Wills also acknowledged that Labour was currently “feeling the pressure” from Reform UK ahead of next May’s local elections.
And she urged voters to be “mindful of what any change might represent”.
“When I’ve spoken to potential Reform UK candidates,” she said, “they haven’t had local insight and when they’ve been asked about issues in Tameside, they’ve talked about boats.”
Tameside Council has been run by Labour ever since the borough was created in 1974.
While there were no local elections in Tameside in May, Reform UK won a by-election in the Longdendale ward in April, picking up 47% of the vote.
Reform UK said the councils it controlled were “fixing decades of Tory and Labour mismanagement – unearthing hundreds of millions in savings in just a few months and filling tens of thousands of potholes”.
The party’s statement continued: “In Derbyshire alone, our administration has already slashed the pothole backlog from 26,000 to 3,000, with highways claims down 72% year-on-year.”
