{"id":31271,"date":"2026-05-08T06:01:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T06:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/31271\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T06:01:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T06:01:19","slug":"reform-uk-surges-as-labour-party-suffers-heavy-early-losses-in-local-elections-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/31271\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform UK surges as Labour Party suffers heavy early losses in local elections \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reform UK<\/a> has surged in the UK local elections after taking council seats from the Labour Party<\/a>, with Keir Starmer<\/a>\u2019s party haemorrhaging seats as local authorities began declaring overnight.<\/p>\n

Nigel Farage<\/a>\u2018s Reform UK gains exceeded 210 seats when results were in from 37 of the 136 councils in the early hours of Friday, while Labour lost more than 160, including in its traditional northern heartlands.<\/p>\n

A jubilant Mr Farage suggested Reform was now on course for a general election victory, and that the results heralded a \u201chistoric change in British politics\u201d, telling reporters \u201cthere is no more left-right\u201d as his outfit was \u201cscoring stunning percentages in traditional old Labour areas\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Reform leader compared the substantial gains to clearing Becher\u2019s Brook, a famously difficult jump in the Grand National.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we cleared Becher\u2019s Brook and landed well, we go on to win the Grand National. What is very clear to me is that our voters will stick with us now all the way through.\u201d<\/p>\n

The heavy early losses for British prime minister Starmer\u2019s Labour showed the depth of voter anger with his government and raising fresh doubts about his future just two \u200cyears after a landslide general election victory.<\/p>\n

Labour lost support in the traditional strongholds in former industrial regions of central and northern England, along with some parts of London.<\/p>\n

The main beneficiary was the anti-immigration \u200bpopulist Reform UK of Brexit<\/a> campaigner Farage, which could form the main opposition in Scotland and Wales to the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe picture has been pretty much as bad as anyone expected for Labour, or worse,\u201d said John Curtice, Britain\u2019s most respected pollster.<\/p>\n

The elections for 136 local councils in England, alongside the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, represent the most significant \u200btest of public opinion before the next general election due in 2029.<\/p>\n

\"NewlyNewly elected Reform UK councillors Jeff Bray (left) and Peter Harris (right) celebrate during the 2026 Essex County Council election at Clacton Leisure Centre in Essex. Photograph: Joe Giddens\/PA Wire <\/p>\n

Lawmakers in the governing Labour Party said if the party performs poorly in Scotland, loses power in Wales, and fails to hold many of the roughly 2,500 \u2060council seats it is defending in England then Starmer will face renewed pressure to quit or set out a timetable for his departure.<\/p>\n

The \u200cearly \u200cresults \u200bshowed the continued fracturing of Britain\u2019s traditional two-party system into a multiparty democracy, in what analysts say represents one of the biggest transformations in British politics in the last century.<\/p>\n

The once-dominant Labour and Conservative parties were losing votes to Reform, and at the other end \u2060of the political spectrum to the left-wing pro-environment Green Party, while nationalist parties were \u200bexpected to win the elections in Scotland and Wales.<\/p>\n

Labour was wiped out in some of the most closely watched early results.<\/p>\n

The party lost control of the council of Tameside in \u200cGreater Manchester for the first time in almost 50 years after Reform picked \u200bup all 14 seats Labour was defending.<\/p>\n

In nearby Wigan, a former mining community it has controlled for more than 50 years, Labour also lost every one of \u2060the 20 seats it was defending to Reform, and in Salford, the \u2060party only held three of the 16 seats \u200bit was defending.<\/p>\n

The results were \u201csoul-destroying\u201d, said Rebecca Long-Bailey, a Labour member of parliament for Salford.<\/p>\n

While incumbent governments often struggle in midterm elections, pollsters forecast that Labour could lose the most council seats in local elections since former prime minister John Major lost more than 2,000 in 1995, when his government was mired in endless corruption scandals.<\/p>\n

In early results, Reform UK added 253 council seats in England with results in more than 4,200 seats still to be counted. Labour lost 185 seats, and the Conservative Party was down 93 seats.<\/p>\n

Most of the election results \u2013 including the seats in the Scottish and Welsh elections \u2013 are due to be declared on Friday afternoon and evening.<\/p>\n

Starmer was elected in 2024 with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history on the premise \u200cthat he would bring stability, rather \u2060than charisma, after years of political chaos.<\/p>\n

\"ElectionElection staff count votes during the Havering local council election in Romford, England. Photograph: Dan Kitwood\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

But his time in office has been marked by numerous policy U-turns, a rotating cast of advisers and the disastrous appointment of Peter Mandelson as Britain\u2019s ambassador to the United States who was fired nine months into job over his links to the late convicted US sex \u200coffender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

Starmer insists he will lead Labour into the next election, and the party has never successfully removed an incumbent prime minister in its 125-year history.<\/p>\n

The prime minister is helped by the fact that two front-runners \u200bto succeed him if he goes \u2013 Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and former deputy prime Minister Angela Rayner \u2013 are not yet \u200bin positions to mount leadership bids, and other potential rivals seem unwilling to move against him for now.<\/p>\n

Energy minister Ed Miliband denied on Thursday a report in the Times newspaper that he had advised Starmer to consider setting out a timetable for his departure from Downing Street. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reform UK has surged in the UK local elections after taking council seats from the Labour Party, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11702,4655,408,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-31271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-conservative-and-unionist-party","9":"tag-labour-party-uk","10":"tag-reform-uk","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116537437898093611","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}