The candidate for Reform U.K., the right-wing party of British lawmaker and ally of President Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, won a parliamentary by-election by just six votes, taking the seat from the governing Labour Party.
The election for northwest England’s Runcorn and Helsby went to a recount, but Reform’s Sarah Pochin emerged victorious by an ultra-slim margin, beating Labour’s Karen Shore into second place in what was previously seen as a safe seat for the party.
Farage, the party’s leader, who has appeared with Trump at rallies in the U.S., called it a “huge night for Reform,” which also picked up a regional mayoralty—its first—and came close elsewhere in a night of local elections across the country.
A by-election was triggered in Runcorn when the previous Labour Member of Parliament stepped down after he was sentenced to prison for assault.
Reform is one of the insurgent right-wing parties in Europe favored by Elon Musk, who has also backed Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), and the by-election win marks another major moment in its rise in British politics.
Labour still has a large overall majority in parliament, but by-elections, which occur outside of the usual parliamentary election cycle, are usually seen as a litmus test for the state of politics.
Reform will now have five MPs, Labour 403. The Conservatives, the official opposition, have 121. The Conservative candidate in Runcorn received just over 7 percent of the vote, versus 38.72 percent for Reform and 38.70 percent for Labour.
The U.K. uses a first-past-the-post system for its elections, which makes it harder for smaller parties to break through. But a poll towards the end of April put Reform in first place for voting intention among British adults.
The YouGov poll put Reform at 26 percent, with Labour in second at 23 percent, and the Conservatives in third at 20 percent.
Sir John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and one of the country’s leading experts on British elections, said Reform’s overturning of a majority as large as Labour’s—35 percent in the seat—was rare, making the party’s performance “quite remarkable”.
“The big question we were asking ourselves was: are Reform posing a major challenge to the traditional dominance of British politics by Conservatives and Labour? Is that challenge really there?” Curtice wrote in his analysis for BBC News.
“And I think we now know that the answer to that question is yes.”
This is a developing article and more information will be added soon.
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