Reform UK wins 1,453 English council seats and becomes Welsh opposition party

Reform UK won 1,453 council seats in England during local elections held in May 2026. The party also became the official opposition in the Welsh Parliament, known as the Senedd, and performed strongly in Scotland. Reform UK now holds 32 seats in the Senedd as of June 2026.

Joe Martin, a 28-year-old Reform UK member of the Senedd who previously worked in finance, said the forces behind the party's rise are global. "The forces that are sort of pushing reform are global forces as well which you see with the likes of One Nation in Australia," he said. A by-election will take place in the Makerfield constituency near Manchester on June 18, 2026.

In a February 2026 by-election in a nearby seat, Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer won with more than 40 per cent of the vote. Labour candidate Andy Burnham will contest Makerfield. The next UK general election must be held by July 2029.

Reform UK currently holds eight seats in the national parliament. A party needs at least 326 seats to form a majority government. Nigel Farage founded the Reform party, originally named the Brexit party, in 2018.

He had unsuccessfully run for the UK national parliament seven times over 30 years prior to 2026. Farage has pledged to deport up to 600,000 migrants living in Britain, end migrants' right to apply for permanent residency after five years, and refuse visas to anyone who uses people smugglers to arrive in Britain on small boats from continental Europe.

Net migration to the UK last year dropped to its lowest level since 2012.

In 2025, 41,000 people arrived in the UK by small boat. An Ipsos poll conducted in 2025 found that 85 per cent of respondents believed there was a sense of division in Britain.