UK

Downing Street has reacted with fury to revelations that Nigel Farage plans to use Reform’s control of councils across England to launch a series of legal challenges to tie Sir Keir Starmer’s government in knots.The announcement by Reform’s new mayor for Greater Lincolnshire Dame Andrea Jenkyns came as she spoke to The Independent in her first major interview since her victory was declared on Friday morning.She said that high on the agenda were plans to take the Labour government to court in a bid to block net zero projects like solar and wind farms, as well as attempts by the Home Office to house asylum seekers in Lincolnshire.It came as The Independent revealed that another top priority, to sack council diversity officers, has fallen flat after it emerged Lincolnshire County Council does not employ any.Reform UK won 10 councils and more than 600 councillors, raising questions over the direction of the two main parties More

Kemi Badenoch has admitted that Nigel Farage can become prime minister at the next general election after the Conservatives’ dismal local elections results.Still reeling from her party losing 45 per cent of the council seats it was defending last week, the Tory leader was pressed by Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC over whether Mr Farage could enter Downing Street at the next general election.She replied: “Anything is possible. We live in politically turbulent times. It is my job to make sure he doesn’t become prime minister.”Kemi Badenoch apologised to Conservative councillors defeated in local elections(PA) More

The leader of the House of Commons is facing calls to quit after she appeared to dismiss concerns over the grooming gangs scandal as “dog whistle” politics.Lucy Powell’s remark came on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? when she was responding to a point by Reform UK’s Tim Montgomerie.Ms Powell interrupted as he was trying to question why Labour has blocked a national inquiry into the way gangs of men targeted young girls in towns and cities around the UK with the authorities failing to act.She said: “Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Let’s get that dog whistle out, shall we?”Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell (Lucy North/PA) More

A campaign group has claimed that the impact assessment produced by the government on assisted dying legislation proves that there will be a financial incentive to end people’s lives early.The claim by the group Care Not Killing (CNK) came after the government identified at least £59.6m savings a year to be made by allowing assisted deaths. CNK believes the real amount is much bigger because savings in benefits cannot be quantified.However, the bill’s sponsor Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has warned: “The cost in human terms of failing to act would be immense.”She said: “It is difficult, if not impossible, to put a price on correcting injustice and providing dignity to our fellow citizens in their final weeks and months, but it is of course right that we look at what effect changing the law would have more widely.”Kim Leadbeater is the Labour MP behind the assisted dying Bill (Jordan Pettitt/PA) More

Labour is being rejected in its heartlands as disappointment among voters about the party’s first 10 months in office has opened the door to Reform, Professor Sir John Curtice has warned.The leading pollster says that the “devastating” local election results have shown Labour support is “in free fall” and voters lost to Reform and the Greens “are not likely to return to the party any time soon”.He also suggested that Labour MPs are now right to fear Reform and Nigel Farage more than Kemi Badenoch and the Tories, with the beleaguered Conservative Party leader already facing plots to have her removed.Sir John’s warning comes as Luke Tryl, executive director of polling organisation More in Common, has warned that the Tories have just 12 months to turn things around before being consigned to irrelevance.John Curtice’s analysis is bad news for Labour and the Tories More

The 2025 local elections have seen unprecedented success for Nigel Farage’s Reform party, which won 677 council seats across England. The Liberal Democrats nearly doubled their seats up to 370 overall, and winning majority control of three councils.But the third-party players’ success came at a price for the Conservatives and Labour, both of which lost two-thirds of the seats they had in 2021. This spells trouble for Sir Keir Starmer, whose newly-formed government are already facing protest votes. Yet most at risk is Kemi Badenoch, who failed to secure success for the floundering Conservative party in the face of its right-wing challenger.Here, the Independent looks at where Labour and the Conservatives received the least amount of votes in this year’s local elections. Reform UK is now in control of eight councils, while the Tories lost all 15 local authorities it controlled going into Thursday’s local elections. (Jacob King/PA) More

The dust has settled on this year’s local elections, with Nigel Farage’s Reform party seeing unprecedented success across the country. Some 1,650 local councillors were elected in 23 councils, with a further six mayoral races and one by-election in Runcorn and Helsby. From the unexpected scale of Reform’s success, to Labour winning no votes in some areas, The Independent looks at the most important figures from the 2025 local elections.See the results in full hereHundreds of seats for Reform Reform entered the local elections this year with zero seats to defend and went on to win 677 council seats. This easily exceeded expectations, with pollsters predicting around 400 to 450 seats for Mr Farage’s right-wing party. Both Labour and the Conservatives, on the other hand, lost hundreds of seats, amounting to two-thirds of their 2021 representation on local councils, far worse for both parties than expected. The Conservatives had the most to lose, winning some 996 seats in 2021, when these councils last held elections. Labour barely scraped ahead of Independent candidates and Greens, winning just shy of 100 seats. The third-party players – Reform and Lib Dems – both ousted Labour and the Conservatives to be the two leading parties in the local elections.Though their success was somewhat overshadowed, the Lib Dems nearly doubled their council seats from 2021; leading experts to suggest the UK is moving away from a two-party system to a four or five-party one.See where Reform performed best here. Labour failed to get any votes in dozens of wards Overall, Labour and the Conservatives both lost hundreds of local council seats. But Labour faces a further sting when looking at individual electoral wards, where it didn’t just lose the race – it got no votes at all.No single vote was recorded for Labour in 81 electoral wards, mostly within Cornwall and Wiltshire councils. Anti-Labour sentiment hit Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s party hard, with the least success of any major party in this year’s local elections. More

Andrea Jenkyns’ vow to get rid of council diversity officers as one of her first acts as the new Reform mayor for Lincolnshire has fallen flat after it emerged the council doesn’t employ any.Nigel Farage and Dame Andrea put getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officers at the top of their agenda as they impose their own version of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting DOGE on the county.They doubled down on the promise at a rally in Kent last night where Dame Andrea and Mr Farage were among a line of leading speakers as part of Reform’s “war on woke”.Reform UK leader Nigel Farage attends a post-election event at the Staffordshire County Showground in Stafford More