ENGLAND — The Labour Party lost more than 600 council seats in local elections across England, with many of those seats flipping to the Reform Party, which captured the most seats overall. Five parties each received more than 15 percent of the total votes cast, an outcome without precedent in a British first-past-the-post contest.

The Reform Party won its seats with approximately 26 percent of the vote. The Conservative Party, the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats also each cleared the 15 percent threshold. Seven parties competed seriously for votes, including two nationalist parties and five national parties, a configuration that had not occurred before in a British first-past-the-post system, in which the candidate with the most votes wins the seat.

The Green Party added hundreds of seats under its new leader, Zack Polanski. The Greens under Polanski oppose Israeli government policies.

Nigel Farage has been the dominant figure in Reform since its formation and has been active in U.K. politics for about 30 years. Farage recruited former Conservative politicians into the party and later shifted his campaign strategy to focus on personal leadership and populist messaging. He initially supported the Iran war and later withdrew his support. Reform opposes immigration, has adopted a climate-skeptic position and advocates reducing the welfare state. Net migration in the U.K. has fallen dramatically. The Reform Party leads national opinion polls in the U.K. and is polling in the twenties percent range.

Polls indicate that support for Labour has declined as public discontent grew and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal continued. In the 2024 general election, Labour won one of the largest parliamentary majorities in U.K. history with 33 percent of the vote, when Keir Starmer received that share. In the 2019 general election, which Boris Johnson won, Jeremy Corbyn received more votes than Starmer did in 2024.

Left-wing and right-wing populist parties were expected to gain substantial support in the local elections. Under the U.K. parliamentary system, voters choose individual constituency candidates without pre-election arrangements to exclude specific parties. The next U.K. general election is not required until the summer of 2029.