Dr David Bull Chairman's our Gloucestrshire

Chairman's Tour - Gloucestershire

THURSDAY 7th August 2025 (Extract from Dr David Bull's weekly update)

No rest for the wicked as I travelled from Runcorn via Chester and Stafford to Cheltenham. The Gloucestershire stop on my Chairman’s road trip was a huge success which was held at Gupshill Manor in Tewkesbury.

184 members joined us. The evening started with South West Regional Director Paul Mills introducing the evening and outlining the South West regional success in May’s council elections gaining 23% of all seats contested- winning 10 in Wiltshire. 11 in Gloucestershire, 18 Devon, and 28 in Cornwall.

Passing over to Mike Masters, the Gloucestershire County Organiser and Chair of the local Tewkesbury branch. Mike outlined the need for volunteers to build on the success in other May’s council elections and that of a recent District by-election ( the latter winning with 41% of the vote share). Mike explained how the branches worked and that there is a place for everyone to make a contribution.

Mike passed over to Councillor Vernon Smith, the Reform UK Councillor Group leader in Gloucestershire council, and leader of the entire South West Reform UK councillor groups.

We are the main opposition to the LIb Dems in Gloucestershire as we are across the entire South West region. Vernon explained how we are thwarted and democracy ignored by the Lib Dem’s refusing to give us any of the chairs or committees we should have as the main opposition. This is a trend right across the South West even in Cornwall where we are the biggest individual party.

What’s laughingly labelled a ‘rainbow alliance’ of Lib Dems, Labour, independents and Greens is thwarting the democratic mandate and demand of the people across the South West. Voters wanted Reform UK to play a large part in all councils but have been deliberately ignored by these so called opposition democratic councillors. The rainbow alliance is more accurately the anti democratic alliance!

The evening finished with a speech from me then a series of questions from the audience from how should we deal with the illegal immigration problem, to the NHS and even what keeps me up at night!

Reform UK held another Press Conference on Lawless Britain.

We unveiled Rupert Matthews as our first Police and Crime Commissioner, Retired DCI Colin Sutton talked about Lawless Britain and how repeated cuts to police budgets by successive Tory and Labour administrations have decimated police capability and morale. The figures are horrifying. Britain is Lawless. Crime is up 50% since the 1990s, it is four times higher than it was in the 1970s.

There were more than half a million incidences of shoplifting last year thanks to the Labour Government’s incompetence to effectively decriminalise shoplifting up to £200. Nearly a quarter of a million bikes were stolen, 90 thousand phones and astonishingly nearly a quarter of a million kids carry knives in the sadly mistaken belief that they will protect them.

We also unveiled former Prison Governor Vanessa Frake who has joined Reform UK to work with Colin Sutton to oversee our crime and justice brief. Vanessa is a very impressive individual having been Governor at high security prisons housing the likes of Rose West and Myra Hindley.

Following the press conference, I then hosted our own Reform UK TV show live from our studio at Reform HQ where I interviewed Rupert, Colin and Vanessa in more depth about what has gone wrong in modern day Britain and what a Reform UK Government will do to turn around the failing state.