Reform UK Wins Big in Britain’s Local Elections, Splintering Labour and Conservatives

Britain’s local elections on Thursday deepened a shift toward multi-party politics as the BBC said the results confirmed “Britain has now entered an unprecedented era of multi-party politics.”

“How the winner-takes-all voting system has turned on Labour and the Tories Under the first-past-the-post electoral system, the candidate or candidates with the most votes in each seat are elected”

BBC

The BBC projected that if the whole country had had the chance to vote in a local election on Thursday, Reform would have come first with 26% of the vote and the Greens second with 18%, leaving the Conservatives and Labour with 17% each and a joint tally of 34%.

BBC

The BBC also said the winner-takes-all first-past-the-post system has become “colour blind in how it operates,” raising questions about whether it will continue to benefit the Conservatives and Labour in future.

In the BBC’s sample of detailed voting results, the joint tally of council seats won by Reform and the Greens stood at 2,063, almost 200 more than the total of 1,864 won jointly by the Conservatives and Labour.

The BBC added that in a sample of more than 1,000 wards where it collected detailed voting statistics, support for Labour fell on average compared with 2022 by 25 points where the party was trying to defend the seat.

As early results rolled in, the Guardian reported that Labour went into Thursday’s local elections expected to lose up to 1,850 councillors, with senior figures describing the contest as “tough.”

The Guardian said Reform took control of its first council at around 6am, gaining overall control of Newcastle-under-Lyme from Labour, and that Nigel Farage described the early results as a “historic change in British politics.”

CNN

In Oldham, the Christian Science Monitor described the local vote as a “referendum on Starmer,” saying of the 20 seats up for grabs, 13 were won by Reform UK while Labour won only three seats.

The Christian Science Monitor also quoted Reform’s leader in Oldham, Councillor Lewis Quigg, saying, “They’re fed up with the wanton disregard of concerns.”

The BBC reported that Starmer admitted voters were “clearly not satisfied with the ‘pace of change’ under his government,” while he insisted, “I’m not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos.”

The BBC warned that first-past-the-post no longer appears effective at discouraging people from backing parties other than Conservative or Labour, noting that Reform and the Greens together won 2,063 council seats in its sample while the Liberal Democrats won 842 local council seats.

“The hard-right Reform UK party led by Nigel Farage has surged in England’s local elections while the governing Labour Party has slumped, deepening doubts about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ability to govern and further splintering Britain’s traditional two-party political system”

CNN

The Independent argued that “Multi-party politics is here to stay,” saying the two-party system has been smashed and that by the 2024 election Labour and the Conservatives’ share had dropped to 58%.

The Christian Science Monitor said Thursday’s regional elections were widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister and Labour leader Keir Starmer, with Labour losing its hold on the council in Oldham and no party able to claim overall control.

In Scotland and Wales, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Labour’s losses extended into the devolved Parliament in Holyrood and the Senedd, where Wales’ first minister, Labour’s Eluned Morgan, was among those to lose her seat.

Across the country, the New York Times framed the stakes as the system’s ability to handle multiparty politics, saying the British electoral system “wasn’t built for multiparty democracy,” even as insurgent parties like Reform U.K. surged and Labour lost members of its party from local councils.