Reform UK will “astonish everybody” by “eating into the old Labourvote” at local polls next month, Nigel Farage has said as his party celebrated a decisive by-election victory.
Reform ousted Labour in a landslide win in Tameside, Greater Manchester on Thursday night.
Allan Hopwood became the party’s first elected politician in the city - receiving 911 votes to Labour’s 489 to take the Longdendale ward council seat.
The party now has its sights set on local elections taking place across the England on May 1 and hopes to take a flurry of seats from both the Tories and Labour.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has suggested that Reform UK and Tory councillors could run town halls together after next month's votes.
Mr Farage has appeared to brush off the idea, saying he had "no intention in forming coalitions with the Tories at any level".
However, he left the door open to more informal co-operation and said Reform is willing to have "working relationships" with other parties.
Responding to comments from Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper who said “the Conservatives and Reform have merged in all but name”, Mr Farage on Friday insisted that they are “completely different”.
He told LBC: “Look, the Conservatives gave us 14 years of high tax, open borders, excessive regulation.
“They did not deliver. We're a completely different political party. And Daisy Cooper, what you will see when you wake up on May 2 is that we will have eaten into the old Labour vote in a way that's going to astonish everybody.”
Registration to vote in next month’s local and mayoral elections closes on Friday, April 11 at midnight.
There are polls in 24 of the country’s 317 councils as well as some mayoral authorities on May 1.
Some 1,650 seats will be contested on 14 county councils, eight unitary authorities, one metropolitan district, and in the Isles of Scilly.
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There will also be mayoral elections in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Doncaster, the West of England, North Tyneside and - for the first time - in Hull and East Yorkshire, and Greater Lincolnshire.
Elections to all 21 county councils had been due to take place, but last month the government announced they would be postponed in nine areas so local authorities could restructure.
It is the first large set of voting since Labour's landslide victory at the general election in July last year and is expected to indicate how voters are reacting to Sir Keir Starmer’s government.