English local elections: Tories reject claim Reform UK main opposition after ultra-slim byelection win – UK politics live

Reform UK would come under fresh scrutiny.

What does Reform offer? We’re now going to start to see people scrutinising, if they’ve got a Reform councillor, are they actually interested in the local community?

Are they going to be willing to put in the time? And what are their policies actually going to be at local level? Are they going to be willing, for example, to make sure that children with special educational needs [get the support they need]? Or are they going to continue to say that those needs are not real?

Gawain Towler, a former Reform UK press officer who was on the panel alongside Ramsay claimed that Nigel Farage had never said that. But Ramsay said Farage recently claimed that special educational needs and disabilities are being over-diagnosed.

the Conservatives should stand aside to let Reform UK win it. McVey expressed her feeelings about Nigel Farage’s party again this morning in a post on social media.

Congratulations to my new constituency neighbour @SarahForRuncorn on her dramatic by-election victory.
I look forward to working with her for the benefit of the people of Cheshire.

on social media, he said:

Labour’s defeat in Runcorn was entirely avoidable – and is the direct result of the party leadership’s political choices.

By pushing policies like cuts to disability benefits and scrapping the winter fuel allowance, the leadership is driving away our own voters – and letting Reform squeeze through.

The Labour leadership must urgently change course and govern with real Labour values to deliver the change people are crying out for.

It should start by ditching the plans to cut disability benefits and increase taxes on the wealthiest instead.

If it fails to deliver that real change, things could get far worse, with Reform waiting in the wings. And the consequences of that would be horrific for those our Party exists to represent.

Burgon was one of seven Labour MPs who had the whip withdrawn last year for voting for an SNP amendment to the king’s speech calling for the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped. He had the whip restored in February.

latest update for the BBC, he says:

Reform UK have, so far, been winning about 39% of the vote, which puts them 11 points ahead of the Conservatives. They have also won 79 seats – more than any other party.

In those same elections, the Conservatives have been trying to defend 99 seats and have only succeeded in defending 37 of them.

Unless their ability to hang on to seats improves throughout today, their total losses of seats is going to be towards the high end of what people were anticipating.

Lord Hayward, a Tory peer and elections expert, has said he expects the Tories to lose between 475 and 525 council seats.

Labour MP Brian Leishman says the government “must change course” in the light of the Runcorn defeat. He posted this on social media.

Runcorn shows Labour must change course. People voted for real change last July & an end to austerity. The first 10 months haven’t been good enough or what the people want & if we don’t improve people’s living standards then the next government will be an extreme right wing one.

Leishman, who was elected as MP for Alloa and Grangemouth in Scotland last year, has criticised the government in public before, particularly over benefit cuts and policy in relation to the Grangemouth oil refinery. Most of the Labour MPs elected for the first time last summer have not wanted to sound disloyal in public.

Staffordshire county councils from the Conservatives.

He said:

We’ve supplanted the Conservative party now as the main opposition party of the Labour government.

I think the messages we’re getting in many places where we didn’t quite win was that, if you vote Conservative, actually get Labour.

And we’ve bitten very hard into the labour heartland.

This seat of Runcorn and Helsby – one of Labour’s safest seats in the country. And, albeit the margin may be narrow, but it’s a spectacular byelection win.

But we’re also interestingly, if you look at Conservative, as was, Lincolnshire, Conservative Staffordshire – these are areas where the Conservatives had nearly 90% of the council seats. And we’re going to take control of both of those councils. So it’s a really big night.

Farage is right to say his party is on course to win Lincolnshire (see 8.09am) and Staffordshire. According to PA Media, in Staffordshire Reform won 24 of the 30 seats that were counted overnight, with the Conservatives winning the other six.

To understand what a change this would be, you need to look at what the results were the last time elections were held in these two counties (2021 – when the Tories were doing very well nationally, partly because of Boris Johnson’s vaccine rollout). These are from Andrew Teale’s masterful and extremely detailed preview of the elections on his Substack blog. This is what Teale says about Lincolnshire.

Lincolnshire county council … had a large Conservative majority when it was last contested in 2021: 54 Conservatives against 5 independents, 4 Labour, 3 Lib Dems, 3 South Holland Independents and one Lincolnshire Independent (Overton). Six byelections here over the last four years have all been held by the defending party (four Conservatives, one South Holland Independent and one Labour). The Conservatives have overall control of North Kesteven and South Holland councils and minority control of East Lindsey, but Boston council has an independent majority, South Kesteven is run by an independent-led coalition and West Lindsey council has Lib Dem minority control. The PCC [police and crime commissioner] elections here in 2024 had 37% for the Conservatives, 30% for Labour and 14% for Reform UK,

And this is what he says about Staffordshire.

Staffordshire county council has been under Conservative control since 2009. It is perfectly capable of giving lopsided results, as we can see from the 2021 election (57 Conservatives against 4 Labour councillors and one independent), but that doesn’t mean Labour are entirely out of this (or Reform UK, if they can capitalise on their current support).

6.40am.)

Speaking on the Today programme, Huddleston said:

We do have the humility we need to communicate to the public, and are doing, that we understand why they lost trust and faith in us.

But we are under new leadership now. [Kemi Badenoch has] only been leader six months. We’re coming from a very, very difficult time period after the last election. But our job … we will continue to hold this disastrous Labour government to account.

But, in an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Huddleston also admitted that it would take the party “a long time” to win back the trust of voters. He said:

It’s going to take us a long time to build back that trust and confidence … Kemi has said this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Liberal Democrats two and Conservatives one, PA Media reports.

The party needs another 17 seats from the 45 still to be declared to gain a majority on a council which was previously run by the Conservatives with 54 seats. The full result from the council will not be known until later this afternoon, as counting has not yet started in many of the seats.

7.10am.)

But, as a regional mayor, it won’t be that straightforward for Jenkyns, Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of Local Government Information Unit (LGIU), has pointed out. Jenkyns is now head of the Greater Lincolnshire combined country authority (CCA).

In an update on what we have learned from the election results so far, Carr-West said:

What we do know so far is that, for the first time, Reform UK will hold power regionally. This is significant given the government’s agenda to drive further devolution across England.

But, like all combined authority mayors, [Jenkyns] will find that to be successful she must build effective partnerships with local government and across the public sector. The nature of the combined authority mayoral model and the relatively limited powers of the mayor mean that they lead most effectively through persuasion, not compulsion.

Keir Starmer.

This is from Sasha das Gupta, co-chair of Momentum, the leftwing Labour group originally set up to promote Jeremy Corbyn’s policies.

The Runcorn and Helsby byelection result shows what can happen to a Labour government that takes its core voter base for granted. To lose a safe seat so early into its parliamentary term, whilst the far right makes advances across the country, should raise alarm bells in the party.

By continuing austerity, pandering to the far right and failing to offer real change, the Labour Leadership risks handing the country to the likes of Nigel Farage.

It’s time MPs, councillors, party members and the wider labour movement speak out and demand the government change course. This starts with the upcoming vote on welfare cuts. MPs must vote against these cruel and unnecessary measures and stand up for the most vulnerable in society.

And this is from Neal Lawson, a soft left Labour activist who runs Compass, a progressive group committed to pluralism and electoral reform.

Despite Reform scraping it by the skin of their teeth, Labour are squandering their general election victory – people in Runcorn voted for change and instead Labour are giving them more of the same. It’s paving the way for Reform.

Labour need to understand that if people want Reform’s policies then they will vote for Reform – and if they can close the gap this much in 11 months, imagine what it might be in five years.

What should terrify Labour strategists in Runcorn is that the Green vote went up [see 6.17am] – even though Green voters knew this might let Reform in. Labour is simply not progressive enough to win even tactical support.

Liberal Democrats three and Greens two, PA Media reports.

With the Conservatives and Reform now holding 49 of the 69 seats on the council, it raises the question of whether the parties will have to deal to run it.

The council was previously led by a minority Conservative administration, with the party down seven and Labour down nine, while Reform previously had no seats on the council.

Here are the results as shown on the Guardian’s results page.

Reform UK has made a significant breakthrough in English politics. He said they are currently 10 points ahead of the Tories in council results and – crucially – that the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system was now helping them, not hindering them.

Speaking to the Today programme, he said:

The big question that we were looking to these local elections, together with the parliamentary byelection, to answer is, is the message of the opinion polls that Reform seemingly pose a significant threat to the traditional dominance of the Conservatives and Labour in our electoral politics – is that message of the polls correct?

And it already seems to be clear that the answer to that question is yes.

Winning the byelection in itself was a very substantial success for Reform, narrow as it was.

Ukip never, ever managed to win a parliamentary byelection afresh when it was fighting. And so to that extent is we have now broken new ground in terms of parliamentary byelections.

But it’s what happened underneath the byelections that, in a sense, is really notable.

Yes, Reform did narrowly miss out on those three mayoralities [Doncaster, West of England and North Tyneside – Curtice was speaking before the Greater Lincolnshire result was declared].

But we’ve got 124 wards have been declared, basically across four councils. Reform are clearly ahead on 38% of the vote, the Conservatives with 28% and Labour with 18%.

Now these are very heavily in pro-leave, traditionally Tory areas, so they’re not necessarily representative.

But, even so, what were once parts of true blue England now rather look like true turquoise England.

Curtice also said the first-past-the-post electoral system was working for Reform, not against it.

It’s also the case again, quite remarkably, Reform, who of course found it very difficult to break through the electoral system last summer, now actually have won more councillors as of this morning than any other party.

And I think the crucial point there is that, while at 15% the electoral system could work against them, at their level of support now it could work in their favour.

Source: theguardian.com