Is Reform UK now the government’s ‘main opposition’?

Following last week’s local elections, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage claimed: “After tonight, there’s no question, in most of the country we are now the main opposition party to this government.”

And on X, he made a similar claim in light of the party’s parliamentary by-election success, writing: “Victory in Runcorn & Helsby proves we are now the opposition party to this Labour government.”

Given the traditional two-party dominance in British politics, the question of who represents the “main opposition” to the government has in recent history been for the most part uncomplicated.

In Parliament, the party with the largest number of MPs that is not in government is designated His Majesty’s Official Opposition. This remains the Conservative party, which also still has the second highest number of councillors in England behind Labour, despite incurring substantial losses on 1 May.

However Reform UK’s narrative that it is either closing the gap, or overtaking the Conservatives, as Labour’s primary challenger among voters has been echoed in the media in recent days, as well as by some figures in government.

And while this isn’t the first time that commentators have questioned whether the two-party system of British politics is coming to an end, many have claimed that last week’s local election results serve as proof of a fundamental shift.

While there is a clear definition of HM Official Opposition, there’s no such formal definition of which party represents the “main opposition”. But we’ve looked here at some of the different ways of comparing political parties’ relative strength, and what they suggest about Reform UK’s current position.

Reform UK outperformed all other parties last week

Last Thursday, Reform UK gained the most councillors, adding 677, and took control of 10 of the councils which were holding elections, far more than any other party. The party also won its first mayoralties in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire, and added a fifth MP to its ranks after pipping Labour to the post in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes.

According to the BBC, the results were the worst on record for both Labour and the Conservatives, with both parties losing around two thirds of their council seats which were up for election.

However, only a minority of the country’s councils held elections last week, and it remains to be seen whether last Thursday’s results are replicated at a national scale.

As Jane Green, Professor of Political Science and British Politics at the University of Oxford, noted ahead of the vote last week: “These local elections aren’t happening in a random sub-sample of places, and they’re local election votes, not general election votes, so they wouldn’t be the same if a general election were happening in the same places or in the country as a whole.”

That said, Reform UK does currently lead Labour on average in the polls, and according to BBC analysis of projected vote share, if the last week’s local elections had taken place nationwide, Reform UK would have had the highest vote share, at 30% (just slightly lower than the 31% the party received across the 23 councils which did hold elections).

It’s worth noting that there were no local elections last week in Wales and Scotland, where national parties Plaid Cymru and the SNP have long challenged the two-party system (though surveys suggest Reform UK is polling ahead of the Conservatives in both nations). Local elections were also not held in Northern Ireland, though the political party system in Northern Ireland is substantially different to the rest of the UK, and Reform UK has not previously stood candidates there.

Challenges from other parties

Reform UK isn’t the only party to claim that the recent local election results position it ahead of the Conservative party. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey claimed his party—which gained three councils and outperformed both Labour and the Conservatives in terms of seats gained—had replaced the Conservatives as the “party of Middle England”.

He added: “For the first time ever we have overtaken the Conservatives in local elections and that’s put us on track to overtake the Conservatives at the next general election.” (The Liberal Democrats remain the third largest party in terms of MPs and councillors).

It’s also been noted that last week both Labour and the Conservatives lost votes not only to the right, but also to the left, with the Green Party seeing a net gain of 44 seats.

Speaking on the BBC last week, polling expert Sir John Curtice said: “This is the first time when the two parties have been challenged from more than one direction at the same time.”

One possible measure of Reform UK’s relative strength is how it is treated by other parties.

Asked last week which party represented Labour’s “most serious opposition”, health secretary Wes Streeting told the BBC: “I don’t know whether it will be Reform or the Conservatives that emerge as the main threat. I don’t have a horse in that race, but like Alien vs. Predator, you don’t really want either one to win but one of them will emerge as the main challenger to Labour at the next general election.”

What might Reform UK-led councils do?

While it had significant success last week, Reform UK currently controls only 10 local authorities, so its ability to implement its own policies at a wide scale, or challenge the implementation of government policy, remains somewhat limited compared to the Conservative party, which either controls or is in government in far more local authorities in England.

Councils have the power to make decisions on spending and policies for various services, depending on the type of council. But these decisions can only be made within constraints established at a national level—most notably, the UK government sets out funding settlements for local authorities, and also sets limits on the amount local authorities can charge in council tax and business rates.

Local authorities have the power to make byelaws, but these must be approved by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

So while, for example, Reform UK councillors on Durham County Council can make changes to school provisions in the area, they can only do so within the limits of the funding the council currently receives from UK government grants, council tax and business rates, with limited opportunities to raise revenue through other means.

Reform UK has said it will make efficiency savings in the councils it now controls, with Mr Farage saying he wants “a Doge in every county”, in reference to the Department of Government Efficiency created by US President Donald Trump, which has sought to make substantial reductions to US government spending.

Reform UK has also said that it will scrap ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion’ roles in councils it now controls.

There are also questions over how effective Reform UK-led councils can be when it comes to pursuing the party’s policies on national issues.

For example, although the party has pledged to use “every lever” to stop the use of asylum hotels, it has limited power to do so unilaterally at a local level, as ultimately decisions on the provision of accommodation for asylum seekers are taken by the Home Office.

Some local authorities have made legal challenges to try and prevent certain sites from being used to house asylum seekers, which Reform UK has said it is considering.

The party has also said it’s considering legal challenges to prevent the construction of wind and solar farms, and has pledged to disrupt the implementation of national net zero policies at a local level, with deputy leader Richard Tice MP saying: “Whether it’s planning blockages, whether it’s judicial reviews, whether it’s lawsuits, whether it’s health and safety notices, we will use every available legal measure to an extreme way in order to frustrate these people.”

It’s been suggested that while Reform UK-led councils may not have the power to stop some net zero projects—in particular larger-scale renewable construction—it may be able to block or delay others.