We travelled to the United Kingdom for the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, the first since Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government has been in power. It was a test of Starmer's popularity compared to Nigel Farage's Reform Party, which has been rising in popularity since its strong showing in the 2024 election.

Labour comfortably won in Runcorn and Helsby in 2024, but Reform managed to make a gain here in an impressive upset that was determined by just six votes.

The U.K. has a different way of counting its votes than we have in Canada.

Here, they bring all of the boxes of ballots to one central location, typically a place with a big gymnasium. All the different parties' counters, scrutineers and other volunteers gather in that counting room to verify every vote before beginning the count.

It's painstaking, it takes several hours, but it feels to me as perfectly secure as it can be. There are no digital screens, everything is done in one place and is typically finished in one night. 

But that counting centre was the site of a protest by an activist group from Manchester called Stand Against Racism. We wanted to hear what these protesters had to say, and they were quite open with us — at least, until one of them googled Rebel News and decided that we were unpersons.

We spoke to one woman about military-aged men who come to the U.K. as refugees, crossing the English Channel from France in small boats. 

“For some naive reason they believe that Britain is more welcoming,” she said. “Many of them speak English, many of them have a connection with Britain — whether it's they've got family here already or they were here as international students — they come because they have this belief that in Britain we are more welcoming.”

People like Nigel Farage are “the problem,” she told us, saying the refugee issue can be dealt with without being racist and that the group was there to protest Reform.

“Nigel Farage's party is a racist party through and through,” another man said, despite admitting other parties also campaigned to stop the boats coming across from France. Other parties have “antiracists” among their ranks he asserted, suggesting “there are no antiracists in Reform UK.”

Another woman took things even further, labelling Reform as a sort of Nazi or “far-right” party.

Eventually, we'd asked too many questions for the protesters, and they refused to respond.

Will Reform continue to chip away at the Conservative Party's status as the alternative to Labour? Only time will tell, but on this night, Farage's party picked up another seat in British Parliament with the slimmest victory in a by-election since the Second World War.

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