Reform’s local election sweep puts Starmer and Badenoch in hot seat
Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch face pressure to reverse their parties’ fortunes after the local elections saw Reform UK make major gains across England.
Nigel Farage hailed the results as “the end of two-party politics” and “the death of the Conservative Party” as Reform picked up 10 councils and more than 600 seats in Thursday’s poll.
Conservative figures sought to deny that the results were “existential” for the party.
But, squeezed between Reform and the Liberal Democrats, the Tories lost more than 600 councillors and all 15 of the councils it controlled going into the election, among the worst results in the party’s history.
Mrs Badenoch herself apologised to the defeated Conservative councillors, adding: “I am going to make sure that we get ourselves back to the place where we are seen as the credible alternative to Labour.”
Meanwhile, several Labour figures called on the Prime Minister to change course after Reform won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes and took control of the previously Labour-run Doncaster Council.
Backbench MP Emma Lewell, who has represented South Shields since 2013, said it was “tone deaf to keep repeating we will move further and faster on our plan for change.
“What is needed is a change of plan.”
Brian Leishman, the newly elected MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, said: “The first 10 months haven’t been good enough or what the people want and if we don’t improve people’s living standards, then the next government will be an extreme right-wing one.”
But writing in The Times, the Prime Minister insisted there was “tangible proof that things are finally beginning to go in the right direction”, although he said he was not satisfied with where the country was.
He said: “I am acutely aware that people aren’t yet feeling the benefits. That’s what they told us last night.
“Until they do, I will wake up every morning determined to go further and faster.”
The Prime Minister also warned against parties offering “some simple, ideological fix”, adding: “The lesson of these elections isn’t that the country needs more politicians’ promises or ideological zealotry.
“It isn’t that there is some easy solution, as promised by our opponents. It’s that now is the time to crank up the pace on giving people the country they are crying out for.”
By Christopher McKeon, PA