Sun. May 4th, 2025
Occasional Digest - a story for you

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks during a news conference on support for Ukraine on March 15, and on Friday said voters need to feel the benefits of his Labour Party after it lost several seats in Thursday’s election. File Photo by Betty Laura Zapata/EPA-EFE

May 3 (UPI) — Reform Party leader and Member of Parliament Nigel Farage says Thursday’s elections herald the end of a two-party system in the United Kingdom.

The Reform Party is viewed as a “right-wing” organization and now is the “opposition party to this Labour government,” Farage said Friday, Fox News reported.

Farage said 100 years of two-party rule over U.K. politics is “now dead” after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party lost what many considered to be a safe seat.

The Reform Party added a fifth member of Parliament following the election, plus control of 10 local councils and two mayoral seats, the BBC reported.

The Runcorn & Helsby district was considered a safe seat for the Labour Party, but Reform Party candidate Sarah Pochin won the election to become the Reform Party’s fifth member of Parliament.

Starmer explained the loss as evidence that voters aren’t yet seeing the benefits of his Labour Party-led government.

Starmer’s Labour Party won the general election in July after securing 412 seats and handing the Conservative Party its first election loss in 14 years, the BBC reported in July.

The Conservative and Labour parties still hold commanding numbers in the U.K. Parliament.

The Labour Party holds 403 seats in Parliament to the Conservative Party’s 121. Liberal Democrats control 72 seats and Independents 14.

The Reform Party is one of 11 other political entities that hold the remaining 40 seats in Parliament.

While the numbers show the Labour Party with a large majority in Parliament and well ahead of the Conservative Party, the two long-established political parties lost seats in Thursday’s election.

The election results mean “now is the time to crank up the pace on giving people the country they are crying out for,” Starmer said in an opinion piece published Friday in The Times.

Source link

Leave a Reply