Votes being counted as Farage seeks to ‘smash the two-party system’
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK hopes to make gains at the expense of Labour and the Tories, with the Liberal Democrats and Greens also expecting successes.
Votes are being counted in elections which could see Labour lose a previously safe Commons seat and the Tories suffer a “battering” in council contests across England.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could deal major blows to both Labour and the Conservatives while the Liberal Democrats and the Greens are also confident of success at the expense of the two biggest Westminster parties.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour faces a battle to hold on to the Runcorn and Helsby seat in the Commons, with Reform hoping to take a constituency the governing party won convincingly at the 2024 general election.
Kemi Badenoch faces her first test as Tory leader as the party braced for a difficult set of results, with both Reform and the Lib Dems hopeful of stealing council seats last contested in 2021 at the height of Boris Johnson’s popularity with Conservative voters.
The Runcorn and Helsby by-election was triggered when former Labour MP Mike Amesbury quit after admitting punching a constituent.
The 2024 result suggests it should be a safe Labour seat – Amesbury won 53% of the vote and a majority of almost 14,700 – but Reform’s Sarah Pochin is the bookmakers’ favourite to secure a by-election victory.
Turnout in the seat was 46.33%, with 32,740 votes cast.
More than 1,600 council seats are up for grabs across 23 local authorities while four regional mayors and two local mayors will be elected.
Mr Farage said he wanted to “smash the two-party system”.
He said: “We have fought a strong campaign. The two major parties are more fearful of the results tonight than we are.”
Early results showed Reform making inroads at the expense of Labour in Northumberland, the only council counting in full overnight.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice said the party was also “absolutely smashing it” in traditionally Conservative Lincolnshire, where Dame Andrea Jenkyns – a former Tory minister – is on course to win the regional mayoral contest.
He said the Runcorn and Helsby by-election was “very, very close, nip-and-tuck, way too close to call”, but underlined how remarkable that was in a formerly safe Labour seat.
He told Sky News there was a “seismic shift going on tonight in British politics, where Reform is is taking huge chunks of votes and seats from both the two main parties”.
Labour Party chairwoman Ellie Reeves said the elections “were always going to be a challenge” for her party because they were largely in areas “dominated by the Conservatives, often for decades”.
She acknowledged voters “aren’t yet fully feeling the benefit” of changes brought in since Sir Keir took office.
“However the results turn out this evening, this Labour government will go further and faster in turning our country around and giving Britain the future it deserves,” she said.
But there was some good news for Labour as the party held the North Tyneside mayoralty, although with a majority of just 444 ahead of Reform in second place.
Conservative frontbencher Helen Whately said “we know we’re going to have a really hard night” because 2021 was a “high watermark” for the Conservatives.
The shadow work and pensions secretary told BBC’s Newsnight: “We’re going to get a real battering in these elections.”
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said Mrs Badenoch faced “a reckoning at the ballot box”.
He said: “We are expecting to see big gains against the Conservatives in their former Middle England heartlands.”
The Green Party was also hoping for success in local contests, with co-leader Carla Denyer saying: “We are taking seats from both the Conservatives and Labour up and down the country as voters, understandably, move away from the tired old parties that have let us all down.”
