Anti-immigration Reform UK wins big gains in local elections, putting pressure on government on border policy
Britain’s local and devolved elections on 9 May 2026 were a political shock, as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surged from being a fringe movement to a major municipal power-broker. The hard-right, blatantly anti-immigration party picked up more than 1,300 council seats across England and made its first forays into Scotland’s Holyrood and Wales’s Senedd, according to Associated Press estimates. Its share of the vote shot up to 30 per cent in traditional Labour strongholds such as Sunderland and Barnsley while the Conservatives were losing heavily on the party’s right flank.
Reform UK’s campaign blamed increased net migration for putting pressure on public services and causing a lack of housing. Farage vowed a “emergency brake” on work and family visas, a five-year ban on low-skilled immigration and the fast offshore processing of asylum claimants. Local administrations are increasingly under Reform control or influence and this means more restrictive licensing requirements for landlords who let to migrants, stronger enforcement of rough-sleeping by-laws and strident hostility to Home Office accommodation sites. For businesses, not least in logistics, hospitality and social care, the outcome raises the prospect of stronger sponsor-licence compliance checks at council level – from labour-market testing audits to planning objections against huge HMO properties used to house abroad staff. Companies should assess their community involvement plans and create briefing notes for councillors who may now find themselves sitting on licensing committees. The rise piles pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose Labour Party lost more than 1,400 seats nationally. Starmer said he would not resign but is expected to tighten migration policy to stop defections. Stalled ‘earned settlement’ changes and a suggested cap on overseas care workers could be resurrected in the next Queen’s Speech, observers predict. Multinationals rotating people into the UK need to factor in a more uncertain – and probably more restrictive – political environment for mobility given the general election is due by 2029.