The right-wing Reform UK Party achieved a string of electoral victories early Friday by gaining parliamentary, mayoral, and several local election seats. Leader Nigel Farage asserted that this success demonstrates Reform UK as “now the opposition party to this Labour government.”
Farage, who earlier this year told Fox News Digital to expect a “political revolution,” declared that the longstanding two-party dominance in British politics had ended. This statement followed losses by both the liberal Labour Party and the Conservative Party in a Thursday election.
Reform UK captured a fifth parliamentary seat after Sarah Pochin won the Runcorn & Helsby constituency, which, according to Reform leaders, is considered a Labour “heartland.”
Nigel Farage, center, leader of the Reform UK Party, celebrates the victory of Sarah Pochin, the party’s candidate, in the Runcorn & Helsby by-election at the DCBL Stadium in Widnes, north-west England, on Friday. (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
Andrea Jenkyns also snagged the mayorship for Greater Lincolnshire, which has for years been dominated by the Conservative Party.
Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, reportedly told Times Radio on Friday, “It’s certainly a political earthquake because up and down the country in some 650 elections, give or take, voters have voted and the votes are coming in against the main two parties.”
Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK Party, and Sarah Pochin, the party’s candidate, celebrate her victory in the Runcorn & Helsby by-election at the DCBL Stadium in Widnes, north-west England, on Friday. (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
According to Farage, the rise in Reform UK supporters suggests the Conservative Party — which he was a former member of but left in the 90s and eventually started the Brexit Party before changing the name to Reform UK in 2021 — is losing support.
“You’re witnessing the end of a party that’s been around since 1832,” he told reporters, according to a Reuters report.
