LONDON — The hard-right, anti-immigrant Reform party was the major success in Britain’s local elections, held on Thursday and counted through Friday and into Saturday. Underlining a shift in British politics away from a broadly two-party system, the UK’s Sky News projected that Reform would be the biggest party in the British parliament were general elections to be held today.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party took a battering, but he said he would not resign. “The right lesson is to listen to voters,” but it “doesn’t mean tacking right or left,” Starmer said Saturday.

There was also considerable success for the far-left, anti-Israel Green Party, which won the mayoralty from Labour in two London boroughs, won control of four councils, and gained hundreds of council seats in urban centers, including in London, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle, as well as university towns such as Cambridge.

The Greens have been engulfed in antisemitism scandals during the campaign,  at a time when Jews in the UK are under increasing threat. The party’s Jewish leader, Zack Polanski, made anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian politics a centerpiece of his party’s platform.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK made gains across England, Scotland and Wales — though Scottish and Welsh parties took the biggest share of seats in those elections. With almost all votes tallied, the results were grim for Labour, particularly in Wales, where it lost control of the devolved government for the first time since the parliament in Cardiff was established 27 years ago.

The nationalist Plaid Cymru, which wants Welsh independence in the long-term, is now the biggest party with Reform second and Labour third. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party remains the biggest party but failed to get a majority — winning six fewer seats than in 2021.

In England, Reform picked up nearly 1,500 of the 5,000 council seats available. The Greens also fared unprecedentedly well, winning some 500 seats.

Labour lost almost 1,400 council seats and ceded control of several local authorities — though results in London were not as bad as predicted.

The local and regional elections were widely seen as an unofficial referendum on Starmer, whose popularity has plummeted since he led the center-left Labour Party to power by ousting the Conservatives less than two years ago. Starmer said he took responsibility for the “very tough” results, which saw his party lose more than half the seats it was defending, but would not quit.

“The voters have sent a message about the pace of change, how they want their lives improved,” he said. “I was elected to meet those challenges, and I’m not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos.”

The rise of the Greens

The Green Party won its first directly elected mayoralty in traditionally Labour-supporting Hackney in east London, where councillor Zoë Garbett will fill the role. Later Friday, the Greens’ Liam Shrivastava won the mayoralty in Lewisham, southeast London.

A completed count showed the Greens winning overall control of Hackney Council, which is responsible for the Stamford Hill neighborhood, home to tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Greens also gained control of London’s Waltham Forest council, as well as Hastings on the south coast of England and Norwich in the east.

Speaking outside the Hackney vote count, Polanski hailed the “historic victory” and declared “two-party politics is no longer dying; it is dead and........

© The Times of Israel