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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on Friday claimed he now leads Britain’s main opposition to Sir Keir Starmer’s government after his party won the Runcorn & Helsby by-election, ousting Labour by just six votes.
Farage’s rightwing populist party was making big gains against Labour and Conservatives across England in the first big test of public opinion since last year’s general election. Results will be declared throughout Friday.
Reform also seized its first mayoralty overnight, in Greater Lincolnshire, as former Tory MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns pushed her old party into a distant second place.
Sarah Pochin won the Runcorn & Helsby seat after a recount, overturning a Labour majority of almost 15,000 to become Reform’s fifth member of parliament, capping a night of extraordinary advances by Farage’s party.
The by-election in a traditional Labour stronghold in England’s north-west was the most significant contest among dozens of mayoral races and council elections that took place on Thursday.
As well as Reform, the Liberal Democrats are also expected to make major gains, in the latest sign that Labour and the Conservatives are losing the duopoly they have held in British politics for decades.
Farage said that Labour’s vote in its heartland had “collapsed and much of it has come to us”, but admitted that Reform will now come under much greater scrutiny, not least as it starts to run local services in some areas.
“This is a whole different politics,” he said, adding: “I think we’ve supplanted the Conservative party now as the main opposition party of the Labour government.”
The defeat in Runcorn will alarm Labour, which has endured a plunge in its popularity since returning to government in a landslide victory last July.
The Runcorn seat was held by former Labour MP Mike Amesbury, whose conviction for assault triggered the by-election.
Reform candidate Pochin campaigned on an anti-immigration ticket that targeted a local asylum hotel and capitalised on local anger about the government’s welfare cuts.
Labour championed the government’s extra funding for the NHS and its package of employment reforms, while it also tried to persuade former Green and Lib Dem supporters to vote tactically against Reform.
Early results in mayoral races also suggested a big swing towards Reform. Jenkyns surged to victory with 42 per cent of the vote. Reform also came close to toppling Labour in North Tyneside and Doncaster.
In North Tyneside in north-east England, Karen Clark won with 30.2 per cent, just ahead of Reform’s 29.4 per cent. In Doncaster, Labour’s Ros Jones won with 23,805 votes, just ahead of Reform’s Alexander Jones at 23,107.
Ellie Reeves, the Labour party chair, said: “These elections were always going to be a challenge.” She added: “We know people aren’t yet fully feeling the benefit and we are just as impatient for change as the rest of the country.”
Reform is currently ahead in national opinion polls with an average of 26 per cent, compared with Labour’s 24 per cent and the Conservatives’ 21 per cent, according to the Financial Times’ poll of polls.
Labour strategists fear that Reform could capture large parts of its former heartlands in northern England and the Midlands at the next general election, which must take place by 2029.
In a sign of Labour’s low expectations for the by-election, Starmer did not visit the constituency in the run-up to polling day.
Results due later on Friday are also expected to highlight the dire predicament facing Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, with her party forecast to lose hundreds of council seats.
The Tories are facing a threat from Reform in the north and east and the centre-left Lib Dems, who hope for big gains in southern councils. Results from those contests will start to come through on Friday afternoon.
This set of English councils was last contested when former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson was enjoying heightened popularity thanks to the rollout of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Conservatives’ shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake said: “If we lost half our seats, which I think we probably will do, it’s going to be a bad night for us.”
