For Starmer the results were a powerful reminder of how unpopular his government has become. He promised to speed up the delivery of policy reforms in areas such as migration, the NHS and industrial policy.

But for Badenoch the rise of Reform UK poses what one shadow minister called an “existential” challenge, with Farage boasting that he had “supplanted” the Tories as Starmer’s main opposition.

“This marks the end of two-party politics as we’ve known it for over a century,” Farage said, as he celebrated a narrow victory over Labour in the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election and a string of dramatic victories over the Tories in rural English counties.

With most results in on Friday evening, the Conservatives had lost more than 600 seats — about two-thirds of all the seats they were defending — while Reform UK had gained roughly the same amount.

The BBC projected that if the results were extrapolated to a national vote share, Reform UK would have won 30 per cent, compared with Labour’s 20, the Liberal Democrats on 17, Conservatives on 15 and Greens on 11.

Reform UK took control of local councils for the first time in Staffordshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Kent and Durham, taking votes from Tories and Labour.

In Staffordshire, for example, Reform won 49 seats, having previously had none. The Tories lost 46 seats and were left with just 10.

Badenoch is under fierce pressure to come up with some policies to underpin her flailing leadership.

“She’s on the clock,” said one veteran party official, although most Tory MPs recoiled from the idea of ousting Badenoch after only six months in office. “We’d look ridiculous,” said one shadow minister.

It was always due to be a difficult election for the Conservatives. This set of English councils was last contested when former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson was enjoying heightened popularity after the rollout of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Another shadow cabinet member said: “Heavy losses were priced in, but the sheer velocity and extent of them shows we need to accelerate firming up our policies and principles.”

In an op-ed for the Telegraph, Badenoch apologised for the “bloodbath” in the local elections, adding: “The results show the scale of the work needed to rebuild trust in the Conservative party and the importance of redoubling our efforts to show that this party is under new leadership and is doing things differently.”

Yet the Conservative leader is trapped in a vice, with Reform UK winning over swaths of Tory voters while the Liberal Democrats, which also performed strongly, capture liberal Tory votes in the south and west.

The Lib Dems took control of Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire county councils, all for the first time. The party also elbowed aside the Tories to become the largest party in Devon, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire and Wiltshire.

The defeat in Runcorn will alarm Labour, which has endured a plunge in its popularity since returning to government in a landslide victory last July.

But Starmer refused to back down on unpopular policies that include cutting winter fuel payments and benefit payments.

“The message I take is we need to go further and we need to go faster on the change that people want to see,” he said.

Farage said that Labour’s vote in its heartland had “collapsed and much of it has come to us”, but admitted that Reform would now come under much greater scrutiny, not least as it starts to run local services in some areas.

Along with its local council wins, Reform also won the mayoralties of Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire. In the one glimmer of good news for Badenoch, former Tory MP Paul Bristow won the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoralty from Labour.