“Guess who’s back again?” After Britain left the European Union in 2020, much of Westminster hoped that they had seen the last of Nigel Farage. But the veteran Brexiteer is dominating British politics once again, having been elected to Parliament last July using the music of Eminem as his campaign song. Last week, Farage’s insurgent party, Reform UK, stormed to victory in the English council elections. With 30 per cent of the projected national share, Reform trounced both Labour (20 per cent) and the Conservatives (15 per cent).

For more than a century, power in Britain has changed hands intermittently between those two parties. But amid voter fury about decrepit public service, Farage threatens their stranglehold on British politics. Last Thursday night, Reform showed it could win seats right across England, from Devon in the south to Durham in the north. Its highest vote share came in Tony Blair’s old constituency of Sedgefield, a former coal mining centre.

Much of Farage’s campaign was inspired by America. His main pledge was a “Doge in every county” — a promise that auditors would root out and eradicate wasteful spending at a local level. His rallies, like those of Donald Trump, featured plenty of razzmatazz, including fireworks and Union Jacks galore. On Facebook, he played “pothole golf”, knocking balls into holes on unfixed roads to underline their neglect; on TikTok, he helped plant flowers in them.

Instead of hyping these local elections into a battle for the fate of the nation, Reform campaign staff focused on bin collections, reasoning that voters were less interested in ideology than the delivery of basic services. It was only in the final week that the campaign shifted to national issues, in a push to get out the vote. Farage headed to Dover to decry the 37,000 migrants who arrived in Britain illegally via the English Channel last year and pledged to introduce a “minister for deportations”.

It was a strategy vindicated by results. Reform won 677 of 1,641 wards and became the largest party on 14 of 23 councils. It also gained a fifth Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, too, snatching a Labour seat in the Runcorn by just six votes. For strategists, the results showed that a vote for a minor party is no longer a wasted vote. As one puts it, “If you vote Reform, you get Reform.” That will be the party’s message to voters in the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections in May 2026.

The rise of Farage’s party poses major problems for prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Government. “The message I take out of these elections,” he said on Friday, “is that we need to go further and we need to go faster on the change that people want to see.” But with Britain’s annual economic growth running at just 1 per cent, there are increasing doubts within Labour about whether Starmer can deliver sufficient “change” by the next General Election in 2029.

A bad night for Labour was even worse for the Conservatives. “A total bloodbath” is how leader Kemi Badenoch described the results, as the Tories lost 676 councillors and every single authority that they controlled. The party — which ruled Britain from 2010 to 2024 — now faces a total wipeout, with Reform, Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the Left eroding every part of its ageing electoral base. Much like the Gaullists in France, the traditional party of the British Centre Right risks being consigned to the history books by a brash new upstart.

Reform UK wants to accelerate this process. Already, the party has signalled that it will seek injunctions to stop the Home Office from housing asylum seekers in council areas it now controls. The aim is to draw a contrast between Reform-run councils and others, much like Republican governors in the US who sent undocumented migrants to Democratic-controlled “sanctuary cities”.

Both Labour and the Conservative Party argue that, with Reform members elected to office, the party will soon find governing very different from campaigning. The bulk of local authority spending is dictated by statutory duties, such as adult social care. Far from wielding a chainsaw like Argentine president Javier Milei, they argue, Reform will yield merely token savings in its Doge-style crusade. Big egos in small parties tend to clash, with civil war being a feature of Farage’s previous political forays.

Yet such jibes are usually said as much in hope as in expectation. The constraints imposed on Reform’s councils may serve instead as a justification for the party in its campaign for national government in 2029. Now that local bastions have been seized, next come Wales and Scotland in 2026. And Downing Street looms on the horizon.

Farage’s approach to party management evokes the Ship of Theseus: elements of his ship are constantly changed over time, but always the vessel sails on. Right now, Farage has a favourable wind at his back and a clear destination in mind.

• James Heale is the deputy political editor of The Spectator magazine in London