Nigel Farage takes aim at the UK's dominant parties with hefty gains in local elections

LONDON — The hard-right party Reform UK led by Nigel Farage snatched a seat in Parliament from the governing Labour Party and won hundreds of local council seats from the opposition Conservatives in elections that Farage hailed Friday as a turning point towards ending the two parties' poltiical dominance.

Reform's Sarah Pochin was declared winner of the seat of Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by six votes after a recount, defeating Labour candidate Karen Shore by the narrowest of margins.

It was a significant defeat for Labour, which easily won the district in last year's national election. The special election was held because Labour lawmaker Mike Amesbury was forced to quit after he was convicted of punching a constituent in a drunken rage.

Farage said that ''it's a very, very big moment indeed'' that shows Reform can win against both Labour and the right-of-center opposition Conservatives.

''This marks the end of two-party politics as we've known it for over a century,'' he said.

The Runcorn victory gives Reform, which garnered about 14% of the vote in last year's national election, five of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, compared to 403 for Labour and 121 for the Conservatives.

But Reform appears to have momentum. National polls now suggest its support equals or surpasses that of Labour and the Conservatives, and it hopes to displace the Conservatives as the country's main party on the right before the next national election, due by 2029.

Farage's party is targeting working-class voters who once backed Labour. Starmer's popularity has plunged as his government struggles to kick-start a sluggish economy. The government has raised the minimum wage, strengthened workers' rights and pumped money into the state-funded health system — but also hiked employer' taxes and cut welfare benefits.

Starmer said that he understood why many voters are discontented.

''My response is: We get it,'' he said. ''I am determined that we will go further and faster on the change that people want to see.''

The results were an even bigger blow to the Conservatives, whose voters switched to Reform in droves.

Reform, which didn't exist when these areas last voted four years ago, won hundreds of municipal seats in the elections for six mayoralties and the control of 23 local councils, mostly at the Tories' expense.

Reform candidate Andrea Jenkyns, a former Conservative lawmaker, won the newly created mayoralty of the Greater Lincolnshire region of east-central England. Labour retained three other mayoralties and the Conservatives won one.

The victories will bring pressure for Reform to deliver on transport, garbage collection, potholes and all the other unglamorous demands of everyday politics.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who could now face a party revolt, posted on X that she was ''determined to win back the trust of the public and the seats we've lost.''

The results give only a partial snapshot of voter sentiment. Many areas, including London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, didn't hold elections. Turnout for local polls is typically much lower than in a national election.

And Reform isn't the only story. The centrist Liberal Democrats made gains by winning more affluent, socially liberal voters away from the Conservatives.

Reform blends Farage's long-standing political themes — strong borders, curbing immigration — with policies reminiscent of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration. During the campaign Farage said that he plans ''a DOGE for every county'' in England, inspired by Elon Musk's contentious spending-slashing agency.

University of Strathclyde political scientist John Curtice said that the results showed that politics in Britain, long dominated by the two big parties, has fragmented.

''Reform are now posing a big threat to both Conservative and Labour," he told the BBC.