Nigel Farage has claimed Reform UK has overtaken the Conservatives as the main party of opposition. Reform won a byelection, a mayoralty and more than a dozen council seats in early results.
The Reform leader said the results from Runcorn and Helsby, Greater Lincolnshire and a handful of local elections around the country showed his party should now be taken seriously.
Speaking in Runcorn, where the party won with a majority of just six votes, Farage said: “We’ve dug very deep into the Labour vote and, in other parts of England, we’ve dug deep into the Conservative vote. After tonight, there’s no question, in most of the country we are now the main opposition party to this government.”
Andrea Jenkyns, the former Conservative MP, won the newly created Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty with a majority of 44,000 votes.
In a victory speech Jenkyns said: “I take my hat off to our leader, Farage. I know one day he will make a great prime minister.”
John Curtice, the polling expert and professor of politics at Strathclyde University, told the BBC: “We’ve never previously had a situation where, even at an interim stage, we’ve got a party other than Conservative or Labour not just with more votes, but with more [council] seats than anybody else.”
John McDonnell
In response, John McDonnell wrote on X: “Tin eared response from Labour spokespeople to election results so far. Labour supporters feel Labour, their party, has turned its back on them citing Winter Fuel Allowance, NI tax on jobs & threat of disability cuts. Message to ministers is drop the plans to attack disabled.”
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