Farage Racks Up UK Election Gains as Voters Punish Starmer

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK racked up sweeping gains in the first counts in local elections, with British voters continuing to turn away from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s governing Labour Party.

With counts completed in more than a quarter of English councils, Reform had posted a net gain of 270 new seats, while Labour’s tally was down by 202. The governing party have lost almost half of the seats they were defending, although that’s below the pace of some of the worst-case predictions.