RUNCORN: Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party on Friday in local elections that dealt a blow to Britain’s two establishment parties.
Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities including one mayoralty.
The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics.
“For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big moment indeed,” Brexit champion Farage said of Reform’s first-ever by-election win and Starmer’s first electoral loss since he took office last July.
Reform also picked up dozens of council seats from both Labour and the Conservatives as Britain’s political landscape shows signs of splintering.
In the fight for six mayoralties, Reform won Greater Lincolnshire with Labour holding three. Labour, however, only narrowly held the North Tyneside mayoralty after a 26-percent swing to Reform.
New Greater Lincolnshire mayor Andrea Jenkyns said the “fightback to save the heart and soul of our great country has now begun.”
“Now that Reform is in a place of power, we can help start rebuilding Britain. Inch by inch,” she said.
The polls were the first since Starmer became prime minister and Kemi Badenoch took over the reins of the struggling opposition Conservatives last year.
Just 1,641 seats across 23 local authorities were up for grabs — only a fraction of England’s 17,000 councillors — but early results suggested Reform was transferring leads in national polls into tangible results at the ballot box.
“The big question we wanted to know after these results was are the polls right in suggesting that Reform now pose a significant challenge to both the Conservatives and the Labour party? The answer to that question so far is quite clearly yes,” political scientist John Curtice told the BBC.
The centrist Liberal Democrats and left-wing Greens also expected to make gains, as surveys show Britons are increasingly disillusioned with the two main parties amid anaemic economic growth, high levels of irregular immigration and flagging public services.
Reform, which has vowed to “stop the boats” of irregular migrants crossing the English Channel, is hoping that winning mayoralties and gaining hundreds of councillors will help it build its grassroots activism before the next general election — likely in 2029.
British politics have been dominated by the center-left Labour party and center-right Tories since the early 20th century.
But “British politics appears to be fragmenting,” Curtice wrote in the Telegraph this week.
He said Thursday’s polls were “likely be the first in which as many as five parties are serious players.”
Labour won a huge parliamentary majority in July with just 33.7 percent of the vote, the lowest share for any party winning a general election since World War II.
The Conservatives won just 24 percent of the vote, securing only 121 seats in the 650-seat parliament as the party endured its worst election defeat.
Reform picked up five seats, an unprecedented haul for a British hard-right party, although one of those now sits as an independent. After Friday’s win, their tally now stands at five again.
The Liberal Democrats in July won 61 more MPs than at the previous election and the Greens quadrupled their representation to four.
Labour won Runcorn with 53 percent of the vote last year, meaning it was one of its safest seats, while Reform got just 18 percent.
At a result declared shortly before 6:00 am (0500 GMT) Friday, election officials said Reform’s Sarah Pochin secured 12,645 votes to 12,639 for Labour candidate Karen Shore. Turnout was 46 percent.
The vote was sparked after sitting Labour MP Mike Amesbury was convicted of assault for punching a man in the street.
Labour spokesperson said by-elections are “always difficult for the party in government” and the events surrounding the Runcorn vote made it “even harder.”
On Tuesday, Reform UK topped a YouGov poll of voting intentions in Britain with 26 percent, three points ahead of Labour and six up on the Conservatives.
Labour has endured criticism over welfare cuts and tax rises that it claims is necessary to stabilize the economy.
As Labour edges rightwards it is facing a growing challenge from the Greens on the left.
Under threat from Reform on the right, the Tories are also being squeezed on the left by the Liberal Democrats, the traditional third party, which was eyeing gains in the wealthy south.
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Hard right wins local UK election in blow to PM Starmer
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Hard right wins local UK election in blow to PM Starmer
- The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics
- Labour won Runcorn with 53 percent of the vote last year, meaning it was one of its safest seats, while Reform got just 18 percent
Argentina fires ravage pristine Patagonia forests, fueling criticism of Milei’s austerity
LOS ALERCES NATIONAL PARK: These days, the majestic, forested slopes of Argentina’s Patagonia look like a war zone.
Mushroom clouds of smoke rise as if from missile strikes. Large flames illuminate the night sky, tainting the moon mango-orange and turning the glorious views that generations of writers and adventurers imprinted on the global psyche into something haunted.
Vast swaths of the Los Alerces National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site home to 2,600-year-old trees, are now ablaze.
The wildfires, among the worst to hit the drought-stricken Patagonia region in decades, have devastated more than 45,000 hectares (174 square miles) of Argentina’s forests in the last month and a half, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists. As of Monday, the inferno was still spreading.
The crisis, with most of Argentina’s fire season still ahead, has reignited anger toward the country’s radical libertarian president, Javier Milei, whose harsh austerity drive in the last two years has slashed spending on programs and agencies that not only work to combat fires but also protect parks and prevent blazes from igniting and spreading in the first place.
“There has been a political decision to dismantle firefighting institutions,” said Luis Schinelli, one of 16 park rangers covering the 259,000 hectares (1,000 square miles) of Los Alerces National Park. “Teams are stretched beyond their limits.”
After coming to office on a campaign to rescue Argentina’s economy from decades of staggering debt, Milei slashed spending on the National Fire Management Service by 80 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, gutting the agency responsible for deploying brigades, maintaining air tankers, purchasing extra gear and tracking hazards.
The service faces another 71 percent reduction in funds this year, according to an analysis of the 2026 budget by the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation, or FARN, an Argentine environmental research and advocacy group.
The retrenchment arrives at a time when climate change is making extreme weather more frequent and severe, increasing the risk of wildfires.
“Climate change is something that’s undeniable. This is us living it,” said firefighter Hernán Mondino, his face smeared with sweat and soot after a backbreaking day battling blazes in Los Alerces National Park. “But we see no sign that the government is concerned about our situation.”
The Ministry of Security, which assumed oversight of firefighting efforts after Milei downgraded the Ministry of Environment, did not respond to requests for comment.
Milei and Trump take chainsaws to the state
Milei’s deep spending cuts have stabilized Argentina’s crisis-stricken economy and driven annual inflation down from 117 percent in 2024 to 31 percent last year — the lowest rate in eight years.
His battles against government bloat and “woke” culture have helped him cozy up to US President Donald Trump, whose own war on federal bureaucracy has similarly rippled through scientific research and disaster response programs.
After Trump announced last year that the US would leave the Paris climate agreement, Milei threatened to do the same. He boycotted UN climate summits and referred to human-caused climate change as a “socialist lie,” infuriating Argentines who understand that record-breaking heat and dryness, symptomatic of a warming planet, are fueling the fires in Patagonia.
“There’s a lot of anger building up. People here are very uncomfortable with our country’s politics,” said Lucas Panak, 41, who piled into a pickup truck with his friends last Thursday to fight the blazes enveloping the small town of Cholila after municipal firefighters were sent elsewhere.
Disaster management amid austerity
When lightning started a small fire along a lake in the northern fringes of Los Alerces in early December, firefighters struggled to respond, limited by the remote location and a lack of available aircraft to transport crews and douse the hills.
The initial delay forced the resignation of the park’s management and led residents to accuse them of negligence in a criminal complaint when the winds picked up and blasted the blaze through the native forest.
But some experts argue the problem wasn’t inaction after the fire erupted, but long before.
“Fires are not something you only fight once they exist. They must be addressed beforehand through planning, infrastructure and forecasting,” said Andrés Nápoli, director of FARN. “All the prevention work that’s so important to do year-round has essentially been abandoned.”
On top of cutting the National Fire Management Service budget, Milei’s government ripped tens of millions of dollars from the National Park Administration last year, leading to the dismissal or resignation of hundreds of rangers, firefighters and administrative workers.
As more tourists descend each year on Argentina’s parks, forest rangers say that cutbacks and deregulation measures make it harder to monitor fire dangers, clear trails and educate visitors on caring for the park. Last March the government scrapped a requirement for tourist activities such as glacier treks and rock climbs to be overseen by licensed guides.
“If you increase the number of visitors while cutting staff, you risk losing control,” said Alejo Fardjoume, a union representative for national park workers. “The consequences of these decisions is not always immediate, they will be noticed cumulatively, progressively.”
Firefighters strain to keep up
A 2023 National Park Administration report recommends a minimum deployment of 700 firefighters to cover the land under its purview. The agency employs 391 now, having lost 10 percent of staff as a result of layoffs and resignations in the last two years under Milei.
Budget cuts to the National Fire Management Service have scaled back training capacity and reduced available equipment, firefighters say, leaving many to rely on secondhand protective suits and donated gear.
Authorities at Los Alerces said that they’ve always been strapped for funds no matter the government and insisted that there were no shortages of resources to battle the blaze.
“Criticizing is always easy,” said Luciano Machado, head of the fire, communications and emergency division at the National Park Administration. “Sometimes adding aircraft doesn’t make things better. And in order to add firefighters, you need more food, shelter and rotation.”
But national park firefighters pushed beyond the brink of exhaustion said their ranks are constantly thinning, if not due to layoffs then to resignations over poverty-level wages that have failed to keep pace with inflation.
The average firefighter in Patagonia’s parks earns less than $600 a month. In provinces with cheaper living costs, the monthly wage drops below $450. A growing number of firefighters say they’ve had to pick up extra work as gardeners and farmhands.
“From the outside it looks like everything still functions, but our bodies bear the cost,” said Mondino. “When someone leaves, the rest of us carry more weight, sleep less and work longer hours.”
An untimely dance
For a month as the forests burned, Milei said almost nothing about the fires and carried on as usual. Last week, as provincial governors pleaded with him to declare a state of emergency in order to release federal funds, he danced onstage with his ex-girlfriend to Argentine rock ballads.
The split-screen image supplied his critics with powerful political ammunition. “While Patagonia burns, the president is having fun singing,” said centrist lawmaker Maximiliano Ferraro. Left-leaning opposition parties staged protests across provinces.
On Thursday Milei relented, decreeing a state of emergency that unlocked $70 million for volunteer firefighters and announcing “a historic fight against fire” on social media.
At a base camp this weekend, volunteer medics scurried around bleary-eyed firefighters, tending to scratchy throats, sore legs and irritated sinuses. Some expressed hope that more relief was on the way. Others dismissed the decree as symbolic. All, looking over the smoldering trees that take human generations to regenerate, couldn’t help but dwell on what had already been lost.
“It hurts because it’s not just a beautiful landscape, it’s where we live,” said Mariana Rivas, one of the volunteers. “There’s anger about what could have been avoided, and anger because every year it gets worse.”
Mushroom clouds of smoke rise as if from missile strikes. Large flames illuminate the night sky, tainting the moon mango-orange and turning the glorious views that generations of writers and adventurers imprinted on the global psyche into something haunted.
Vast swaths of the Los Alerces National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site home to 2,600-year-old trees, are now ablaze.
The wildfires, among the worst to hit the drought-stricken Patagonia region in decades, have devastated more than 45,000 hectares (174 square miles) of Argentina’s forests in the last month and a half, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists. As of Monday, the inferno was still spreading.
The crisis, with most of Argentina’s fire season still ahead, has reignited anger toward the country’s radical libertarian president, Javier Milei, whose harsh austerity drive in the last two years has slashed spending on programs and agencies that not only work to combat fires but also protect parks and prevent blazes from igniting and spreading in the first place.
“There has been a political decision to dismantle firefighting institutions,” said Luis Schinelli, one of 16 park rangers covering the 259,000 hectares (1,000 square miles) of Los Alerces National Park. “Teams are stretched beyond their limits.”
After coming to office on a campaign to rescue Argentina’s economy from decades of staggering debt, Milei slashed spending on the National Fire Management Service by 80 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, gutting the agency responsible for deploying brigades, maintaining air tankers, purchasing extra gear and tracking hazards.
The service faces another 71 percent reduction in funds this year, according to an analysis of the 2026 budget by the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation, or FARN, an Argentine environmental research and advocacy group.
The retrenchment arrives at a time when climate change is making extreme weather more frequent and severe, increasing the risk of wildfires.
“Climate change is something that’s undeniable. This is us living it,” said firefighter Hernán Mondino, his face smeared with sweat and soot after a backbreaking day battling blazes in Los Alerces National Park. “But we see no sign that the government is concerned about our situation.”
The Ministry of Security, which assumed oversight of firefighting efforts after Milei downgraded the Ministry of Environment, did not respond to requests for comment.
Milei and Trump take chainsaws to the state
Milei’s deep spending cuts have stabilized Argentina’s crisis-stricken economy and driven annual inflation down from 117 percent in 2024 to 31 percent last year — the lowest rate in eight years.
His battles against government bloat and “woke” culture have helped him cozy up to US President Donald Trump, whose own war on federal bureaucracy has similarly rippled through scientific research and disaster response programs.
After Trump announced last year that the US would leave the Paris climate agreement, Milei threatened to do the same. He boycotted UN climate summits and referred to human-caused climate change as a “socialist lie,” infuriating Argentines who understand that record-breaking heat and dryness, symptomatic of a warming planet, are fueling the fires in Patagonia.
“There’s a lot of anger building up. People here are very uncomfortable with our country’s politics,” said Lucas Panak, 41, who piled into a pickup truck with his friends last Thursday to fight the blazes enveloping the small town of Cholila after municipal firefighters were sent elsewhere.
Disaster management amid austerity
When lightning started a small fire along a lake in the northern fringes of Los Alerces in early December, firefighters struggled to respond, limited by the remote location and a lack of available aircraft to transport crews and douse the hills.
The initial delay forced the resignation of the park’s management and led residents to accuse them of negligence in a criminal complaint when the winds picked up and blasted the blaze through the native forest.
But some experts argue the problem wasn’t inaction after the fire erupted, but long before.
“Fires are not something you only fight once they exist. They must be addressed beforehand through planning, infrastructure and forecasting,” said Andrés Nápoli, director of FARN. “All the prevention work that’s so important to do year-round has essentially been abandoned.”
On top of cutting the National Fire Management Service budget, Milei’s government ripped tens of millions of dollars from the National Park Administration last year, leading to the dismissal or resignation of hundreds of rangers, firefighters and administrative workers.
As more tourists descend each year on Argentina’s parks, forest rangers say that cutbacks and deregulation measures make it harder to monitor fire dangers, clear trails and educate visitors on caring for the park. Last March the government scrapped a requirement for tourist activities such as glacier treks and rock climbs to be overseen by licensed guides.
“If you increase the number of visitors while cutting staff, you risk losing control,” said Alejo Fardjoume, a union representative for national park workers. “The consequences of these decisions is not always immediate, they will be noticed cumulatively, progressively.”
Firefighters strain to keep up
A 2023 National Park Administration report recommends a minimum deployment of 700 firefighters to cover the land under its purview. The agency employs 391 now, having lost 10 percent of staff as a result of layoffs and resignations in the last two years under Milei.
Budget cuts to the National Fire Management Service have scaled back training capacity and reduced available equipment, firefighters say, leaving many to rely on secondhand protective suits and donated gear.
Authorities at Los Alerces said that they’ve always been strapped for funds no matter the government and insisted that there were no shortages of resources to battle the blaze.
“Criticizing is always easy,” said Luciano Machado, head of the fire, communications and emergency division at the National Park Administration. “Sometimes adding aircraft doesn’t make things better. And in order to add firefighters, you need more food, shelter and rotation.”
But national park firefighters pushed beyond the brink of exhaustion said their ranks are constantly thinning, if not due to layoffs then to resignations over poverty-level wages that have failed to keep pace with inflation.
The average firefighter in Patagonia’s parks earns less than $600 a month. In provinces with cheaper living costs, the monthly wage drops below $450. A growing number of firefighters say they’ve had to pick up extra work as gardeners and farmhands.
“From the outside it looks like everything still functions, but our bodies bear the cost,” said Mondino. “When someone leaves, the rest of us carry more weight, sleep less and work longer hours.”
An untimely dance
For a month as the forests burned, Milei said almost nothing about the fires and carried on as usual. Last week, as provincial governors pleaded with him to declare a state of emergency in order to release federal funds, he danced onstage with his ex-girlfriend to Argentine rock ballads.
The split-screen image supplied his critics with powerful political ammunition. “While Patagonia burns, the president is having fun singing,” said centrist lawmaker Maximiliano Ferraro. Left-leaning opposition parties staged protests across provinces.
On Thursday Milei relented, decreeing a state of emergency that unlocked $70 million for volunteer firefighters and announcing “a historic fight against fire” on social media.
At a base camp this weekend, volunteer medics scurried around bleary-eyed firefighters, tending to scratchy throats, sore legs and irritated sinuses. Some expressed hope that more relief was on the way. Others dismissed the decree as symbolic. All, looking over the smoldering trees that take human generations to regenerate, couldn’t help but dwell on what had already been lost.
“It hurts because it’s not just a beautiful landscape, it’s where we live,” said Mariana Rivas, one of the volunteers. “There’s anger about what could have been avoided, and anger because every year it gets worse.”
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