More than 60 of Reform UK’s council candidates standing in this year’s elections are defectors from the Conservative party, according to research from the Labour party.

Reform has also selected an ex-Conservative for its candidate in the upcoming Runcorn and Helsby byelection, while the party’s mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire is the former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her parliamentary seat in West Yorkshire last July.

All but one of Reform’s MPs, including the party leader, Nigel Farage, were previously members of the Conservative party.

Labour has accused Farage’s party of a “mass rebrand” as Reform populates its ranks with candidates seeking to “save their own political careers” after the Conservatives suffered huge losses in the 2024 general election.

A Reform spokesperson said: “This is less than 4% of all our 1,100% candidates. Is this the same Labour party that accepted the defections of then Conservative MPs Christian Wakeford and Natalie Elphicke?”

The Labour study of candidate nominations for the local elections in May shows more than 60 Reform council candidates across Britain have served as councillors, candidates or activists for the Tories.

Reform’s parliamentary candidate for the byelection in Runcorn and Helsby, triggered by the resignation of the Labour MP Mike Amesbury after a criminal conviction, is Sarah Pochin, a former Tory councillor for Cheshire East.

In social media posts that have been deleted since Pochin became a Reform candidate, she described her “absolute pleasure” posing in 2019 with the then levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, while she was a Conservative councillor, before describing her meeting with Liz Truss’s business secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, as “inspiring”.

Nineteen of the 23 councils up for election this May are run by the Conservatives. There will be mayoral elections in the West of England, and Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, and inaugural mayoral contests in Hull and East Yorkshire, and Greater Lincolnshire.

A Labour spokesperson said: “A snake might shed its skin but at the end of the day it’s still a snake. Is that why so many of Nigel Farage’s council candidates are slithering away from their years serving the Tory party?

“Farage claims to be a breath of political fresh air, but he just hoovered up 60 candidates who failed our country as card-carrying Conservatives.

“The truth is, we now know when you take the mask off a Reform candidate, you’ll often find a tired old Tory trying to breathe life into a failed political career.

“A vote for Reform on 1 May risks letting a Tory in by the back door. Only Labour can bring real change to Britain.”