Alex Sibley stands for Reform UK in Havering local elections
alex sibley is standing for Reform UK in Thursday's local elections in Havering. The former Big Brother star is contesting a seat for Emerson Park in East London, putting a reality-TV name into a local race already shaped by a minority administration.
He said it in an Instagram post just days before the polls opened, sharing a photo with fellow Reform candidate David Johnson. “It’s Official. 7th May 2026. With a combined age of 126 years old and no degree from Oxford or Cambridge in Politics, we are Emerson Park candidates for Havering and Reform UK.”
Emerson Park race
Alex Sibley, now 47 years old, is not entering politics from nowhere. He first came to fame in 2002, when he appeared in the third series of Big Brother alongside Jade Goody, Alison Hammond and Kate Lawler, who went on to win the series. That television history gives the campaign instant name recognition in a ward where every vote will matter.
He is running against Ghazala Ansari for the Greens, Balwinder Singh Khaira for Labour and a joint Conservative ticket of Bernice Robinson and Dominic Noel Swan. In a tight local contest, that lineup means the Emerson Park seat is not a vanity run; it is a direct fight for representation in a borough where the local residents’ association currently holds power in a minority administration.
From TV to ballots
After Big Brother, Sibley moved into modelling and television presenting, with stints on Nickelodeon and Celebrity Bling Date. Domestos also used him in an advertising campaign that earned him £250,000, a reminder of how far a brief reality-TV run can travel when a broadcaster or brand decides to cash in.
The harder part of his public story came later. In 2004, butcher Kurt Lange was killed after he ran in front of Sibley's BMW in Essex, and the case was dropped in 2006 due to insufficient evidence. Sibley later said in 2020 that his TV career was destroyed after the crash, and that history now sits behind a candidacy that will be judged less on nostalgia than on whether voters in Emerson Park want a former celebrity on the ballot.
Havering on Thursday
For Reform UK, the move adds a recognizable face to a local contest where the party is trying to compete with the Greens, Labour and the Conservatives in an East London ward. For voters, the choice is narrower and more practical: Emerson Park will either send a former Big Brother contestant into Havering politics or leave the television past exactly where it started, on the screen.
