The far-right Reform UK made major gains in the Thursday’s elections in Britain at the expense of both the ruling Labour Party and opposition Conservatives.

Reform, led by Nigel Farage, won the majority of seats in local elections in England and won the parliamentary by-election for the Runcorn and Helsby constituency in northwest England—formerly considered one of the safest Labour seats.

The seat became vacant when Labour MP Mike Amesbury stood down after being convicted of assaulting a man who he punched repeatedly in the street.

Elections were contested across 24 local authorities and 1,641 council seats; and for seats on 14 county councils and eight unitary authorities in England. Six mayoral elections were held, including inaugaral mayor contests in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire.

Reform UK won Runcorn and Helsby by just six votes (12,645 to 12,639) but slashed Labour’s majority of almost 14,700 at the general election held in July last year. The narrowest margin of victory in a by-election since the war was therefore achieved due to a 17 percent swing to Reform on a turnout of 46 percent. Reform also picked up votes from the Conservatives to win the Runcorn seat—with the Tories share of the vote falling by nearly 9 percent from the 2024 general election.

Local elections, held on a rotating basis, were mainly in Conservative held seats that were last contested in 2021, when the Tories were in power under Boris Johnson. Around 1,000 of the seats (957) in the local election were being defended by the Tories, with just 297 being defended by Labour and 224 by the Liberal Democrats.

Reform won most seats taking an average of around 10 percent above other parties. With 20 of 23 councils declaring results by Friday evening, Reform had taken eight, winning 635 seats. The Tories lost 15 councils, taking just 300 seats—a fall of 633. Labour lost one council as it took just 88 seats—a fall of 180. The Liberal Democrats won three councils.

Reform won the mayoralties in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull & East Yorkshire. The party’s Tory defector candidate Andrea Jenkyns, with a huge majority of nearly 40,000 votes, was elected Greater Lincolnshire mayor, and Reform also took Lincolnshire council wiping out a 38 seat Tory majority. Giving vent to Reform’s anti-immigrant agenda, Jenkyns said of asylum seekers in her victory speech, “I say no to putting people in hotels… Tents are good enough for France, they should be good enough for here in Britain.”

Reform also took Kent, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire councils.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party was partially shielded by contesting fewer seats but still proved itself to be massively unpopular after having enforced cuts to pensioners income and £5 billion in welfare cuts with Starmer’s own ratings falling to a record low. Such is the hatred for Starmer that party strategists advised him not to visit Runcorn to campaign for Labour’s candidate.

As well as losing Runcorn, Labour suffered huge losses on Durham Council to Farage. Labour had run the northeast council for almost a century until 2021. With Durham under no overall control, Reform managed to capture the 50 seats needed to take the council (taking 65 in total), with Labour winning just four. An ecstatic Daily Mail described Durham, located in a former coal mining region, as the “spiritual home of the labour movement”.

Reform more than consolidated the gains it made in last July’s General Election in which Farage’s party won over 4 million votes and 14 percent of the poll. Due to Britain’s undemocratic first past the post system, this translated into just five MPs in a 650 seat Parliament. Just prior to the local elections, however, it was polling as the first party nationally on around 26 points, ahead of Labour on 24 and the Tories on 21.

Based on the local election results, Sky News estimated that Reform’s national share of the vote in a general election would reach 32 percent, well ahead of Labour on 19 percent and the Tories on 18 percent.

While the official policy of Kemi Badenoch’s Tories and the Reform leadership is that they will not form a coalition at a national level, with Farage deriding the Tories as a “waste of space”, the parliamentary arithmetic now points to a Reform UK/Tory coalition and the wipeout of the Starmer government at the next election.

Former Tory cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg told the World at One on Friday, “In terms of policy, there’s very little difference between the Conservative party and Reform. It’s basically a matter of personality… I think we need to work together. … conservatism is having a fantastic 24 hours.”

Reform originates in Farage’s earlier UK Independence Party and the Brexit Party (which became Reform UK in 2021). It has only been able to make a breakthrough due to the abandonment of any defence of the working class by Labour and the trade unions.

This has created fertile ground for Farage to win a hearing—including among a layer of mainly older workers in former industrial heartlands—based on an appeal to social despair being channelled into scapegoating migrants for the decimation of housing, education and the National Health Service.

Labour and the Tories share much of the anti-immigration platform of Reform, with Labour boasting of its “successes” keeping out migrants by even using Reform’s turquoise branding. But Farage’s party continually insists that only it is serious about slashing migration. He called in the election campaign for a new Department of Deportations to be created. His agenda is constantly promoted by a filthy tabloid media, keeping a daily tally of how many “illegal” migrants get to the UK on small boats and denouncing Labour’s policies, as did the Express this week, as “migration madness”.

Reform UK are openly aping the fascist US President Donald Trump, who Farage counts as a friend having spoken at Trump rallies and attending his inauguration in January. One of Reform’s slogans is “Make Britain Great Again”. On Thursday, Farage announced that he would end Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in any council Reform won, and reiterated his call for a Trump/Elon Musk-style Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Britain.

But not only does Labour fuel anti-migrant sentiment. Its pro-business agenda and refusal to put forward anything whatsoever to ameliorate massive social hardship, with the cost of living at unbearable levels, allows Reform to portray migration as the root of all evil.

Jeremy Corbyn’s betrayal of the mass movement that backed him as Labour leader—centred on demands to end austerity and war and to kick out Labour’s Blairites—put Starmer, a right-wing man of the state, at the party’s head—paving the way for his government’s savage welfare cuts, warmongering and anti-migrant policies.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) campaigned in the local elections via their Stand Up to Racism campaign, declaring that it was “so important” that they “labelled Reform UK a racist party and campaigned against the myths about immigration.” 

But while the SWP raised the “need for a left alternativse at the ballot box that could mobilise breaking with Labour to the left,” those they say should lead this project—Corbyn and the trade union leaders—have no intention of leading any movement against Starmer. Indeed, the pseudo-left’s recent Summit of Resistance, with Corbyn the main draw, specifically ruled out the formation of any political party to challenge Labour “from the left”.

Reform UK have filled the political vacuum this creates. Its rise belatedly mirrors already far advanced developments in major European countries, as evidenced by the rise of the fascist Alternative For Germany and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France.

Genuinely combatting Reform UK demands the building of a revolutionary party, through which the deepening rupture between the working class and the Labour Party can become a conscious political struggle against Starmer’s pro-capitalist government and for socialism.