In May 2014, Nigel Farage stood in front of the television cameras and declared his party’s victory in the European elections was “about the most extraordinary result that has been seen in British politics for 100 years”.
A year later, the Conservatives won an unexpected majority at the general election, restricting Ukip to just a single seat, with Farage failing in his attempt to win South Thanet.
The question for Keir Starmer after a bruising set of local, mayoral and parliamentary elections is whether he can pull off what David Cameron achieved 10 years ago and burst Farage’s bubble in time for a general election.
“The big question going into these elections was whether Reform could turn the enthusiasm of their supporters into actual votes,” said Luke Tryl, the executive director of the political research group More in Common. “The early results from both the early council elections and Runcorn suggest they have managed just that.”
By Friday afternoon, Reform had won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection, overturning a Labour majority of more than 14,000, as well as the Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty, seven councils and hundreds of council seats.
Farage says he has learned from previous failures, and has spent much of the past few months trying to professionalise his party. His model for this, he says, is the Liberal Democrats, who have long been stronger at the local level than they are nationally.
“The Liberal Democrats build branches, the Liberal Democrats win seats at district, county and unitary levels,” he said last year.
His success at building a grassroots campaign for these elections is one reason why many experts think this time Reform could be a long-term electoral force. Farage’s party delivered so many personalised letters to voters ahead of Thursday’s votes that the Liberal Democrats raised questions over the source of the party’s funding.
Reuters recently estimated that Reform had poached at least 80 former candidates, donors and staff members from the Conservatives since last year’s general election, bolstering its ability to reach voters on the doorstep.
“This time it is quantitatively and qualitatively different,” said the political historian Tim Bale. “Reform seems to be turning its poll performance into seats. Despite Ukip’s 2014 European election win, Farage’s parties have often not been great at local elections, partly because they don’t have boots on the ground.”
However well organised Reform was on a local level before Thursday’s vote, it is likely to be much more so afterwards, with hundreds of councillors to provide much-needed ground troops at a general election.
Another reason this year is different is that the two main parties are watching voters desert them on both flanks – to the Lib Dems and Greens as well as Reform.
The Greens were disappointed to lose the West of England mayoralty, but performed well elsewhere. The Lib Dems prospered by taking votes away from the Conservatives in the kinds of affluent southern areas where they also did well at the general election.
The polling expert John Curtice told the BBC: “This is the first time when the two parties have been challenged from more than one direction at the same time.”
In the Tory ranks, Kemi Badenoch will have to cope with another round of speculation about her leadership after heavy losses just six months into the job, though she is likely to be given time to improve her party’s standing.
For Starmer, meanwhile, there are reasons for optimism amid the gloom.
First, turnout at a local level was low, suggesting that many Labour voters remained at home rather than voting for another party. Second, there were pockets of resistance.
Labour won three mayoralties: in Doncaster, North Tyneside and West of England. In Doncaster, pollsters say voters were particularly impressed by the reopening of Doncaster airport, suggesting Starmer’s focus on building infrastructure may pay electoral dividends.
The problem for the prime minister is that Doncaster also provides him with some more unpalatable lessons. Ros Jones, the re-elected Labour mayor, told the BBC she had won in part by running against the national party’s policies of cutting winter fuel payments and disability benefits while hiking national insurance.
And unlike Cameron in 2014, who nullified Ukip’s electoral appeal by promising a referendum on Europe, Starmer lacks a similar option for winning back defecting voters.
The more existential worry for the prime minister and Badenoch is that neither Reform’s strong showing on Friday nor Ukip’s victory in 2014 are a blip, but rather part of a long-term trend away from the two major parties.
“The grip of the two main parties has been gradually loosening since the mid 1970s – a process disguised, and to some extent slowed, by the first-past-the-post voting system,” Bale said.
“Famous last words, but I can’t see it ever being restored.”
