Reform U.K.’s Success Is Latest Sign of Strength for Europe’s Far Right

Keir Starmer and the Labour Party may have won Britain’s general election, but another politician was also looking happy on Friday.

Nigel Farage, Britain’s veteran political disrupter and Brexit campaigner, saw his new anti-immigration Reform U.K. party secure five seats in Parliament and it could have been more. Reform won more than four million votes nationwide — around 14 percent — making it Britain’s third most successful party by that measure.

It was the latest successful result in Europe by populist, right-wing parties, and it instantly drew comparisons to the National Rally, which is seeking to become France’s biggest party in that country’s parliament in a final round of voting on Sunday. In his campaign, Mr. Farage said immigration had “diminished” the quality of life in Britain and that “the time has come to stand up and say ‘enough is enough.’” He has called for a “freeze” on nonessential immigration, blaming it for putting pressure on health services and housing.

Britain’s electoral system of first-past-the-post tends to work against smaller parties, meaning that Reform collected far fewer seats in the 650-member House of Commons than its vote share might have indicated. Still, Mr. Farage sounded triumphant on Friday.

“There is a massive gap on the center right of British politics, and my job is to fill it,” he told jubilant supporters after it was announced that he had won a parliamentary seat in Clacton, an economically distressed seaside region, by a big margin. It was his first successful run after seven failed races for Parliament.

He said his party would also “now be targeting Labour votes,” building on its second-place finish in the popular vote to become the dominant center-left party in several seats in northern England.