London — The hard-right Reform UK party led by Nigel Farage has surged in England’s local elections while the governing Labour Party has slumped, deepening doubts about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ability to govern and further splintering Britain’s traditional two-party political system.
Results announced early Friday showed that the Reform party of Farage – a chief architect of Brexit and an ally of US President Donald Trump – had gained more than 600 seats, while Labour had lost more than 450. The Conservative Party – the other half of the duopoly that has dominated British politics for more than a century – lost nearly 300 seats.
“Labour are being wiped out by Reform in many of their most traditional areas, and what you’re going to see later on today is the Conservative Party being wiped out in their heartlands,” Farage told reporters Friday morning, as some councils were still counting the votes.
He insisted his upstart party – which won just five seats in parliament in Britain’s last general election nearly two years ago but has since climbed in the polls – was no longer a “fluke or a protest vote,” but a “truly national party” that was “here to stay.”
…
“What’s happened is a truly historic shift in British politics,” Farage said. He added that Reform’s broad gains across England showed that his populist party could challenge the traditional dominance of Labour and the Conservative Party. “It’s a big, big day – not just for our party, but for a complete reshaping of British politics in every way,” he said.