The 2026 English local elections - Poles apart

 Readers, Sir Keir Starmer suffered a drubbing for Labour in this year's election similar to that the Conservatives endured in 2023 - and like Rishi Sunak back then, many of the political changes will be virtually irreversible.

Like in 2025, the May 2026 local elections in England resulted in a breakdown in 2 party-politics. Although Labour won the second most seats up for election this year, this is only because they were defending (notionally, accounting for East and West Surrey's replacement of the 11 Surrey districts and Surrey County Council) as many as 2,564 seats, more than all the other parties, residents' associations and independents combined. They lost 1,496 of these - almost 60% of the seats they were defending, as well as control of 38 of the 66 councils they had overall control of, again an almost 60% decrease; in fact across England they gained just 3 council seats from other parties. By far their largest losses were in Greater London, where they lost control of Barnet, Brent, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Southwark, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, and Westminster; in many other metropolitan areas they were decimated, especially if Greens, Reform UK, or both were the key opposition (they lost seats to both Greens and Reform in Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, notably). A new cost-of-living crisis that has started since the Iran War began in March has hit Londoners hardest, and a failure to push through vital leasehold reforms, which Londoners are in need of most given that so many flats in London are currently unsellable and unmortgageable due to service charges and ground rents being excessively high, even if they do not have fire-vulnerable cladding, at the expected pace were key factors for the particularly heavy rejection of Labour in London, even though the leasehold issue is for the most part outside the scope of local councils. The Labour government's perceived economic mismanagement, as well as perceived mismanagement about immigration issues (even though these are not within the remit of local councils) were the primary factors behind their heavy losses, as their support was pulled apart left, right and centre. Many Labour councillors only held on due to the opposition being significantly split, as particularly seen in this year's elections in Birmingham, Camden, Ealing and Peterborough.

The Conservatives, like their traditional oppositional counterparts in Labour, also experienced a slide downwards, but not on the scale of Labour's. They lost 2/3 of the seats they were (notionally) defending, especially in county councils that would have had elections last year had those not been postponed due to local government reorganisation, but they blunted those losses with gains in London, gaining control of Westminster, only narrowly missing out on regaining control of Barnet and Wandsworth, more than doubling their majority in Harrow despite one of their candidates being suspended for racist Facebook posts, and regaining largest party status in Enfield. The aforementioned five councils are prosperous multicultural areas with more moderate politics than most of London. Conversely within Greater London, they were wiped out in Havering and Sutton, the former of which was the only Greater London Borough that Reform UK won overall control of.  The Conservatives have been shifting their policies closer to Reform's in a bid to attract more hardline conservative (small "c") voters, but in fact this move has only hastened their slide from once being the "natural party of government" into smaller party status (in most current opinion polls they are polling no better than 3rd place and no higher than 18%), much like the Liberals (a predecessor to the Liberal Democrats) endured during the inter-war years (1918-1939) as Labour became more of a real opposition in the eyes of working and lower middle-class voters to the Conservatives. 

Just like last year, Reform UK's surge from nowhere was the story of this year's local elections. With a gain of 1,453 council seats, the largest surge for a smaller party since the early 1980s when the SDP/Liberal Alliance was at its peak, they gained control of the councils of Barnsley, Havering (as mentioned above) Newcastle-under-Lyme, Sandwell, St Helens, South Tyneside, Sunderland, Thurrock, Wakefield and Walsall, the county councils of Essex and Suffolk, missing out on Norfolk primarily due to Great Yarmouth First (actually a branch of Restore Britain, a Reform splinter group led by Rupert Lowe, Great Yarmouth's MP) and most surprisingly, Calderdale, traditionally regarded as a key middle-of-the-road Conservative-Labour battleground and an area with a significant South Asian population (especially in Halifax). In 2024 they did not even stand any candidates in Calderdale. As with last year, their strongest surges were in areas with low ethnic diversity and lower than average education levels, and where traditional industries that were lost in the last 4 decades have not been adequately replaced; it is at its core a reactionary backlash to feelings of alienation in modern, multicultural Britain (Britain has always been a multicultural society to some extent, and evolved from a patchwork of different cultures, but it is at its most multicultural now by a significant margin) and not benefitting from the progress Britain has made. Despite considerable evidence of the harmful actions of county councils Reform gained control of last year, including for example cuts to special needs and adult educational provision in Derbyshire without proper consultation with residents and cutting back on flood defences in Lincolnshire even though Lincolnshire is one of the most vulnerable counties in Britain to rising sea levels and climate change in general, not to mention racist social media posts by many of their candidates (some of whom were later disendorsed by Reform UK themselves) Reform managed several landslide victories at local level and gained largest party status in the city of Birmingham and tied with the Liberal Democrats in East Sussex. However, they won only 6 seats in Bexley - which after Havering, is the second strongest borough in London for Reform - and finished 3rd in both Hampshire and Swindon in seat terms. It is worth noting that Reform UK's vote in this year's election was actually down 3 percentage points on last year, yet because of the grievously flawed First Past the Post electoral system they were able to win multitudes of seats on low vote shares, a notable example being Wakefield where they won 92% of the seats (58 out of 63) despite only managing a 38.8% vote share. This also worked against them in a few cases; for example despite narrowly topping the poll in Milton Keynes with 22.9%, they won only 9 seats out of 60. 

The Green surge was the other star story of this election, with their win of 587 seats, an increase of 441, easily being a new record locally for the Green Party of England and Wales, and for the first time ever they gained overall control of multiple councils. Before May the only council above town and parish council they had won overall control of was Mid Suffolk; they now also have overall control of Hackney, Hastings, Lewisham, Norwich, and Waltham Forest; they also only narrowly missed gaining control of Haringey and Lambeth. Under the leadership of Zack Polanski, who first won that office in September 2025, the Greens were able to position themselves as a definitive left-wing and progressive alternative to Labour in addition to the core environmentalist party, which explains why more than half their council seat gains were in Greater London boroughs. Outside of Greater London, they made breakthroughs onto the councils of Ipswich, Lincoln, and Southampton, inter alia, and achieved significant Green surges in Suffolk County Council, where with 13 seats they became the official opposition (to Reform), Manchester, where they won 18 of the 32 seats up for election, in Birmingham where their gains of 17 seats were enough to push Labour (who had in 2022 won 65 seats, a clear majority) into 3rd place, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne where they won 24 seats, finishing a close second  to the Liberal Democrats, despite the local party disendorsing 4 of their candidates in Newcastle-upon-Tyne over anti-Semitic social media posts. It was not all rosy for the Greens, however - their longstanding group in Solihull was reduced by nearly 2/3 from 11 seats to just 4, losing mainly to Reform, they lost all the seats they were defending in Burnley and Epping Forest, and they were wiped out in St Helens. They also did not increase their seat total in the Isle of Wight and many councillors who defected to the Green Party (mainly from the Labour Party) lost their seats at this election including for example both their councillors in Hammersmith & Fulham (one of only 2 councils up for election this year to elect only Conservative and Labour councillors, the other being Westminster). Their overall modest gains outside metropolitan areas is somewhat reflective of the SNP's situation during the Nicola Sturgeon era, when their gains in urban Labour heartlands were offset by a stall in progress or loss of seats in the rural fringes north of the River Tay where the SNP had first gained local and parliamentary seats.

Of the 3 "legacy" political parties (as some political commentators have dubbed them), only the Liberal Democrats managed to increase their seat total, and in fact in their case their net gain of 195 seats was enough to overtake the Conservatives on that score. Many of their gains primarily amounted to consolidation in councils with extant or recent strength for the Liberal Democrats, including notably Sutton where they won 92% of the seats, Richmond-upon-Thames which marks the first time the Liberal Democrats have won every single council seat on a council above town and parish level in England, the new authorities of East and West Surrey (which actually take office next April but held shadow elections this May) where they convincingly gained overall control, West Sussex where they gained overall control for the first time, East Sussex where they topped the poll, and Huntingdonshire where they became the largest party, the last of which is somewhat reflective of the effects of demographic change radiating outwards from the nearby city of Cambridge. They found it somewhat hard to advance, however, outside the well-heeled and well-educated urban areas which form their core base, as seen in non-metropolitan England where the Reform swept away even some Liberal Democrat council seats (in addition to those held by Labour, the Conservatives and more rarely the Greens) such as in Suffolk, and in the most progressive urban areas, such as the ancient university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, they could only hold their existing wards (and even lost a few, such as losing 1 of the 3 seats in Highgate ward, Haringey to the Greens) and the Green surge stymied attempts to gain some Labour wards.

Independent candidates and Residents' Association candidates fared rather badly at this election, the latter partly due to the effects of local government reorganisation which will merge remaining districts and boroughs into larger unitary authorities. The Epsom & Ewell Residents' Association, who had controlled the soon to be abolished district of Epsom & Ewell since its inaugural election in 1973, was the most significant victim winning only 2 of the 10 seats on the new East Surrey that lie within the area of Epsom & Ewell, and the various Residents' Associations in Havering could only win 11 seats, being unable to resist the Reform tide that swept areas where localist associations have historically performed well; the majority of voters who consistently vote for councillors of this type are socially conservative, have a settled tenure, and have modest levels of education. In fact, due to the aforementioned local government reorganisation, the Portsmouth Independent Party did not even stand any candidates, with most of their councillors having defected to Reform last year and with Portsmouth set to be subsumed into a "South East Hampshire" authority with Fareham, Gosport and Havant. Even in metropolitan boroughs, which are not affected by the current round of local government reorganisation (in fact, since 1973, the only significant change that has ever been enacted affecting metropolitan boroughs in England was the abolition of higher-tier metropolitan county councils in 1986) their performance was mixed at best; the Garforth & Swillington Independents and the Morley Borough Independents held on in Leeds but the Bradford Independent Group was reduced to just 1 seat in Bradford. Many localist independents were swept away by Reform but those with exceptional personal votes (such as Stephen Shing in Polegate and Kerry Smith in Westgate, Basildon) held on easily. Independents who had ceased to be members of other parties (either voluntarily or involuntarily) rarely fared well; for example the 2 ex-Green district councillors standing for election to Norfolk County Council, Pallavi Devulapalli and Michael de Whalley, came nowhere near being elected. 

With the exception of Aspire, who gained overall control of Tower Hamlets and won the mayoralty easily, despite Lutfur Rahman's past controversies (including being removed from the post after being found guilty of corrupt election practices by an election court in 2015), and the aforementioned Great Yarmouth First, minor political parties fared badly. The Workers' Party only gained a handful of councillors, including just 1 in Birmingham, the site of their strongest electoral performance at the 2024 general election by far, and just 2 in Rochdale, the only area to have ever had a Workers Party MP (George Galloway, for 5 months in 2024). Another left-wing party, Arise, won only 1 seat in Harrow despite being backed by Your Party (which fielded few candidates due to the numerous organisational and factional problems it has endured ever since Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn founded the party) and only 1 of the left-wing candidates backed by Greens in London (a solitary Camden People's Alliance councillor in St Pancras & Somers Town ward, Camden) was elected. The Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition fared even worse; most of their candidates finished bottom of the poll and only in Bevois ward, Southampton (a council where they previously had councillors) did they poll remotely respectably.  On the right of the political spectrum, the few Advance UK candidates polled derisory votes.