Brexit champion Nigel Farage has predicted that his insurgent Reform UK party is on course for a “stunningly well” performance during Thursday’s local elections.
This week’s local elections will mark the first major opportunity for the British public to give their verdict on the governance of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s left-wing Labour Party government since coming to power in 2024. However, they will also be the first significant test for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which has held a commanding lead in all polls over the past year.
Speaking to the Times of London on the campaign trail in the former Conservative Party heartland of West Sussex, Mr Farage said: “Unless I’m self-deluding, then I think that we’re going to do stunningly well — I mean stunningly well — in what really are Labour heartlands.”
The Reform boss said that he expects the party to do particularly well in areas such as the Midlands, Yorkshire, the valleys of Wales, and the north of England. He said that predictions that Reform would gain around 1,550 councillors and Labour would lose around 1,900 seemed “quite realistic”.
The elections, the first in which Reform will truly challenge nationally, could lay the groundwork and local infrastructure needed for the party to fulfil its main aim of toppling the two-party duopoly that has controlled Westminster politics for the past century.
Farage has also cast the elections as a referendum on Prime Minister Starmer, whose grip on power remains tenuous at best, with frequent scandals, economic woes, and the undeterred arrival of illegal migrants continuing to dog his government.
In an interview with The Sun earlier this week, Farage predicted that a strong Reform win would be the end of the prime minister, saying: “Clearly the cabinet has lost faith in Starmer. I think our results in the Northwest, the Northeast, the Midlands, the old coal fields of South Wales, I think we’ll be the thing that finally pushes him over the edge.”
Despite Starmer’s insistence that he plans to stay on no matter the result, multiple high-profile Labour Party figures appear to be on manoeuvres, making moves to put themselves in a position to potentially step forward as an alternative leader and saviour of the party, which continues to languish in the polls.
Runners and riders so far include Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Starmer’s former deputy leader Angela Rayner, and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, a former creature of the Blairite establishment who has spent the past decade trying to rebrand his image as a man of the people up North.
In addition to failing to turn around key issues which he was elected to solve, namely the economic shambles and the migrant crisis left by the former Conservative government, Starmer has also faced a rolling scandal over his appointment of former Blair spin doctor Lord Peter as ambassador to Washington, despite having known that he had maintained a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein’s child prostitution conviction.
The scandal was given fresh legs by the Trump administration’s release of the so-called Epstein files, which appeared to show that Mandelson had allegedly passed confidential government economic information amid the 2008 financial crisis, for which he is currently under police investigation, likely meaning further headlines to keep the scandal alive in the British tabloids.
While such scandals would often force a prime minister to resign, there appears to have been a hesitancy from within the Labour rank and file to pressure Starmer to step aside. The Westminster speculation has been that the main challengers have held their powder dry, not wanting to take over the party until after Thursday’s local elections, so as to avoid any blame for the expected heavy losses.
Nevertheless, it appears the public is ready for Starmer to go, with a poll last month finding that 50 per cent of voters think the PM should resign, compared with 36 per cent who think he should remain in power.
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