“As you can see, we are scoring stunning percentages in traditional old Labour areas”
Nigel Farage is celebrating a ‘historic change’ in politics after Reform UK gains a swathe of council seats across the country after the 2026 local elections.
Thousands of seats across 136 councils were being contested, including a third of councillors are to be elected in Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Manchester, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan. Elsewhere, six mayoral elections have taken place in England, and elections for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments have also been held.
As of around 3:30am on Friday, May 8, full results were in from 13 of the 136 councils. Reform UK had gained 103 seats, with Labour losing 80. The Conservatives had lost 11 seats, independents 22 and Your Party one, with the Greens gaining eight and the Liberal Democrats three.
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A jubilant Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told reporters at the party’s Millbank headquarters: “I think what you’re witnessing is an historic change in British politics. Forget left-right, there is no more left-right. It is gone, it is out of the window, it’s finished.
“As you can see, we are scoring stunning percentages in traditional old Labour areas. We’re currently averaging about 39% of the vote, of the seats that are in already, we’re currently on 145 seats won.
“We are way exceeding anything that I thought.”
When speaking about his predictions later Friday, he said: “What you’ll see tomorrow is the same pattern repeated across the south when we win Essex by an extraordinary margin and Norfolk by an extraordinary margin.”
As Reform surged in early local election results, the party said on X: “It’s clear that Labour voters are switching directly to Reform. We are penetrating the red wall in a way the pollsters and experts simply didn’t predict.
“Britain wants Reform.”
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And Nigel Farage suggested his party was on course for a general election victory after Reform UK’s local election success. He compared the substantial gains to clearing Becher’s Brook, a famously difficult jump in the Grand National.
He said: “This for me was our Becher’s Brook. If we cleared Becher’s Brook and landed well, we go on to win the Grand National. What is very clear to me is that our voters will stick with us now all the way through.
“They are not lending their vote to Reform.”
In Greater Manchester, Reform won 13 seats of the 21 up for election on Salford City Council. Labour, which previously had 16 of the seats, held three. Three seats went to the Green Party, while one Conservative candidate and one independent were elected. The council remains under Labour control but the party now has 34 seats, rather than 47.
The Liberal Democrats secured Stockport Council, ending a no overall control deadlock which had remained in place since 2011. Responding to the Liberal Democrats taking Stockport council, which was previously under no overall control, a party spokesperson said: “This is a great result and shows that Liberal Democrat teams can win right across the country.
“Our hardworking local team has held off the rise of Reform – while others sought to sow division and chaos, we focused on the issues that matter.”
Labour lost 20 councillors in Wigan as Reform UK won all but one of the seats available. Although Labour retains control of the council, represented in Parliament by Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, it does so with a much-reduced majority.
Reform won 24 seats on the authority, bringing its total to 25, with an Independent candidate picking up the remaining seat on offer. And the Conservatives lost their one remaining seat in Wigan.
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