Farage vows to ‘resist’ asylum hotels as Reform celebrates major gains
Mr Farage’s party has gained hundreds of seats and taken control of five councils.
Reform UK will “resist” asylum seekers being housed in the counties now under the party’s control, Nigel Farage said as he celebrated significant gains across England.
Mr Farage’s party gained more than 600 seats and took control of 10 local authorities in Thursday’s local elections.
In a speech in County Durham, where Reform had replaced Labour as the largest party, he said the party had “cleared a very important hurdle” and claimed the results marked “the end of two-party politics” and the “beginning of the end of the Conservative Party”.
Setting our his party’s agenda in local government, he said Reform would look to scale back councils’ work “to what it ought to be”, end working from home and sack staff working on climate change or diversity.
He also vowed to “resist” asylum seekers being housed in the counties where Reform was in control, claiming they were being “dumped into the north of England, getting everything for free”.
He said: “It is unfair, it is irresponsible, it is wrong in every way and I don’t believe Starmer has got the guts to deal with it.”
However, it is unclear whether Reform councils could block asylum seekers being housed in their areas, as the system is managed by the Home Office.
Thursday’s vote saw Reform take control of Durham, Kent, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire county councils along with Doncaster, North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire in the best local election results for a party led by Mr Farage so far.
The party also won the mayoralty of Greater Lincolnshire, where former Conservative minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns secured a majority of almost 40,000, and took the Labour parliamentary seat of Runcorn and Helsby by just six votes.
Reform’s Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxer, swept to victory in the Hull and East Yorkshire mayoral election, but the party fell short in Doncaster, where the Labour mayor Ros Jones clung on by 698 votes.
Mr Farage told the PA news agency: “It’s been a big night for us.
“We’ve dug very deep into the Labour vote and, in other parts of England, we’ve dug deep into the Conservative vote, and we are now, after tonight there’s no question, in most of the country, we are now the main opposition party to this Government.”
Conservative co-chairman Nigel Huddleston said it was not “credible” for Mr Farage to claim Reform could be the main opposition party, saying he “can’t even manage five MPs”.
But polling expert Sir John Curtice described Reform as being “in business”.
The Strathclyde University professor told BBC Breakfast: “The big question we were looking to these elections to answer was, the message of the opinion polls is that Reform are now posing a big threat to both Conservative and Labour, neck and neck with them according to the polls.
“Is that really true? And I think we now already know that the answer to that question is yes.
“Ukip never managed to win a parliamentary by-election afresh in the way that Reform have managed to do in Runcorn.”
Sir John said Reform had put in “some quite remarkable performances” as the more evenly spread vote was not a disadvantage to the party at local level.
He added: “Reform are in business. They are a major challenge.”
