For editorial and advertising contributions email paul@newtonnews.co.uk Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Reform UK has swept to victory across more than half a dozen English councils, as Nigel Farage said his party had eaten “Labour for lunch” and “wiped out” the Conservatives in parts of England The party has taken control of seven local councils winning hundreds of seats across localities from Durham to Kent and toppled a 14,000-strong Labour majority in a parliamentary by-election While Labour lost the race to for a new MP in Runcorn and Helsby the Conservatives have been bruised in local government as Mr Farage’s party took control of Staffordshire The Lib Dems have also made gains at the Tories’ expense in Devon while the Conservatives also lost control in Warwickshire amid a Reform surge Speaking in County Durham on Friday afternoon Mr Farage said the results marked the “beginning of the end of the Conservative Party” and “the end of two-party politics” He said Reform had had “the Labour Party for lunch” and “wiped out” the Conservatives in parts of England Earlier on Friday, Sir Keir Starmer conceded his party’s loss to Reform in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election was “disappointing”, with Reform also taking control of the council in Durham, where Labour were previously the largest party. Votes were continuing to be counted in council and mayoral contests on Friday afternoon. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch told Conservative councillors who lost their seats she was “sincerely sorry” and that while the public are “fed up” with Labour, they are not yet ready to trust the Tories. “We have a big job to do to rebuild trust with the public,” she said. “That’s the job that the Conservative party has given me and I am going to make sure that we get ourselves back to the place where we are seen as the credible alternative to Labour.” However amid the council losses the Tories took a mayoralty from Labour, with victory for ex-MP Paul Bristow in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The position had been Labour held since 2021, but their candidate Anna Smith came in third behind the Lib Dems. The picture on local councils has been emerging through Friday, after Reform’s victory by just six votes in Runcorn and Helsby set a new record for the smallest majority at a parliamentary by-election since the Second World War. The contest was triggered when former Labour MP Mike Amesbury quit after admitting to punching a constituent. Amesbury won 53% of the vote less than a year ago at the general election – and the defeat, along with Reform gains in other Labour heartlands, will cause unease in Downing Street. Speaking to reporters during a visit to Bedfordshire on Friday following the result, Sir Keir said: “What I want to say is, my response is we get it. “We were elected in last year to bring about change.” He said that his party has “started that work”, such as bringing in measures to cut NHS waiting lists, adding: “I am determined that we will go further and faster on the change that people want to see.” Labour also lost their status as the biggest party on Durham County Council, as Reform took control of the patch in the North East. Labour MPs including Diane Abbott and Brian Leishman publicly called on the Government to change course following the Runcorn result, arguing that voters had wanted an end to austerity but faced further cuts. “The first 10 months haven’t been good enough or what the people want and if we don’t improve people’s living standards then the next government will be an extreme right-wing one,” Mr Leishman, who was first elected last year, said. Sir Keir was asked by reporters whether he would reconsider unpopular policy changes, such as means-testing the winter fuel payment, amid murmurs of backbench discontent in the wake of the results. “The reason that we took the tough but right decisions in the budget was because we inherited a broken economy,” he told Sky News. “Maybe other prime ministers would have walked past that, pretended it wasn’t there… I took the choice to make sure our economy was stable.” Nigel Farage has said the Tories will “never recover” and Reform UK has “supplanted” them as the opposition to Labour after his party made sweeping gains in local elections Both Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch are under pressure to reverse their parties’ fortunes after Reform picked up 10 councils and more than 600 seats in Thursday’s poll The Prime Minister has said he will go “further and faster” with his plans in response to the poor result while Mrs Badenoch apologised to defeated Conservative councillors and pledged to get the party back to being a “credible alternative to Labour” Mr Farage said two-party politics had “died” at a local and national level they will never recover,” the Clacton MP said Sir Keir has faced calls to change tack after Reform UK gained an MP in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election and took control of the previously Labour-run Doncaster Council Labour backbencher Emma Lewell said there the Government has made unnecessary choices that have cost the party at the ballot box, and that the party needs a “change of plan” rather than a “plan for change”. “The Labour Party doesn’t need to lurch right or left, we need to do what we say we will do and do it in line with our core values and principles of social justice and fairness,” she wrote in The Mirror. Clive Efford, Labour MP for Eltham and Chislehurst, said it was “madness” to keep doing the same thing. “The idea that the public have given us such a kicking because they think we’re not going fast enough and they want more of the same, it’s just nonsense,” he told Times Radio. South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard warned that patience is “in short supply” in his region and urged Sir Keir to have those voters in mind when they make spending decisions in the summer. While Doncaster’s Labour mayor Ros Jones was narrowly re-elected, the councillors are now majority Reform. Labour MP Rachael Maskell called on the Government to scrap winter fuel and welfare policies that she said are pushing voters away, telling BBC Breakfast the party needs to be driven by “a framework of values, which is about protecting people”. Jo White, the chair of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs, urged Sir Keir to stop “pussyfooting around” and introduce digital ID cards to stop illegal immigration. “He should take a leaf out of Donald Trump’s book by following his instincts and issuing some executive orders,” she wrote in The Telegraph. Sir Keir is expected to set out a proposed crackdown on immigration in a white paper due to be released in the coming weeks, according to reports. Mr Farage has pledged to “resist” asylum seekers being housed in the counties now under his party’s control. It is unclear whether Reform councils could block asylum seekers being housed in their areas, as the system is managed by the Home Office. The party is also drawing up plans for how it would deport all illegal immigrants within five years if Mr Farage were prime minister, its chairman said. Zia Yusuf told The Times this would involve leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and striking out other international treaties and articles so “no matter how activist the judge, there is no room for interpretation about preventing these people from getting deported”. “Let me be really clear, we’re putting people here in the country illegally on notice: a Reform government with Nigel as our leader will deport every single one of them within five years.” Mr Yusuf said he is “sceptical” about Reform UK accepting defecting Tory or Labour MPs whose seats might be under threat at the next election, but that he has been talking to former Tory donors about switching their support to Reform. Conservative figures have meanwhile sought to deny that the results were “existential” for the party. Squeezed between Reform and the Liberal Democrats, the Tories lost more than 600 councillors and all 15 of the councils it controlled going into the election, among the worst results in the party’s history. Shadow chief Treasury secretary Richard Fuller said Reform UK would soon find out there are “no simple answers” to local public finances and have to make “difficult choices”. The public will then “hold them to account for the decisions they make,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Mind the Gap: Sign the Place North Viability Gap Campaign The 75,000 sq ft County Durham facility will be one of Europe’s most advanced processing up to 10,500t of clinical and hazardous waste each year before transforming it into a low-carbon heat source for local businesses Yorkshire-based GMI Construction and Tate Consulting are delivering the project as principal contractor and mechanical designer respectively Other companies in the development team include architect ASA structural engineering practice Burrows Graham and quantity surveyor and employer’s agent The facility at Merchant Park is being development managed by INDEV Projects on behalf of Fornax Environmental Solutions The high-temperature treatment facility will process waste that cannot be sent to landfill recycled or go to other types of energy-from-waste plants The site’s innovative technology will produce a zero-carbon district heating scheme within Merchant Park The development is part of an initial £15m investment which will be undertaken as a second phase by renewable heat specialist said: “This is the first thermal treatment project that we’ve worked on… “We have designed and will be implementing cutting-edge solutions at every stage of the project spanning the mechanical a highly advanced sprinkler system as well as integrating the site into a 5.6MW district heating system.” Read our comments policy Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Outline approval is being sought for 775,000 sq ft of warehousing space on the empty 54-acre plot of land at Durham Lane industrial park in Stockton-on-Tees Mandale Investments can go ahead with plans for 37 industrial units on a four-acre patch of land on the estate Register for free North East property intelligence Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value" Stay updated on the latest news and views in North East property views and opportunities in North East property By subscribing, you are agreeing to Place Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_3" ).setAttribute( "value"