While Reform UK sweeps through small-town England, the Greens are outperforming their expectations in their target urban communities. For two decades, Labour won Hackney’s mayoralty by at least a 25-percentage-point margin: the Greens took it by 12 percentage points. They’re now bullish about other inner London communities, such as Lewisham and Haringey.
In Manchester, they hoped to take six council seats – instead they won 17. They made sweeping gains in Sheffield, ousting the Labour leader, and in Newcastle. They even increased their vote share in my hometown of Stockport, as well as Oxford and Exeter.
Labour’s high command gambled that a vicious smear campaign against the Greens would lower their vote. Yet Zack Polanski’s insurgents look well positioned to replace Labour in large swathes of its urban heartland. Keir Starmer believed that if he could crush the left within Labour, he would be able to expel it from politics for ever. The Greens have proved him wrong.
So far, on the right, the results seem clear enough: an excellent night for Reform UK, and a potentially dangerous, not-quite-disastrous one for the Conservatives.
In 1990, victory in Westminster and Wandsworth allowed Margaret Thatcher to put a brave face on a terrible set of local election results. Kemi Badenoch fell two seats short in Wandsworth this time, but retaking Westminster may do her a similar service – especially because, since Robert Jenrick’s defection, the Tories are overall keen to avoid another round of internal recriminations.
But despite picking up seats in a few places, the overall results as they stand are dire for the party. Unlike last year’s rout, which the Conservatives could at least comfort themselves was fought in places last contested during Boris Johnson’s 2021 pomp, this week’s elections were last fought in 2022, at the height of Partygate, so they were already bad results by historic standards.
This puts that recent talk of the “Kemi bounce” into perspective. And the worst part is, that bounce wasn’t just invented – her personal ratings really have improved, as has the general tone of the press coverage the Tories receive. It just hasn’t been enough to put the party on the front foot in tangible, electoral terms.
Local elections provide at best a partial view of the political situation in the UK, and less than 24 hours after the polls closed votes are still being counted. What we can know at the moment, however, is that it was not a good night for Labour (although not as maximally painful as it perhaps could have been). Now, the question will be which narrative about the results Labour uses to set future strategy.
One narrative is that the party needs to focus on losses to Reform UK and direct itself accordingly. The other is that it is losses to progressive parties, notably the Greens, that are hurting Labour most. Even when seats are switching from Labour to Reform, as John Curtice has pointed out, it is often the Green vote that is damaging Labour more than direct switchers to Reform.
While both narratives are somewhat simplistic, many increasingly think there is something to the view that obsessively pursuing voters to its right is partly the cause of Labour’s unpopularity, particularly in a context where some polls suggest that as little as 1% of Reform voters are open to backing Labour. One lesson Keir Starmer’s party is likely to take from this election is the necessity of some focus on staunching losses to its left.
These were always going to be tough elections for the Conservative party. And while the headlines will go to Labour, we need a clear-eyed assessment of where the Tories are.
After that historic rout in the general election, Kemi Badenoch is trying to pick our party back up off the canvas to get us ready to challenge for government again. She deserves credit for all she’s done so far, but we can do more.
Building in opposition means putting together coalitions of voters. It means targeting focus and resource on geographical constituencies, yes, but also on constituencies of purpose. What is our offering to young people? To parents? To public sector workers? To business owners?
We know that there are millions of people with centre or centre-right views who feel that no party truly represents them.
I want to help the Conservative party reach out to a broader coalition of voters – including those now voting Labour or Liberal Democrat – and focus on making the economy work for them, and for the country.
That’s how you build the support you need.
In December I wrote that, despite my discontent with the national party, my local Labour-led council, Wandsworth, was a true example of municipal socialism, making a real difference to local people through its revolution in social-housing development.
This work started when Labour ended 44 years of Conservative control of the council in the 2022 local elections with a radical campaign. Wandsworth had helped pioneer a number of policies that came to be known as neoliberalism, from low council tax, outsourcing, privatisation and austerity. But now Margaret Thatcher’s favourite council has fallen to no overall control: the Conservatives are the largest party and an ex-Conservative independent holds the balance of power.
The signs were there when I spoke to councillors in the weeks before the election. They told me that locals on the doorstep acknowledged their good work, but considered the national party too repulsive to support in any context. Elsewhere in London, you can see where this contempt was directed at the council: Lambeth and its cosy relationship with developers at the expense of local communities; Hackney and its abysmal record on housing.
But these results show that even where local government is popular, voters view its representation on the ballot as a synecdoche for the national party and its detested leader. The consequences of this toxic association are more significant than power manoeuvres at the top of the Labour party.
The results show the Liberal Democrats have now made gains in eight successive rounds of local elections. That progress has not always grabbed the headlines, but the party accumulates year after year. Already running more councils than the Conservatives, we are on course this parliament to overtake them in terms of the number of councillors – and perhaps even Labour, too.
Our progress may be that of the tortoise, not the hare – but it’s the tortoise that wins.
The most dramatic gains have been in areas such as Richmond in London. Only a decade ago it had two Conservative MPs, a Conservative council and a Conservative London Assembly member. All have been replaced by Lib Dems – and, after today, the Conservatives no longer have even a single councillor.
But there is progress elsewhere, too, with smaller groups making gains in places such as Exeter, Ealing and Lincoln, spreading our strength to new places.
Communications strategist, writer and host of the Over the Top, Under the Radar podcast
The best way to understand these results is as a dress-rehearsal for the general election. For the Greens and Reform UK, this was the first real test of whether their party machines are battle-ready. Activists and candidates from both challenger parties will be energised tonight and have further proof they are more than a protest vote.
The English councils where Reform won the most seats counted their votes first, but all signs point to a good election for both parties. Given most people couldn’t pick Zack Polanski out of a lineup this time last year (and many still can’t now), the Greens’ impressive rise is the one to watch.
Voters across England, Scotland and Wales gave a clear verdict on this Labour government. If it doesn’t change course and change leader, it risks total wipeout in three years’ time. Labour activists talk about how unpopular Keir Starmer was with voters on the doorstep. Picking a new leader won’t guarantee the party changes its fate, but with Starmer in charge it can’t get a hearing.
