Reform wins control of first councils as voters turn their backs on Tories and Labour
2 May 2025, 15:33 | Updated: 2 May 2025, 19:33
Reform has claimed their first seats in what's been described as a local election landslide, as Keir Starmer branded Labour losses 'disappointing'.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
It follows the party's defeat to Reform UK in the Runcorn and Helsbly by-election, which saw Farage's candidate Sarah Pochin beat Sir Keir's candidate Karen Shore by just six votes.
Recent hours have seen reform game a flurry of seats, taking control of Nottinghamshire from the Tories, also taking control of Derbyshire and Lancashire County Council as results rolled in on Friday.
Claiming the resounding victory for his party, Farage said Reform UK ate “the Labour Party for lunch” and “wiped out” the Conservatives in parts of England as local election results rolled in.
Speaking with Tom Swarbrick at Drive, Labour MP and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, was seen to brand Reform UK "a cult" spearheaded by Farage.
"What do you do when someone joins a cult, albeit very fleetingly, at a polling station? By signing across, you gently bring them back.
Adding: "And that's what the Conservative Party has to do. We have to gently bring those votes back to the Conservatives and there's no reason if we do, we can't go on and triumph at the next election."
The Reform UK landslide comes as a major blow to the Conservatives, who lost a string of seats with previously sizeable majorities on Friday.
Farage's party has now won more than half of the seats up for grabs, with more than 900 already declared.
Initial projections have Reform on target to claim around 800 seats.
Elsewhere, Labour narrowly retained mayoralties in both Doncaster and North Tyneside, with Reform coming a close second in both.
Speaking on a visit to Bedfordshire on Friday, the PM said he wanted to go "further and faster on the change that people want to see" after Reform surged to victory.
Despite the "disappointing" results, he insisted that the government had made "tough but right" decisions such as hiking national insurance, cutting winter fuel allowance for pensioners and curbing benefits.
"The reason that we took the tough but right decisions in the budget was because we inherited a broken economy," he said.
He added: "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."
The Runcorn and Helsby by-election saw Reform take the seat which Labour won with a majority of almost 14,700 less than a year ago.
The race was separated by just six votes, leading Labour to demand a recount.
In another historic breakthrough, Reform won control of Staffordshire Council - their first ever council majority.
Zia Yusuf, who was present at the by-election count at the Halton Stadium in Widnes, said: "Provisional announcement from Runcorn & Helsby is Reform wins by four votes."
"Labour has demanded a full recount. Here we go again," he added.
But several hours later, the news came in that Reform had indeed won the race by just six votes, in what will go down as the closest race in by-election history.
Sarah Pochin becomes the constituency's new MP after securing 12,645 votes, six more than Labour's 12,639.
85 ballots were rejected as part of the recount.
Nigel Farage said it was a “big moment” for Reform UK as he arrived at the Runcorn and Helsby count.
He said: "For the movement, for the party, it's a very, very big moment indeed, absolutely, no question, and it's happening right across England."
Speaking to LBC, Farage said the country has "lost faith" in Labour and pointed to the increase in channel crossings as a key reason for their defeat.
Speaking directly to Sir Keir Starmer, Farage said: “I would just say to him, very simply, that people who put trust in you, that is eroded, albeit almost eradicated, in a very short space of time.
“Be nice to know who he really is, wouldn't it? What does he actually, I mean, what does he actually believe in? It seems that whatever Morgan McSweeney writes for him on a piece of paper he reads out, there's no conviction in this Labour Party.
“But crucially, crucially, the things that switched a lot of old Labour voters to us in this constituency, number one, working people, they have alarms that go off in the morning, they cross the bridge and work in Merseyside.
“Mostly the taxes they pay are going up and they wonder why they're doing it.
“Secondly, a feeling that somehow Labour is not a patriotic party.
“And thirdly, there are 750 young men who've crossed the English Channel living in this constituency at the expense of hard-working taxpayers, causing great alarm in many streets.
“Dover may be a long way away. Its influence on this by election was enormous.”
Ms Pochin, who becomes Reform's fifth MP, said: "We have made history here tonight."
The contest to become the new MP for Runcorn and Helsby was the first by-election under Keir Starmer's leadership, and was seen as hugely important for both Reform and Labour.
Labour said by-elections are "always difficult for the party in Government" and the events surrounding the Runcorn And Helsby vote made it "even harder" after Reform UK's Sarah Pochin won the seat.
A party spokesperson said: "By-elections are always difficult for the party in government and the events which led to this one being called made it even harder.
"Voters are still rightly furious with the state of the country after 14 years of failure and clearly expect the Government to move faster with the plan for change.
"While Labour has suffered an extremely narrow defeat, the shock is that the Conservative vote has collapsed. Moderate voters are clearly appalled by the talk of a Tory-Reform pact.
"There are encouraging signs that our plan for change is working - NHS waiting lists, inflation and interest rates down with wages up - but we will go further and faster to deliver change with relentless focus on putting money back into people's pockets."
The vote was triggered after former Labour MP Mike Amesbury quit the party after admitting punching a constituent in the street, which was caught on CCTV.
Amesbury pleaded guilty to assaulting constituent Paul Fellows, 45, after a row in the street in Frodsham, Cheshire, in January, for which he was given a suspended sentence.
Amesbury won his seat last year with a majority of 14,696 over Reform UK, and his resignation became the first by-election test for Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party.
It comes as a number of by-elections are being held across England, and Reform UK is contesting nearly all of them.
More than 1,600 council seats are up for grabs across 23 local authorities, while four regional mayors and two local mayors will be elected.
At the last local elections in 2024, Reform only put forward candidates in 12% of all available council seats. This year, Farage said the party is deploying nearly a "full list of candidates across the entire country".
The leader of the right-wing populist party, Nigel Farage, said he wanted to “smash the two-party system”.
Reform does not currently run any councils, but critics and supporters alike will be eager to see how they will run local authorities if they do win councils and mayoral contests.
The level of votes they receive at the local level will also be a major electoral test for the party, which has publicly spoken about their ambitions to win the next general election and run the country.
Most of the council seats were last contested in May 2021, at a time when the then-Conservative government, led by former prime minister Boris Johnson, was enjoying a spike in popularity following the successful rollout of the first Covid-19 vaccines.
This means the Tories are defending a large number of seats across much of the country: they currently control 19 of the 23 local authorities holding elections on Thursday, either as the majority party or a minority administration.
