Reform UK has won four seats in Parliament on a night which the party’s leader Nigel Farage described as the “beginning of the end” for the Conservatives.
Mr. Farage was elected in the Essex seat of Clacton, where he ousted the sitting Conservative MP Giles Watling.
Lee Anderson, who defected to Reform from the Conservatives, retained his seat in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.
Reform’s party Chairman Richard Tice won Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire, beating the Conservatives’ Matt Warman, who had been MP since 2015.
The fourth Reform MP will be businessman and former chairman of Southampton football club, Rupert Lowe, who won Great Yarmouth, another gain from the Tories.
All four victories were in areas which voted heavily in favour of leaving the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
‘Massive Gap on the Centre-Right of British Politics’
In a speech, following the election count in Clacton, Mr. Farage said, “It’s not just disappointment with the Conservative party, there is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it.”Speaking to journalists afterwards, Mr. Farage insisted Reform was a, “non-racist, non-sectarian” party, after three of the party’s candidates were dropped and disowned for allegedly offensive comments on social media.
He also predicted the result was the, “beginning of the end” for the Conservative Party.
Mr. Farage said, “This is just the first step, I set out with a goal to win millions of votes, to get a bridgehead in Parliament and that’s what we’ve done so I’m very pleased.”
The 60-year-old former MEP said Reform would move forward “very rapidly.”
“I’ve got to professionalise it, I’ve got to democratise it, I’ve got to get rid of a few idiots that found it too easy to get on board. They will all go, they will all go, this will be a non-racist, non-sectarian party. Absolutely and I give my word on that,” he added.
Mr. Farage has stood for Parliament several times under various banners but he was finally victorious on a night when the Conservative vote collapsed, with many of their voters switching to Reform.
Reform pushed the Tories into third place in many constituencies but more significantly its surge in votes also enabled Labour to win many previously safe Conservative seats.
Reform Falls Short in Barnsley and Hartlepool
In Barnsley North, where the exit poll predicted Reform would win, their candidate Robert Lomas fell 8,000 votes short and Labour held the seat.Mr. Lomas was one of the three candidates Mr. Farage said he wanted, “nothing to do with” after their historical comments on social media emerged.
The other seat Reform failed to win was Hartlepool, a traditionally Labour seat which the Conservatives’ Jill Mortimer won at a by-election in 2021.
Mr. Anderson lost the Tory whip in February after saying, on GB News: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of [Mayor, Sadiq] Khan, and they’ve got control of London.”
He then quit the party and joined Reform.
After retaining his seat, Mr. Anderson said, “This is the capital of common sense, by the way, people speak their mind in this area and they’ve had enough of the two mainstream parties.”
He said, “The Reform Party, people like myself, Richard and Nigel speak the same language, in a different accent obviously, we speak the same language as the great people of Ashfield.”
In Northern Ireland, the leader of Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), Jim Allister, is predicted to defeat the DUP’s Ian Paisley. TUV is affiliated with Reform UK.
This article will be updated as seats continue to be declared.
