‘Humiliated Tories’ and ‘angry Labour’: what the papers say about Reform’s local election rout

Success of hard-right party is a ‘sobering day’ for Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, UK papers report after a ‘populist wave sweeps England’

Saturday papers in the UK were dominated by the Reform party’s victory at the polls, in which it gained an MP at Labour’s expense and won a string of local councils.

A jubilant Nigel Farage said his hard-right populist party had now supplanted the Conservatives and pledged that Reform-run councils and mayoralties would block asylum seeker accommodation and dismantle equalities programmes.