East Sussex has a long connection with the slightly less well-known sport of Ultimate Frisbee. The Sussex University Hawks, founded in 1986, are one of the longest-running teams in the country and have won the student national championships multiple times.
At every Ultimate tournament, competing teams score their opponents on fairness, communication and respect. The prize, called the “spirit award”, is the most valued by any serious team – more than the championship itself – and it goes to the side judged to have competed with the most integrity, assessed not by a referee but by the very opponents it beat. During a game, there are no referees. Players call out their own fouls. That principle has been written into the rulebook since 1978. You can want to win with every ounce of effort, but you must conduct yourself with honour.
Reform UK believes that principle should apply in politics. The evidence of the past few weeks suggests that some of our elected representatives in Westminster have not yet grasped it.
Kieran Mullan MP recently used his column in the Bexhill News to write about the recent local elections – not to reflect on what he had done for his constituents, but to campaign for the Conservative Party and attack Reform UK. Before coming to Bexhill and Battle, Dr Mullan was an MP in Cheshire from 2019 until 2024, when he opted not to seek re-election there following a boundary change. He instead secured the nomination for Bexhill and Battle, historically a safe Conservative seat. He is, in the plainest sense, a product of the Westminster machine – a politician who goes where the party sends him, representing whoever’s seat is available.
There is a puzzle, too, about where the article came from. Kieran Mullan is one of the more prolific MPs on social media. His constituency website and socials are rarely quiet. Yet this article has not appeared on either. Whether it was written by him or handed to him by Conservative central office, readers cannot know. But it carries his name, and he must own it.
What is most striking is what the article does not mention. Before the May 7th election, the Conservatives held 22 seats on East Sussex County Council. They had run the authority for fourteen years. On election day they lost 18 of those seats and gained none, reduced to just three councillors. Labour was wiped out entirely.
The article references that several Reform councillors have resigned or been suspended, but fails to mention that this isn’t here in East Sussex, where all 22 elected Reform UK county councillors are getting on with the job. It also omits the Conservatives’ own conduct during the campaign: postal mailings across his constituency attacking Reform UK and predicting chaos if Reform won. Quietly not mentioned that Reform UK on the other hand ran only a positive campaign.
How a party behaves when it wins says something. When Reform UK Councillor, Andy Woolley was elected leader of East Sussex County Council on 21 May, he began by paying tribute to councillors who had not been returned, including those who had served for many years. He spoke about the achievements of the previous Conservative administration and said the new council would “build on what works.” He reached out to every group at County Hall – Liberal Democrats, Greens, Conservatives – telling them: “We are not asking you to abandon your identities or your principles. We are asking whether we can find sufficient common ground to work together for the people of East Sussex.” No pot shots. No victory laps. That is what statesmanship looks like.
Reform UK is not interested in playing Westminster games. It is interested in fixing East Sussex.
The contrast with the House of Commons is stark. Prime Minister’s Questions has become a theatre of organised noise – serious questions about public services drowned out by stamping, jeering and scripted putdowns. Green MP Hannah Spencer, recently described Reform UK MPs sitting behind her as embodying a “dirty grubbiness.” Earlier this year she said she could smell alcohol on colleagues between votes. Neither advanced the interests of a single constituent by one inch
The same habit is visible closer to home. On 11th June, Labour MP Helena Dollimore stood in the House of Commons and raised the issue of abandoned caravans causing antisocial behaviour in Hastings. It is a legitimate concern and one that deserves to be addressed. But in making her case, she told the chamber she had spent the past eighteen months writing to East Sussex County Council, which she described as “run by Reform,” urging them to act – and accused the council of dragging its heels. The Leader of the House, Alan Campbell, agreed enthusiastically, calling it “yet further evidence of Reform councils underperforming.”
This is a matter of fact, not opinion. Reform UK formed its administration at East Sussex County Council just weeks before on 21 May 2026. Helena Dollimore’s eighteen months of correspondence was addressed to a council run by the Conservatives. Reform has been in office for three weeks. To stand in the House of Commons and describe that record as Reform dragging its heels – and to have a Cabinet minister accept the premise unchallenged – is not scrutiny. It is the manufacture of a false narrative for political consumption, on the floor of Parliament, at the expense of residents who deserve better.
Helena Dollimore knows this county, and she knows when the administration took office. I, Andy Woolley and Reform UK’s councillors would welcome a constructive conversation with her about abandoned caravans and antisocial behaviour in Hastings – on exactly the terms Andy set out on day one: find the common ground, work together, put residents first. That offer stands.
Britain needs a new approach to politics, and it can start with learning a lesson from the game of Ultimate Frisbee. The Spirit of the Game is not soft idealism. It is the founding principle of a competitive sport played at world championship level, where teams compete as hard as they can to win and are then judged by their opponents on whether they did so with integrity. The team that wins the spirit award earns something the championship trophy cannot give: the respect of everyone else.
Westminster has forgotten that politics can work that way. In East Sussex, Reform UK is trying to show that it can. Every party and every independent elected to serve this county – whatever their politics – is invited to compete on those terms. The residents of East Sussex deserve representatives whose first question each morning is not “how do I embarrass the other side?” but “what can I do today for the people I serve?”
That is the spirit of the game. It is time more people in public life, including our elected MPs, Kieran Mullan and Helena Dollimore, played by it.
Cllr Pete Morley,
Reform UK, East Sussex County Councillor for Bexhill West
June 2026
