Reform UK are celebrating a major victory after snatching a Labour safe seat in a by-election won by the narrowest of margins. Nigel Farage’s party clinched victory in Runcorn and Helsby by only six votes, after an initial margin of four on the night forced a tense recount.

The extraordinary result is a major blow to Labour, and means MP Sarah Pochin becomes Reform’s fifth MP and their first female Parliamentarian. The by-election was triggered by the resignation of Labour MP Mike Amesbury, after he was dealt a 10-week prison term for punching a constituent, though it was reduced to a suspended sentence following an appeal.

Labour lost seats to Reform in Northumberland and Mr Farage’s party also made gains elsewhere in the country at the expense of the Conservatives.

Mr Farage was in Runcorn to hear the results come in, and took the opportunity to jab at Labour and the Conservatives, telling told Kemi Badenoch “please stay” as Tory leader and claiming that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is “making life easy” for him.

Speaking to Sky News, the Brexit architect said: “Whether we won by six or lost by six, I was going to come to this count, support our candidate. Winning’s obviously fantastic but just think about the swing, just think about the swing.

“This is heartland Labour Party, their vote has collapsed and much of it has come to us. And that does away with the sort of media narrative that it’s just us versus the Conservatives. It’s not, this is a whole different politics.”

Reform, which only launched in 2018, has seen a rapid rise in popularity. In the 2024 general election, the party won four million votes in a major blow to the Tories, but due to the UK’s first-past-the-post system only returned four MPs.

But with growing support, the party hopes that its strong showing in the local elections give it a platform to properly take on Labour and the Tories at the next GE, in what would be a dramatic reshaping of the UK’s established political landscape.

A Labour spokesman said: “By-elections are always difficult for the party in government and the events which led to this one being called made it even harder.

“Voters are still rightly furious with the state of the country after 14 years of failure and clearly expect the Government to move faster with the Plan for Change.

“While Labour has suffered an extremely narrow defeat, the shock is that the Conservative vote has collapsed. Moderate voters are clearly appalled by the talk of a Tory-Reform pact.

“There are encouraging signs that our Plan for Change is working – NHS waiting lists, inflation and interest rates down with wages up – but we will go further and faster to deliver change with relentless focus on putting money back into people’s pockets.”

Meanwhile, Conservative co-chair Nigel Huddleston rejected Reform’s claim to now being the main opposition to Labour telling the BBC’s Today programme: “We do have the humility we need to communicate to the public, and are doing, that we understand why they lost trust and faith in us.

“But we are under new leadership now,” he continued, as Ms Badenoch has “only been leader six months”.

“We’re coming from a very, very difficult time period after the last election. But our job … we will continue to hold this disastrous Labour government to account.