Further results are being declared today – click here for our latest news and analysis

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK won its first parliamentary by-election last night in Runcorn & Helsby, where the Labour MP Mike Amesbury had resigned following a conviction for assault.

Reform’s Sarah Pochin polled 38.7% and won the seat by six votes – a much closer result than pundits and bookmakers’ odds had forecast. The Conservatives collapsed to just 7.2%, only just ahead of the Greens who managed to resist the tactical squeeze and slightly increased their vote to 7.1%.

Reform’s rivals on the right, the English Democrats and the English Constitution Party, polled insignificant votes of 0.3% and 0.2%.

Farage’s party has been making even more significant gains in English local elections, where votes continue to be counted today, including winning their first elected Mayor: the former Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns was easily elected Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire.

London and major metropolitan areas such as the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Merseyside have no elections this year, although there are a total of 94 local by-elections scattered around the country, coinciding with the county council and mayoral contests.

Some votes were counted overnight, including several mayoral elections. In addition to their expected victory in Greater Lincolnshire, Reform came very close to gaining the North Tyneside mayoralty, where Labour held on by a wafer-thin majority, and the West of England and Doncaster mayoral contests were also very narrow Labour victories.

Most of the councils that held elections yesterday will not be counted until today, but it’s already clear that Reform will take control of Lincolnshire County Council, probably also Staffordshire, and will be the main opposition in Northumberland after depriving the Tories of overall control and taking seats from both them and Labour.

Croft ward, Northumberland, was the night’s first gain for Reform and the party ended up with 23 seats on Northumberland’s unitary council. Croft is part of Blyth, a town which was a famous success for Boris Johnson’s Tories in the Brexit-dominated general election of 2019. There are new boundaries here, but it’s fair to point out that on the old boundaries in 2021, Reform took only 5.3% in Croft – a seat which they have now won.

It seems likely that Northumberland will now have to be governed by a European-style ‘grand coalition’ between Conservatives and Labour.

The Tory leader of Staffordshire county council was among many Conservative councillors to lose their seats as the Reform surge continued: with almost half the county’s seats still to be counted, Reform looks on course to take control of Staffordshire as well as Lincolnshire.

We shall report on further results as they come in later today.

Last night’s first result was a stunning Reform victory in Throston ward, Hartlepool, where Reform candidate Amanda Napper gained a seat from Labour. This was quickly followed by another Reform gain in Mark Hall ward, Harlow, which was less surprising as this was a UKIP held seat back in 2014. Another unsurprising Reform gain was Ockendon ward, Thurrock, which was won by UKIP at three successive elections in the mid-2010s, and where Reform won a double by-election this week. Further Reform by-election gains occurred in Exeter, Lichfield and Bridgend. These were merely the first of many Reform gains which will continue this afternoon in many formerly safe Conservative and Labour areas.

Labour is also likely to lose votes and seats to the Greens and to Gaza-focused leftwing and Muslim independents, as Sir Keir Starmer’s government is seen to have disappointed ethnic minority and ‘woke’ voters as well as the White working class. One early gain for the Greens was Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction ward, Lambeth. In Hainault ward, Redbridge (where from 2006-10 H&D subscriber Julian Leppert, then of the BNP, was a councillor), Labour held on by just one vote against a White localist independent, who surprised some observers by pushing Reform into third place. This was one of many elections this week that demonstrated how the UK’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system is unsuited to the fragmented politics of 2025. Labour won Hainault with only 28.8% – and won the West of England mayoralty with only 25%.

As regular H&D readers will know, racial nationalist parties tend to be overshadowed at present by Reform, and our movement has still not recovered from the BNP’s collapse and the discreditable conduct of Nick Griffin more than a decade ago.

The British Democrats and the Homeland Party each had a handful of county council candidates, and the British Democrats also contested the Doncaster mayoralty where their candidate Frank Calladine polled 448 votes (0.6%).

Ian Seeby for the British Democrats polled 87 votes (2.8%) in the Flamstead End & Turnford division of Hertfordshire, where a traditionally rock-solid Conservative seat was gained by Reform.

Lorna Garner of the Homeland Party polled 26 votes (1.0%) in a by-election for the Mancroft division of Norfolk County Council, where the main elections were postponed pending reorganisation. This seat (which is part of Norwich) remained safely Green, with Reform surprisingly pushing Labour into third place.

Dr Andrew Emerson, a former BNP organiser who now leads his own small party Patria, polled 7 votes in Midhurst – 0.2% in the West Sussex county division and 0.3% in the parallel Chichester district council ward – each of these by-elections was comfortably retained by the Liberal Democrats.

Most voters don’t seem to have been affected by the serious splits inside Reform, including the resignation of one of their MPs, Rupert Lowe, and the founding of a new breakaway party by Reform’s former deputy leader Ben Habib. This new ‘Integrity Party’ wasn’t registered in time to contest the present elections.

However, these splits are very serious and reflect underlying problems within Reform that are typical of the fundamental weakness of the entire Farage project, presently disguised by a series of election gains but which will prove insoluble.

This week’s election advances for Reform are a signal of the collapse of confidence in mainstream politics. But Reform itself isn’t really an improvement, as will quickly become evident as it tries to govern in certain newly conquered shire counties.

Heritage and Destiny will continue to host the widest ranging debates on the future direction and strategy of racial nationalism: the next issue of the magazine is about to be printed, and the issue after that will examine England’s new electoral landscape.