(Adnkronos) – Nigel Farage’s populist and anti-immigration party, Reform UK, has snatched a parliamentary seat from Labour, winning by just six votes in the Runcorn district, in the Liverpool area. “It was a great night for Reform, one or two mayoral elections narrowly lost, but a great night,” Farage immediately commented on the victory of his candidate Sarah Pochin, which has a strong political content in the first local elections faced by Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
A Labour Party spokesman stressed how this type of election “is always difficult for the ruling party” and stressed that “the narrow defeat” should push “the government to move faster on the path of the plan for change”. However, a minister told the BBC it was “frustrating” to lose by just 6 votes. Pochin won 38.7% of the vote, up 20% from last year’s election, while the Labour candidate had the same percentage, down 14%.
