Conservatives and Labour lose ground to Reform in local elections
Votes were continuing to be counted in council and mayoral contests on Friday afternoon.
The Conservatives have lost council seats to Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats, as Kemi Badenoch warned her predictions of a tough set of elections are “proving” true.
Reform have taken Lincolnshire and Staffordshire councils out of Conservative control, with Nigel Farage’s party sweeping hundreds of council seats across England, while Sir Ed Davey’s party made gains at the Tories’ expense in Devon.
Labour have also been hit at the ballot box by Mr Farage as Sir Keir Starmer conceded his party’s loss to Reform in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election was “disappointing”, with Reform also taking control of the council in Durham.
Votes were continuing to be counted in council and mayoral contests on Friday afternoon.
Mrs Badenoch insisted that the “renewal” of the Conservatives has “only just begun” as she thanked those who had campaigned.
In a post on X, she said: “These were always going to be a very difficult set of elections coming off the high of 2021, and our historic defeat last year – and so it’s proving.
“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.”
Reform took control in Lincolnshire on Friday, having won more than half of the 70 total seats. The Conservatives had previously led the council with 54 seats, but were down in single figures.
There were similar stories in Staffordshire and Lancashire where Reform took control from the Conservatives.
The Lib Dems narrowly failed to take control of Devon County Council, another council which had been previously Conservative-run.
However amid the council losses the Tories took a mayoralty from Labour, with victory for ex-MP Paul Bristow in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
The position had been Labour held since 2021, but their candidate Anna Smith came in third behind the Lib Dems.
The picture on local councils has been emerging through Friday, after Reform’s victory by just six votes in Runcorn and Helsby set a new record for the smallest majority at a parliamentary by-election since the Second World War.
The contest was triggered when former Labour MP Mike Amesbury quit after admitting to punching a constituent.
Amesbury won 53% of the vote less than a year ago at the general election – and the defeat, along with Reform gains in other Labour heartlands, will cause unease in Downing Street.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Bedfordshire on Friday following the result, Sir Keir said: “What I want to say is, my response is we get it.
“We were elected in last year to bring about change.”
He said that his party has “started that work”, such as bringing in measures to cut NHS waiting lists, adding: “I am determined that we will go further and faster on the change that people want to see.”
Labour also lost their status as the biggest party on Durham County Council, as Reform took control of the patch in the North East.
Labour MPs including Diane Abbott and Brian Leishman publicly called on the Government to change course following the Runcorn result, arguing that voters had wanted an end to austerity but faced further cuts.
“The first 10 months haven’t been good enough or what the people want and if we don’t improve people’s living standards then the next government will be an extreme right-wing one,” Mr Leishman, who was first elected last year, said.
Sir Keir was asked by reporters whether he would reconsider unpopular policy changes, such as means-testing the winter fuel payment, amid murmurs of backbench discontent in the wake of the results.
“The reason that we took the tough but right decisions in the budget was because we inherited a broken economy,” he told Sky News.
“Maybe other prime ministers would have walked past that, pretended it wasn’t there… I took the choice to make sure our economy was stable.”
