LONDON (AP) — Voters in many areas of England went to the polls Thursday in local elections that provide a test of feeling about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s center-left Labour government, 10 months after it was elected in a landslide.
Both Labour and the main opposition Conservative Party braced for losses in the midterm poll. The hard-right Reform UK led by Nigel Farage fielded more candidates than any other party and hoped to make major gains in the elections that are deciding 1,600 seats on 23 local councils, six mayoralties and one seat in Parliament.
Reform got about 14% of the vote in last year’s national election and holds just four of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. But polls now suggest its support equals or surpasses that of Labour and the Conservatives, and it hopes to displace the Conservatives as the country’s main party on the right before the next national election, due by 2029.
“Tomorrow is the day that two-party politics in England dies for good,” Farage told supporters at a rally on Wednesday evening.
Results in most of the races were expected Friday.
Reform is aiming to win hundreds of municipal seats, largely from the Conservatives, whose leader Kemi Badenoch could face revolt if the party does very badly.
Badenoch has acknowledged that the results could be “very difficult” for the Tories. The party did extremely well when these areas were last contested in 2021, a time when then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government enjoyed a surge in popularity due to the COVID-19 vaccine program.
Farage’s party also hopes to win two or three mayoral contests and a special parliamentary election for the seat of Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England. It was long a secure Labour district, but the previous lawmaker, Mike Amesbury, quit after he was convicted of punching a constituent in a drunken rage.
Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the Conservatives and Reform are in “a fight for the soul of the right wing of U.K. politics.” He said Farage’s “populist radical right insurgency” also poses a threat to Labour, targeting working-class voters with pledges to curb immigration, create jobs and cut government waste.
The centrist Liberal Democrats also hope to build on their success in winning more affluent, socially liberal voters away from the Conservatives.
Bale said winning municipal power could be a double-edged sword for Reform, bringing pressure to deliver on transport, potholes, housing and all the other unglamorous demands of everyday politics.
“Populist parties tend to offer fairly simple solutions to fairly complex problems,” he said. “Which is fine when you’re in opposition and all you are doing is living in a house of words. But once you start living in house of deeds, that is a completely different proposition.”
