Farage: Domination of Two Legacy Parties ‘Finished, Over, Gone’ After Historic Reform Victory

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has warned woke employees of English councils working on “climate change initiatives, or diversity” to seek alternate employment after his party won historic victories in Thursday’s England elections.

Nigel Farage addressed supporters and election-winners on Friday night after the final results for over 1,600 elections across England came in, confirming his Reform UK party had undeniably won the day, stating: “I do genuinely believe what has happened yesterday the length and breadth of England is a truly historic landmark”.

Reform won ten local authorities, two mayoralties, a byelection to Parliament, and 677 councillor seats.

State broadcaster the BBC said it had modelled the results onto a national projection and that had a General Election taken place on Thursday, Reform UK would be forming the next government of the United Kingdom, with both Labour and the Conservatives — who have utterly dominated British politics for a century — wiped out.

Farage, for his part, hailed a “Reformquake” and said this proved the era of the two-party state was over and that his Reform UK party is now here to stay. He said on Friday night that the elections ” marks the end of two-party politics as we have known it for over a century in this country, it is finished, it is over, it is gone. That is a significant moment… I do genuinely believe what has happened yesterday the length and breadth of England is a truly historic landmark”.

He called Reform the “agents of change… agents of optimism” and said: “I believe, as I think you believe, that we really will make history and win the next General Election”.

The Reform campaign was perfectly open about treating these elections as a springboard for the next General Election, which at the latest will be in 2029, and consequently campaigned at times on national issues. Nevertheless, in his victory speech Farage pointed to areas where he intended to leave his mark on local government.

Echoing the U.S. ‘DOGE’ initiative to drive government efficiency, Mr Farage warned government employees in Councils Reform now controls, having gone from zero to ten yesterday, who work on “climate change initiatives, or diversity equity and inclusion” to seek “alternative careers”.

One factor that repeatedly emerged in Reform candidates’ reading of the public mood as they knocked on thousands of doors across England was disquiet over the government’s handling of the migrant boat crisis, and the practice of placing these migrants in accommodation around the country at taxpayers’ expense.

Farage hinted Reform councils would attempt to resist central government moves to plant migrants in the regions. He said: “our absolute desire to protect our borders, and the number of people who I met in the north who are just so enraged because they get up early in the morning, they go to work, they pay their taxes. And they see young men crossing the English Channel, being dumped into the north of England, getting everything for free.

“And once they’re given indefinite leave to remain they go to the top of the social housing list. It is unfair, it is irresponsible, it is wrong in every way… We will resist central government plonking scores, hundreds, of young men in these counties that we now control”.

While the Conservative Party and the governing Labour Party have had less to say in the wake of their drubbing at the ballot box, in both cases the pleas that they had now learnt their lessons appeared to imply anything but. Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, for instance, said the lesson he had taken away from these elections is that the public want more of what his government is delivering and faster.

The Prime Minister said: “”What I want to say is, my response is we get it… I am determined that we will go further and faster…”.

Given how well that has gone down at the ballot box this week, this response will doubtless be music to Mr Farage’s ears.

Starmer was dinged from the left on this reaction, with party colleague Diane Abbott — very much the spiritual core of Labour’s left-wing — refuting the further and faster line. She said in a statement: “Labour leadership saying the party will go further and faster in the same direction. They don’t seem to understand that, it is our current direction that is the problem”.

And further in interview: “Labour leadership seems to think that the answer to these catastrophic election results is more of the same, including cuts to winter fuel payments…. The Labour leadership should be listening to voters on winter fuel payments, welfare cuts, the cost of living, the NHS and energy bills. Instead, it is attacking our own voters.”

Providing the first deeper insights into the data coming out of the vote was Yougov’s Dylan Difford who illustrated the extraordinary nature of this week’s election by demonstrating it to have not simply being part of the regular churn of elections. Rather, more seats changed hands on Thursday than any other set of local elections in modern British political history.

The Conservatives’ performance was the “worst set of local election results for any party in British history”, he said. While Labour on paper fared better in terms of seats lost, Difford disabused this notion too, observing their having performed so poorly in previous rounds in 2017 and 2021 means being already at rock-bottom, they simply had fewer seats to lose.