Reform Storms to By-Election Victory in Boost for Nigel Farage
Reform UK has secured another closely watched by-election victory, giving Nigel Farage an opportunity to reinforce his argument that the party is becoming an increasingly important force in British politics.
The result came in East Markham, a ward on Bassetlaw District Council in Nottinghamshire, where Reform candidate Matthew Evans won 436 votes, almost half of all ballots cast. The Conservatives finished second with 250 votes, while Labour received 151 and the Greens 42. Reform said the result represented a 44-point swing from the Conservatives.
The result is notable because East Markham had previously been a strongly Conservative area. At the 2023 council election, the Conservatives won around 66% of the vote in the ward, according to Reform’s account of the result. The latest contest therefore represented a substantial change in the distribution of support between the parties.
For Farage, the timing is particularly significant.
The ward is located within Robert Jenrick’s Newark parliamentary constituency. Jenrick, a former Conservative cabinet minister and former Conservative leadership candidate, left the Conservative Party and joined Reform UK earlier in 2026. He subsequently became one of the most prominent figures in Farage’s parliamentary team.
Reform’s victory in a ward within Jenrick’s constituency therefore carries political symbolism beyond the individual council seat.
Farage immediately celebrated the result, describing it as an “excellent win” and using the performance to argue that Conservative voters were moving towards Reform. Jenrick also welcomed the result, describing the swing from Conservative to Reform as “incredible” and praising the successful candidate and local campaign team.
However, the result needs to be placed in its proper electoral context.
A local council by-election involves a much smaller electorate than a parliamentary general election. Turnout can also be substantially lower, while local factors, individual candidates and constituency-specific issues can have a significant influence on the result.
Consequently, one council by-election cannot by itself establish the future national balance between Reform and the Conservatives.
It can nevertheless provide useful evidence about how voters behave in a particular area at a particular moment.
East Markham is especially interesting because Reform was starting from a position of no previous vote share in the ward, according to the party’s figures. The party’s near-50% result therefore represented not merely a modest increase but a significant change in the electoral landscape.
For the Conservatives, the result represents another reminder of the competition they face from Reform on the political right.
The two parties increasingly compete for voters concerned about immigration, taxation, public spending, national sovereignty and the direction of British politics. Reform has attempted to present itself as a distinct alternative to the established Conservative Party, while the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch are seeking to rebuild their support after losing ground to Reform.
The Newark result therefore has relevance beyond Nottinghamshire.
It demonstrates that Reform can win council seats in places where it previously had little or no established electoral base.
That does not necessarily mean every Conservative voter is moving towards Reform. Nor does it demonstrate that the same pattern would automatically occur in a parliamentary election.
But it does show that Reform is capable of converting political support into actual council representation.
The result also comes after a series of other Reform victories in local by-elections.
In September, Reform reported victories in Eckington, Derbyshire, and Hutton & Locking in North Somerset. In Eckington, the party received 40% of the vote after previously having no vote share, while Labour’s share fell from 60% to 28%. In Hutton & Locking, Reform received 38%, compared with 15% for the Conservatives, according to the party’s account.
Taken together, these contests provide evidence of Reform’s ability to compete across different local areas.
They also demonstrate why Farage has placed considerable emphasis on council elections and by-elections.
Local contests allow smaller parties to demonstrate their organisational capacity without waiting for a general election. They provide opportunities to test candidates, campaign messages and voter reactions in specific communities.
For Reform, winning seats also provides councillors who can build the party’s presence at local level.
But there is an important difference between local electoral momentum and national political power.
A council by-election is decided by a relatively small number of voters. Parliamentary elections involve much larger electorates and require parties to compete across hundreds of constituencies.
The distribution of votes matters as much as the national vote share because Britain uses the first-past-the-post system for elections to the House of Commons.
Reform therefore faces the challenge of converting support into parliamentary seats across a broad range of constituencies.
Farage himself recently experienced a different type of by-election.
After resigning his Clacton parliamentary seat in July 2026, he stood again in the resulting by-election and won 22,239 votes, or 62.8% of the vote, according to the official parliamentary result. Count Binface finished second with 9,455 votes.
That election was unusual because the Conservative and Labour parties did not contest it, leaving Farage’s main challenger as the satirical candidate Count Binface.
The Clacton result therefore cannot be directly compared with a normal general election contest involving all major parties.
Nevertheless, it restored Farage to the House of Commons and gave him a parliamentary platform from which to lead Reform.
The East Markham result has a different significance.
Unlike Clacton, it involved a direct contest with the Conservatives and Labour, and Reform won despite starting from a much weaker position in the previous election.
That makes the result useful in assessing Reform’s ability to challenge established parties at local level.
For Jenrick, the result is also politically important.
His decision to join Reform was one of the most prominent defections from the Conservative Party during 2026. Since joining Farage, he has been given a senior role within Reform and has become one of the party’s leading parliamentary figures.
Winning in his wider constituency area allows Reform to argue that his political decision is resonating locally.
That interpretation, however, remains a political claim.
The reasons voters supported Matthew Evans cannot be established simply from the result itself. Individual voters may have been motivated by national politics, local council issues, candidate preferences, dissatisfaction with the Conservatives, support for Reform, or a combination of factors.
Election results tell us how people voted, but not automatically why every individual voted that way.
The Conservative response is likely to focus on the same point.
One local defeat does not determine the future of the party, particularly when national polling remains volatile.
Indeed, recent national polling provides a more complicated picture than the headline of a Reform surge might suggest.
A YouGov poll conducted on 20 and 21 September among 2,286 voters put Labour on 23%, with Reform UK and the Conservatives both on 21%. The result showed Reform’s support below its earlier levels and indicated that the Conservatives were again competing closely with Farage’s party.
That national evidence is important because it demonstrates that local electoral victories and national polling can move in different directions.
Reform can win individual contests while simultaneously experiencing changes in national support.
The same applies to the Conservatives.
A party can suffer a local defeat without that automatically translating into a national collapse.
This is why the East Markham result should be understood as one piece of a larger political picture.
For Farage, however, it provides a useful campaigning message.
He can point to an actual election result in which Reform defeated the Conservatives in a previously strong Conservative ward. The party can also point to other recent council by-election victories as evidence that it is capable of expanding its local electoral base.
For the Conservatives, the result highlights the need to compete for voters who have become open to Reform.
For Labour and the Greens, it demonstrates that the political contest is no longer simply a straightforward Conservative-Labour struggle.
Britain’s electoral landscape has become more fragmented.
The significance of Reform’s growth will ultimately depend on whether the party can maintain support across different regions, attract candidates and activists, build effective local organisations and translate council-level victories into parliamentary representation.
The East Markham result alone cannot answer those questions.
What it does provide is a concrete example of Reform winning a previously Conservative-held local seat by a substantial margin and doing so in a constituency associated with one of its most prominent former Conservative recruits.
That makes the result politically useful for Farage and his party.
It also gives the Conservatives another reminder that competition on the right of British politics is now taking place not only in Westminster but in council chambers and local communities across the country.
Whether this represents a lasting realignment or a series of individual local shifts will only become clear through future elections.
For now, the East Markham by-election has given Reform another council victory, another talking point for Farage and another example of the changing political competition between Reform UK and the Conservative Party.
