Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage talks to the media after Sarah Pochin won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election at DCBL Halton Stadium, Widnes, Cheshire, on May 2.Peter Byrne/The Associated Press
Britain’s populist Reform UK has shaken the country’s political landscape with sweeping victories in a series of elections across England that also delivered huge blows to the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives.
Millions of voters cast ballots on Thursday in 24 council elections, six mayoralty contests and one parliamentary by-election. The elections were seen as a test of whether Reform could translate its recent surge in public opinion polls, where it has topped Labour and the Conservatives, into actual votes.
As results came in on Friday, it became clear that Reform could not only deliver at the ballot box but that it was also a real threat to both established parties.
Reform narrowly won the by-election in the Liverpool-area riding of Runcorn and Helsby, overturning a 14,696-vote Labour majority in the general election last July. The party also won two mayoralty elections and came second in the other four. It also claimed a majority of seats in eight councils and elected more than 600 councillors overall, far more than any other party, with final results in several councils yet to come.
Based on calculations by polling expert John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, the results indicated that national support for Reform stood at 30 per cent, followed by Labour at 20 per cent, the Liberal Democrats at 17 per cent and the Conservatives at 15 per cent.
“This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation,” Dr. Curtice told BBC.
The results marked a stunning showing for Reform, which changed its name from the Brexit Party four years ago and contested these council seats for the first time.
”This marks the end of two-party politics as we’ve known it for over a century – it is over, it is finished, it is gone," party leader Nigel Farage said Friday. “This is Reformquake.”
Mr. Farage has been a fixture of British politics for decades, largely as a campaigner to get Britain out of the European Union, which finally happened in 2020. He’s a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump and on Friday he promised to emulate Mr. Trump’s adviser, Elon Musk, and slash government spending at the local level.
In last July’s general election, Reform won five seats with 14 per cent of the popular vote. Mr. Farage was among the victors, having failed to get elected to Parliament seven times.
Tony Travers, associate dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics, said Reform did far better than most analysts expected. The party’s gains were largely at the expense of the Conservatives, he added, which lost close to two-thirds of the roughly 1,000 council seats they held.
Dr. Travers said it was too early to tell if the results signalled the end of the long-standing dominance of Labour and the Conservatives. “It’s certainly an existential threat to the Conservative Party, no question,” he said.
Tory councillors on councils that don’t have a clear majority will have to decide whether to work with Reform to form administrations. “And once they do that, is that the beginning of Conservative MPs saying, ‘Well, we might as well just merge with them?’” he added.
Pressure will be building on Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who took over after the Conservatives lost more than 250 seats in the 2024 general election. Ms. Badenoch has been largely ineffective in re-energizing the party and fending off the challenge from Mr. Farage. Some Conservatives MPs have called for some kind of pact with Reform, something Ms. Badenoch has ruled out.
“The renewal of our party has only just begun and I’m determined to win back the trust of the public and the seats we’ve lost, in the years to come,” she said in a post on X.
Friday’s results have also been seen as a verdict on Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who led Labour to a sweeping victory last July, winning 411 of the 650 seats in Parliament. The government has been hobbled by several scandals, a host of unpopular policies and a stagnant economy. A recent poll by YouGov found that just 16 per cent of those surveyed approved of Labour’s performance.
Labour lost nearly 130 seats in Thursday’s vote, the party’s worst showing since 2009. The party managed to hang on to three mayoralty posts and lost one to the Conservatives.
On Friday, Mr. Starmer vowed to work harder to deliver the changes voters want. “The message I take out of these elections is that we need to go further, and we need to go faster on the change that people want to see,” he told reporters on Friday. “What I want to say is, my response is we get it.”
The only party to emerge largely unscathed by Reform’s onslaught was the Liberal Democrats. The centrist part typically does well in local elections, particularly in wealthier parts of the country. It picked up 130 seats on Friday and took control of three councils.
“We are the party of middle England now,” said Liberal Democrats’ leader Ed Davey.