A Reform UK council leader has broken his silence after the party’s bruising by-election defeat.
Ian Cooper spoke to GB News as Nigel Farage's party lost the Gnosall and Eccleshall seat on Staffordshire County Council, finishing behind the Conservatives and the Green Party.
Jeremy Pert, who had served as a Tory councillor in Eccleshall for eight years, reclaimed his seat after narrowly losing it to Wayne Titley by just 27 votes in May’s local elections.
Titley resigned from his post shortly after for "personal reasons" - sparking the by-election.
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|Councillor Ian Cooper has offered his take
Pert won Thursday’s by-election with 1,689 votes — 44.4 per cent of the total.
The Green Party's Scott Spencer came second with 1,037 votes followed by Reform's Ray Barron on 938 votes on a turnout of 34.8 per cent.
Despite this, Cooper, who represents the Perrycrofts ward in Tamworth said he was not surprised by the result.
Speaking to GB News, he said: "It's a division we were surprised to win in May.
"Quite frankly, that division had been Conservative for or at least 20 plus years, and they had massive majorities of about 2000 and we took it by a slim majority of 27 in May. So no surprises."
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|Nigel Farage addresses supporters and the media at Staffordshire County Showground after Reform won control of Staffordshire County Council
The by-election result means Reform still retained their majority on the council with 48 councillors on the authority, a clear majority, with the Conservatives on 11.
Meanwhile, the Greens, Labour and Stafford Borough Independents all have one councillor apiece.
Cooper, who came third at last year's General Election in Tamworth, said that he knew the party would have good and bad days, but insisted the outlook remains positive for the party in Staffordshire.
He continued: "Politics is politics. From a local perspective, I would have liked to have retained the by election, but that didn't happen. That's not unexpected. It's fully costed into the program."
He continued: "But nationally, we're doing fantastic. When we started in Staffordshire, and myself locally in Tamworth a couple of years ago, there wasn't very many of us.
"We had the by election here, when I stood as a parliamentary candidate in October 2023 when Christopher Pincher stood down, we were the difference. We actually retained that deposit and we were the difference between the Conservative Party losing and the new Labour MP winning.
"We came to the general election in July 2024 and I came third in Tamworth. It was a three way split in a national election with all the resources the two main parties could throw at it.
"So overall, in Staffordshire, overall in the in the middle part of England, Reform is doing tremendous."