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LONDON/EDINBURGH/CARDIFF (dpa-AFX) – The British right-wing populists from Reform UK performed strongly in the local and regional elections in Great Britain.
Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s party won hundreds of seats in local councils in England. The biggest loser is Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ruling Labor Party. But the opposition conservatives also suffered heavy losses.
Starmer doesn’t want to resign
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Starmer rejected calls for his resignation. “I will not run away and plunge the country into chaos,” said the Labor politician in an interview with the news channel Sky News after the first results of the super election day were counted on Thursday.
“The results are really tough, I don’t want to sugarcoat it,” said the Prime Minister. He takes responsibility for it. “I was elected to a five-year term and I plan to see it through.” In the summer of 2024, Starmer and his party won an overwhelming victory in the parliamentary election.
He added that he also wanted to lead his party into the next parliamentary election. In the coming days, Starmer announced that he would present steps to bring about the promised change.
Farage speaks of “historic change”
There had been strong speculation for months about Starmer’s possible replacement by his party in the event of a poor election result. However, it may have been to Starmer’s advantage that no suitable candidate for successor emerged.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Health Minister Wes Streeting and Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham are said to have ambitions. But at best Burnham stands out, but he would first have to make the difficult jump into parliament. Given the poor election results, this seems to have become even more unlikely than before.
Reform leader Farage spoke of a “historic change in British politics”. Given his party’s strong gains in former Labor strongholds, the traditional distinction between right and left is obsolete, Farage told supporters in London. At the same time, the Conservatives in the county of Essex were swept away. In fact, Reform was able to win a majority in the local district council.
Brexit has an impact ten years after the referendum
According to election researcher John Curtice from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, almost ten years after the referendum on leaving the EU, the country remains strongly divided between supporters and opponents of Brexit. “If you look at the geography where Reform performs strongly, those are the places that voted most strongly for Brexit,” Curtice told BBC 4 radio.
With the Greens it is the exact opposite, Curtice continued. In the English local elections they won dozens of seats – but the significant upswing that some had expected remained modest compared to Reform UK. There are still successes: Green candidate Zoë Garbett was able to secure the position of district mayor for the London district of Hackney, actually a Labor stronghold.
As of midday on Friday, no final results were available in the elections to the regional parliaments in Scotland and Wales. Disastrous results for Labor were also expected there. According to surveys, the independence parties SNP (Scotland) and Plaid Cymru (Wales) were on course to become the strongest party. Labor is threatening to slip into third place behind Reform UK in its previous stronghold of Wales.
Nigel Farage as the next Prime Minister?
The next general election in Great Britain will not take place until 2029. However, from the perspective of the political director of the polling institute Ipsos, the gains made at local and regional levels by Farage’s party are already “extremely significant.” Reform UK has only recently become a national party, “so we are constantly looking for signs that it can be taken seriously as a potential governing party in the UK,” Keiran Pedley told the PA news agency.
The current results show broad support not only in areas with many Brexit supporters, but there is also “nationwide support”. This “activist base” forms “the basis for the election campaign” for the next general election, says Pedley.
Political scientist Sara Hobolt from the London School of Economics recently warned journalists that, according to current polls, Reform UK could win an absolute majority of seats in the coming general election thanks to the British majority voting system. A widespread concern is that in a country that has no written constitution and few limits on the executive branch, this could amount to a system change.
Politics professor Anand Menon from King’s College London is more relaxed. “We are still a long way from a Prime Minister Farage,” he said recently in an interview with the dpa./cmy/DP/mis
