Radical-right Reform party makes gains in UK elections

The radical-right Reform UK party has won over local and regional electorates as a powerful political force.

Results from Friday showed that the anti-immigration party took a number of seats on local councils, gained its first mayoralty, and gained a fifth parliamentary seat. Reform hopes to unbalance the country’s traditionally polarized political system, which is currently led by the opposition Conservatives and the ruling Labour Party.

After the party was declared the winner of the Runcorn and Helsby seat, Reform leader Nigel Farage said, “It’s been a huge night for Reform.”

Northwest England, a former center for Labour, received just six votes, resulting in the victory.

In the first polls since last year’s general elections, reform won over a mayoral race in Greater Lincolnshire and the Conservatives a number of council seats.

The outcomes appear to highlight how divided the political landscape in the UK has become.

Labour under Prime Minister Keir Starmer won one of the largest parliamentary majority in British history last year, but the popularity of any newly elected government has fallen the fastest.

Farage, the party’s leader on Brexit, noted that the ruling party’s majority had “collapsed” following Labour’s victory in the previous year’s national election with a majority of almost 15, 000 votes. He has previously allied himself with US President Donald Trump.

The government’s proposed sweeping welfare reforms have alienated the left-wing party’s traditional voter base and swayed some people into voting for Reform. This has led to a decline in support for Labour.

“Soft-touch Britain”

Andrea Jenkyns, a former Conservative minister who defected to Reform after losing her seat last year, became the party’s most powerful elected official in the region, serving over a million people.

In her victory speech, Jenkyns vowed to end “soft-touch Britain” and said asylum seekers should be held in tents rather than hotels.

She said, “The rebuilding begins here. We’re going to have a Britain where we put the British people first.”

Reform UK is the most recent of a line of parties led by Farage, a seasoned hard-right politician who played a key role in the referendum’s 2016 withdrawal from the UK. He has claimed that many immigrants from “alien to ours” come to the UK as a divisive figure.

Reform, which has pledged to “stop the boats” of undocumented immigrants crossing the English Channel, hopes that winning mayoral elections and gaining councillors will help it advance its grassroots activism in the wake of the upcoming general election, which will likely take place in 2029.

In the elections that are deciding 1, 641 seats in 23 local councils, six mayoralties, and the parliamentary seat, the party hopes to win hundreds of municipal seats.