{"id":307806,"date":"2025-05-03T05:12:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-03T05:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=307806"},"modified":"2025-05-05T08:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T08:38:11","slug":"nigel-farage-takes-aim-at-the-uks-dominant-parties-with-hefty-gains-in-local-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=307806","title":{"rendered":"Nigel Farage takes aim at the UK\u2019s dominant parties with hefty gains in local elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jill Lawless \u2013 AP May 2, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The hard-right party Reform UK led by Nigel Farage<\/a> 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\u2019 political dominance.<\/p>\n

Reform\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

It was a significant defeat for Labour, which easily won the district in last year\u2019s national election. The special election was held because Labour lawmaker Mike Amesbury was forced to quit after he was convicted of punching a constituent<\/a> in a drunken rage.<\/p>\n

Farage said that \u201cit\u2019s a very, very big moment indeed\u201d that shows Reform can win against both Labour and the right-of-center opposition Conservatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis marks the end of two-party politics as we\u2019ve known it for over a century,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Runcorn victory gives Reform, which garnered about 14% of the vote in the 2024 national election<\/a>, five of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, compared to 403 for Labour and 121 for the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s main party on the right before the next national election, due by 2029.<\/p>\n

A rebuff to Labour<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The local elections held Thursday in many areas of England were a sobering rebuff to Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s<\/a> center-left Labour government, 10 months after it was elected in a landslide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Farage\u2019s party is targeting working-class voters who once backed Labour. Starmer\u2019s popularity has plunged as his government struggles to kick-start a sluggish economy<\/a>. The government has raised the minimum wage, strengthened workers\u2019 rights and pumped money into the state-funded health system \u2014 but also hiked employer taxes and cut welfare benefits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Starmer said that he understood why many voters are discontented.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy response is: We get it,\u201d he said. \u201cI am determined that we will go further and faster on the change that people want to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

A blow to the Conservatives<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The results were an even bigger blow to the Conservatives, whose voters switched to Reform in droves.<\/p>\n

Reform, which didn\u2019t exist when these areas last voted four years ago, won more than 600 seats in the elections for 1,600 seats on 23 local councils, mostly at the Tories\u2019 expense. Reform won control of several county-level local authorities, including previous Conservative strongholds Staffordshire and Lincolnshire in central England, Durham in the north and Farage\u2019s home county of Kent in the southeast.<\/p>\n

Farage told supporters that the Conservatives \u201care over, they are finished, they have literally been gutted in these counties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reform candidate Andrea Jenkyns, a former Conservative lawmaker, was elected mayor of the Greater Lincolnshire region of east-central England, and Reform also took the mayoralty of neighboring Hull. Labour retained three other mayoralties and the Conservatives won one.<\/p>\n

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

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch<\/a>, who could now face a party revolt, said voters, who ejected the party from power last year, \u201care still not yet ready to trust us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fragmented politics<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The results give only a partial snapshot of voter sentiment. Many areas, including London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, didn\u2019t hold elections. Turnout for local polls is typically much lower than in a national election.<\/p>\n

And Reform isn\u2019t the only story. The centrist Liberal Democrats<\/a> made big gains in south and southwest England by winning more affluent, socially liberal voters away from the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

Reform UK is the latest in a series of parties led by Farage, a veteran populist politician who was crucial in taking Britain out of the European Union<\/a> through a 2016 referendum. He is a charismatic but divisive figure who has said that many migrants come to the U.K. from cultures \u201calien to ours.<\/p>\n

Reform blends Farage\u2019s long-standing political themes \u2014 strong borders, curbing immigration \u2014 with policies reminiscent of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> administration. Farage said that he plans \u201ca DOGE for every county\u201d in England, inspired by Elon Musk\u2019s contentious spending-slashing agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cReform is now posing a big threat to both Conservative and Labour,\u201d he told the BBC.<\/p>\n

As to whether two-party dominance will continue, \u201cthe question mark on that has just got three or four times bigger,\u201d Curtice said.<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The characterisation of Nigel Farge\u2019s Reform Party as \u201chard-right\u201d says more about the liberal\/left leanings of those in the corporate media than it does about the party\u2019s political orientation. Nonetheless Reform\u2019s election gains mark a historic shift in UK politics. It means that Farage is on course for No 10 Downing Street <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":307809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=307806"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307811,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307806\/revisions\/307811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/307809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=307806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=307806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=307806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}