD BE NO DEALS

Before the May 2026 election Reform told this borough it wanted no part in any secret agreements or coalitions, and that if you voted Reform you got Reform. After the election Lewis Quigg, then the Reform leader, promised no more backroom deals.

Before Lewis Quigg had announced anything, Mark Wilkinson told the leaders of the other parties on Oldham Council that Quigg was being replaced and that he was taking over. That is how the newspapers got the story. On 9 September 2026 Quigg told Oldham it was gossip and hearsay, and when he was asked if he was still leader he said "Clearly." On the evening of 14 September he announced he had resigned, and Wilkinson was confirmed as Reform's leader.

Oldham Reform UK leader resigns days after slamming rumours as ‘nonsense’

Mark Wilkinson will now lead the group on Oldham Council after Lewis Quigg resigned

Manchester Evening NewsCharlotte Hall

So before Reform's voters knew anything, Wilkinson had already gone to Arooj Shah and every other party leader in that private room and told them Cllr Quigg was gone. The first people Wilkinson trusted with the truth about Reform in Oldham were the leaders of the parties Reform was elected to fight.

Wilkinson's first act as leader was a statement to the people of Oldham. "There will be no deals or political arrangements with other parties." He was misleading every voter who read it.

THE COUNCIL'S PAPERS SHOW THE DEAL WAS STITCHED UP BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

I have the final report put to councillors on 16 September 2026 and an earlier draft of it. In the draft, directly above the table showing which party gets which chair, the council's governance officer wrote that "as explained in the meeting these are suggestions and negotiations can be made amongst Leaders."

Somebody deleted that sentence before councillors saw the final version. In the chamber Shelley Kipling told councillors the arrangement was "not a deal, not a coalition, and not a working agreement." Her governance officer had already written down that the leaders were negotiating it.

Oldham has had no Leader and no Cabinet since May 2026. Every decision has been taken by the Chief Executive after private meetings with the party leaders, and Reform's leader has been sitting in that room with Arooj Shah the whole time. On 16 September councillors were asked to approve a settlement carving up the council's committees and portfolios between the parties.

Between the draft and the final report, the jobs moved from one party to another. They moved because the parties had been bargaining over them in private.

The jobs were shared out before a single councillor raised a hand in public. Wilkinson told Oldham there would be no political arrangements with other parties, while his group was sitting in a private room with Labour agreeing one.

At Full Council on 16 September Arooj Shah humiliated Wilkinson in public. The group leaders, Wilkinson among them, had already agreed in private to support the arrangements before the meeting began. Then Wilkinson announced that Reform would abstain. Reform objected that Labour would keep both of Oldham's seats on the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and tried to put down an amendment, and it was told the amendment could not be accepted for legal reasons.

The meeting was adjourned for 50 minutes while the leaders went behind closed doors again, and Reform's councillors were left arguing among themselves. When Cllr Paul Taylor asked what those legal reasons were, nobody told him. Then 10 Reform councillors signed off a deal that handed Labour everything it wanted from this council. Paul Taylor and Rob Jackson abstained. Gary Tarbuck, Wilkinson's own deputy, voted against it and stormed out of the chamber. Quigg and Robinson refused to vote. Barnes has made clear he would have opposed had he been there. Afterwards Reform put out a statement insisting it was not a coalition or a power-sharing agreement.

LABOUR KEPT THE GREEN BELT, THE MONEY AND THE SEATS AT GREATER MANCHESTER

Labour is the largest group, so Labour chose first, and Arooj Shah's Labour took Place. Place is housing, planning, regeneration, transport, highways and economic development. It is where the money in this borough goes and where every decision about land is made, including the new Mayoral Development Corporation the council set up on 7 September 2026.

Place is also Places for Everyone, the plan that is concreting over Oldham's green belt. On 13 March 2024 Arooj Shah seconded the report that adopted it. On 12 February 2025 Mark Wilkinson voted to take Oldham out of Places for Everyone, and Shah voted against him.

Wilkinson leads a Reform group that has signed up to a settlement giving Shah political control of the plan he claimed to oppose.

The council's masterplan for the green belt at Beal Valley and Broadbent Moss was prepared jointly with the developers and landowners who stand to build on it, Casey, Barratt Redrow, Kellen Homes and Wain Homes. Labour keeps the chair of the Planning Committee too, and under new planning rules officers will consult that Labour chair on which applications reach councillors at all.

Labour also kept Oldham's seats where the real decisions for Greater Manchester are made. Labour holds the Combined Authority seat, the AGMA seat and the seat on the board that runs health and care across the region. When an earlier draft shared the Combined Authority's scrutiny seats among other parties, the final version gave the single seat to Labour on the Combined Authority's instruction. Reform went into the chamber objecting to exactly that and voted it through anyway. Labour goes to the Combined Authority, and Reform goes to the bus committee.

For Place, Reform got the chair of the committee that scrutinises it. Scrutiny can ask questions. It cannot stop a house being built on a green belt field. The one board that sees the big decisions before they are taken went to the Conservatives, not Reform. When the bulldozers go into the green belt, Reform will have been in the room and on the committee, and it will not be able to tell any voter it had nothing to do with it.

REFORM TOOK THE BLAME FOR OLDHAM'S CHILDREN'S SERVICES AND THE TAXI LICENCES

Reform's prize is Children's Services, and Mark Wilkinson took it for himself. He is the new Lead Member for Children and Young People. Wilkinson becomes the face of education, children's social care and safeguarding, and Reform also chairs the committee that scrutinises children's services. In this borough, after everything Oldham's children have been through, there is no more dangerous job in the Town Hall. The report put to councillors admits the role carries no power to take any decision. Those decisions go to the Chief Executive, Shelley Kipling.

Kipling joined Oldham Council in 2009 and was its Head of Communications until 2015, which overlaps the years for which Oldham's handling of child sexual exploitation is under scrutiny. On 6 March 2025 Arooj Shah moved the recommendation making her permanent Chief Executive, and Mark Wilkinson voted against it. Wilkinson himself answers to the public for Oldham's children, while the power over them sits with a Chief Executive he opposed, appointed on Shah's motion.

Reform took Licensing as well. In Oldham that means taxi licensing, and every parent in this borough knows why that matters. Reform has put its name to the two areas where this council has the most to answer for, and it has no power over either of them.

That is the deal. Labour keeps the green belt, the regeneration money, the planning decisions and the seats at Greater Manchester. Reform gets the titles, the questions and the blame. Shelley Kipling keeps the power to decide.

REFORM'S COUNCILLORS ARE BEING PAID EXTRA FOR THE JOBS LABOUR GAVE THEM

The jobs handed out in that private room come with money. Under the council's allowances scheme, the chairs of the Licensing Committee, the Children and Young People Scrutiny Board and the Place Scrutiny Board are each paid a special responsibility allowance of £11,220.30 a year. That is on top of the £12,467 basic allowance every councillor receives.

Reform walked out of that room with all three of those chairs, and the same meeting signed off new pay for the new roles. The people of this borough pay every penny of it.

Reform councillors elected to fight Labour are being paid extra for positions they got by bargaining with Labour behind closed doors. The arrangement has no end date, and every month it runs the money keeps coming. Nobody sitting in that room has any reason to end it.

WILKINSON'S FAILSWORTH MOB TOOK A REFORM TICKET WITHOUT REFORM'S VALUES

What we are witnessing in Oldham is a classic case of entryism. Politicians got themselves elected on a Reform ticket without holding Reform's values. Anyone who meant a word of what Reform promised would never have sat in a private room with Arooj Shah and agreed to this. I believe that is why the deal was done. It is also why Wilkinson and his Failsworth mob are hiding from the people of this borough who voted Reform because Reform promised to fight Labour.

The people who voted Reform in Oldham were promised a fight with Labour and were handed a carve-up with Labour. The councillors who have walked away or rebelled understood that.

I believe Mark Wilkinson and his Failsworth mob have betrayed every Reform voter in this borough.

With the local branch committee gone, no candidates, councillors at war and Wilkinson threatening to walk, I believe there is ZERO chance of Reform taking control of Oldham Council in May 2027.

By all means check with Cllr Wilkinson or any Reform councillor the accuracy of what I've shared with you. That's if you can find one of them.

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