Reform sweep to victory across councils in local elections

Reform UK has swept to victory across more than half a dozen English councils, as Nigel Farage said his party had eaten “Labour for lunch” and “wiped out” the Conservatives in parts of England.

The party has taken control of seven local councils, winning hundreds of seats across localities from Durham to Kent and toppled a 14,000-strong Labour majority in a parliamentary by-election.

While Labour lost the race to for a new MP in Runcorn and Helsby, the Conservatives have been bruised in local government, as Mr Farage’s party took control of Staffordshire, Lincolnshire, Kent, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire.

The Lib Dems have also made gains at the Tories’ expense in Devon, becoming the largest party on the council, while the Conservatives also lost control in Warwickshire amid a Reform surge.

Speaking in County Durham on Friday afternoon, Mr Farage said the results marked the “beginning of the end of the Conservative Party” and “the end of two-party politics”.

He said Reform had had “the Labour Party for lunch” and “wiped out” the Conservatives in parts of England.

Earlier on Friday, 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, where Labour were previously the largest party.

Votes were continuing to be counted in council and mayoral contests on Friday afternoon.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch told Conservative councillors who lost their seats she was “sincerely sorry” and that while the public are “fed up” with Labour, they are not yet ready to trust the Tories.

“We have a big job to do to rebuild trust with the public,” she said.

“That’s the job that the Conservative party has given me and I am going to make sure that we get ourselves back to the place where we are seen as the credible alternative to Labour.”

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.”