How the "British Trump’s" party won local elections and what it means
The Labour Party of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which won last year’s snap parliamentary elections, suffered a major setback in the 1 May local elections in England.
Instead, the populist, Eurosceptic party Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, triumphed.
Winning over 30% of the vote, the right-wing populists secured control of several local authorities for the first time and even won mayoral seats.
The 1 May vote may signal a broader shift in the UK’s party system – even more so than a loss of support for the ruling Labour Party.
For more on the results and their implications, see the article by Oleh Pavliuk, a European Pravda journalist: "Untraditional Britain: how the far-right triumph is disrupting the established political order."
The election results on 1 May were far from satisfactory for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
Out of around 1,600 local council seats contested, Labour won only 98 (around 6%) – 186 fewer than before. In terms of overall vote share, Labour placed only fourth with 14%, trailing Reform UK, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
This crushing defeat appears to be a public verdict on the Starmer government’s first ten months.
A key source of discontent was Labour’s failure to deliver on promises to reduce the cost of living, especially striking for a party that historically represented the working class. Instead, the government proposed a budget involving spending cuts and tax hikes.
However, the biggest losers of the 1 May vote were arguably the Conservative Party.
They were defending the largest number of seats, but ended up losing 676, winning just 317 (about one-fifth), with a vote share of only 23%.
In her six months as Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch has failed to convince voters that the party is any better under her than it was during the chaotic terms of Boris Johnson or Liz Truss – the latter brought down by failed economic policy.
Meanwhile, Reform UK, a right-wing, Eurosceptic populist party, received 31% of the vote, over 670 council seats, control of 10 out of 23 local governments that held elections, and, for the first time, two mayors. The party also now has a fifth MP in the House of Commons.
The secret to Reform UK’s success is strikingly similar to what’s happening in the US Republican Party.
Farage and his team began targeting the working class, visiting factories, meeting trade unions and backing strikes, while Starmer’s Labour pivoted increasingly toward big business.
Farage also exploited the Brexit divide. While the major parties struggle to appeal to both sides of the issue, Reform UK unapologetically championed the pro-Brexit camp. On 1 May, it won nearly half the vote in districts that had supported Brexit in 2016.
Though small in scale, the 1 May local elections have prompted commentators to talk about a potential overhaul of the UK’s party system.
It seems the decades-long dominance of the Conservative and Labour parties may be drawing to a close.
If the Starmer government continues to flounder in the polls and ends up calling early general elections, the makeup of the House of Commons could change dramatically.
Yet even in the (still distant) scenario where Reform UK forms a national government, the right-wing populists will still need to consider public opinion in shaping foreign policy – which, so far, remains firmly pro-Ukraine.