Yesterday's elections: the story so far

Reform joy may be overdone; our voting system has punished the Greens

Friday 7pm update

This morning’s analysis has largely been confirmed by events. At the time of writing, Labour is doing slightly worse than overnight, currently losing 56 per cent of seats it was defending, rather than half.

Reform have maintained their big lead in seats and votes. But they have won a smaller share of seats than last year: 30 per cent (down from 33 per cent this morning, and well down on last year’s 41 per cent). According to Sky News, Reform’s support equates to a 27 per cent share across Britain, five points down on the 32 per cent in the equivalent estimate last year.

Nevertheless, Britain’s shift to multiparty politics continues to dominate the results. Here are two telling examples. In Hackney Zoe Garbutt, the Green candidate was elected Mayor on a 19 per cent swing from Labour. A few miles to the East, Reform captured Havering Council, gaining 39 seats, most of them from the Conservatives. Two boroughs, two two-party contests, but completely different.

Havering apart, Reform did worse in London than the rest of Britain. Most boroughs will have no Reform councillors at all. In Bromley, widely reported as a Reform target, the Conservatives easily retained control. Reform won just six of the 58 seats.

The Liberal Democrats have been largely omitted from discussion of these elections. This is a pity, for their ability to dominate their areas of strength is remarkable. At the time of writing they have won 13 councils – mostly retaining control. What are worth noting are the overall numbers. The Lib Dems have a total of 311 councillors, compared with a combined total of just 27 seats won by the Conservatives, Labour, Greens and Reform.

The results from Wales and Scotland are as predicted by the polls: Labour crashing to a bad third place in Wales, with Plaid Cymru first and Reform second. The SNP remains easily Scotland’s largest party, but looks set to fall short of an overall majority.

Finally, I wrote this morning that Labour’s Rowenna Davis might gain Croydon’s mayoralty. The contest was indeed close but, in the event, Jason Perry won for the Conservatives win a majority of just 1,113: a margin of just one per cent.

Original post

Welcome to multiparty politics. The overnight results from English councils confirm the story told by recent polls: Reform UK is out in front, Labour is in deep trouble, the Conservatives may have begun to recover, the Greens have gained ground, and the Liberal Democrats are doing well where they have a chance of victory.

This morning we can go further. The results so far add new information, and also provoke questions about how politics might evolve between now and the next general election.

1. Behind the impressive tally of Reform’s gains – likely to end up well over 1,000 – Nigel Farage should be privately worried. In last year’s local elections Reform won 41 per cent of all seats contested across England. On the basis of the overnight figures, this year’s tally is around 33 per cent. If there were no polls, and there had been no elections last year, this year’s figure would be astonishing. But we do have the record of recent polls and elections, and it seems clear that Reform has peaked.

Under first-past-the-post, this matters. Our voting system helped Reform last year, when it won a much higher proportion of seats than votes. Its support is now at the point where that bonus has started to shrink. If more voters desert the party, it could suffer badly – falling short in many council and parliamentary seats that it would have won last year.

2. In contrast to Reform, Labour has cause for relief, despite losing half the seats it was defending yesterday. It’s bad – and in normal times it would be catastrophic – but it’s not as bad as its record in local council by-elections over the past 12 months, where it hast lost three-quarters of the seats it was defending. The overnight average conceals wide variations. Labour has lost all the seats it was defending in Wigan and Hartlepool, and all but one in Tameside, Dudley and Redditch. In other parts of England, where Reform is weaker, Labour’s support has held up better.

However, even on the most optimistic interpretation of Labour’s performance, the overnight figures contain a stark warning. John Curtice told BBC viewers in the early hours that while Labour has lost many SEATS to Reform, it has lost VOTES more to the Greens. The next election could produce a mirror-image of what happened in 2024. Keir Starmer’s landslide was largely the result of the way the right-of-centre vote divided in seat after seat between Conservative and Reform, and let Labour in through the middle. Next time, it could be a Labour-Green division that swells the parliamentary contingents of the right.

3. There is another way in which the Greens are mirroring Reform. Their national support is in the same ballpark as Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Yet while Labour and the Liberal Democrats won similar numbers of seats yesterday (253, 250 and 241 respectively overnight), the Greens won only 51. Like Reform two years ago, their support is spread too evenly to win anything like as many seats as their overall vote share would seem to warrant. Reform won only five seats at the general election, despite winning half a million more votes than the Lib Dems, which won 72.

4. The Conservatives have clearly done better – or, more accurately, less badly – than last year. Analysis of the overnight results by Michael Thrasher on Sky News found that the Tories lost 44 per cent of the seats they were defending. This was terrible but not as bad as last year, when loss-rate was 68 per cent.

As in 1990 – the year of the poll tax – gloomy national figures have been offset by gains in Wandsworth and Westminster. Thirty-four years ago, the Tories spun these results into a narrative of great success. I doubt that they can repeat the trick this time; we’ll see.

5. London has produced some startingly varied results. As we have seen, the Tories have done well in Wandsworth and Westminster, but elsewhere has marked time (Merton, Ealing and Hammersmith & Fulham) or been punished (Havering and Sutton). The Lib Dems have consolidated their control of Sutton and Richmond. Labour comfortably retained control of Merton and Hammersmith & Fulham, and also Ealing, despite losing some ground to the Lib Dems.

With results 22 more London boroughs to come, the capital’s political patchwork will become clear. Can Reform add more councils (such as Bromley?) to their overnight success in Havering? And in how many more boroughs will Reform win not a single ward (to add to the six so far)? And will Labour retain control of more boroughs than it might have expected a few days ago? There is even a chance that later today, Labour’s Rowenna Davis will unseat Jason Perry, the Conservative mayor of Croydon. That would be a modest but real consolation for Starmer.