Six sort-of lessons from the local elections: Democracy, but make it volatile

Fragmenting vote, fractured map, and no clear winner — this is Britain in 2026

A local election count in Preston, Lancashire Pic: The Lead

Britain has spoken.

The problem is, no one’s quite sure what it’s said.

Some votes are in, many still being counted, and every party is already drawing their own conclusions from broadly the same set of results.

This was never going to be a straightforward electoral test. The national picture is fragmenting, the voting system distorts as much as it reflects, and the usual caveats about localism and potholes still apply.

But amid the noise, a few patterns are beginning to settle. Here are six things we can say with some confidence — and a few others that are likely to keep Westminster occupied for some time yet.

1. Reform’s rise is real — but the numbers are more complicated than the headlines suggest

Nigel Farage will be undoubtedly be celebrating with a champagne or two, but the headline numbers of Reform’s victory mask a more complicated picture.

Last year, Reform won around 41 per cent of all seats contested in England’s local elections. Early overnight estimates this year appeared closer to the low-30s — prompting some commentators to argue the party may already have peaked.

But that interpretation risks overstating what these elections can tell us. As political analyst Sam Freedman pointed out, the early results were heavily skewed towards London and areas less favourable to Reform. As we move into the afternoon, it has become clearer that Reform is continuing to make gains across the North of England, for example, taking fifteen contested seats from Labour in Sunderland.

Even if Reform ultimately underperforms compared to last year’s extraordinary breakthrough, that does not mean the threat to Labour — or the Conservatives — has diminished. “It’s a big, big day, not just for our party, but for a complete reshaping of British politics in every way,” Farage has said. He’s not wrong. Reform had an objectively good night, taking control of four new councils so far: Essex, Havering Newcastle-under-Lyme and Suffolk.

It is important to note that Reform does not need to be universally popular to win power electorally. Crucially, the party is eating directly into the Conservative vote while benefiting from a broader anti-establishment mood. Under first-past-the-post, that matters enormously. A party polling in the high 20s or low 30s nationally can become existentially dangerous if its support is concentrated in the right places and its opponents remain divided.

2. Labour is losing votes to the left and seats to the right

The instinct inside parts of Labour will be to read these results as proof the party needs to chase Reform voters harder. But the evidence points in the opposite direction.

As Professor Sir John Curtice noted during the BBC’s coverage, Labour’s sharpest declines are often occurring in places where the Greens are surging, not where Reform is strongest. Labour may be losing seats to Reform, but it is losing votes to the Greens. The result is a squeeze from both sides.

The Hackney mayoral race, won by the Greens, is symbolic here: a dramatic swing away from Labour in what was once considered one of the party’s safest urban strongholds. Likewise, Manchester — where Labour haemorrhaged support to both Greens and Reform — shows how unstable Labour’s coalition has become.

This matters because Labour’s current strategy risks aggravating both problems at once. The government has already spent months hardening its rhetoric on immigration in an attempt to neutralise Reform. Unsurprisingly, this has not stopped Reform’s advance. On the other side, it seems to be accelerating disengagement among younger, socially liberal and environmentally focused voters who once formed a crucial part of Labour’s electoral base.

3. The electoral system is putting the brakes on the Greens

The Greens are having possibly their strongest election in vote share terms, but once again, the seat totals barely reflect it.

While Labour and the Liberal Democrats each secured roughly 250 seats overnight, the Greens won only around 50 despite operating in a broadly similar range nationally in many areas, because under first-past-the-post, dispersed support is punished.

As Peter Kellner points out, this is the same problem Reform faced before its vote became geographically concentrated enough to convert support into seats. A party can achieve good national numbers and still end up with minimal representation f it cannot efficiently target wards and constituencies.

There are signs, too, that the Greens’ own strategy may be compounding the issue. Some party insiders had hoped for breakthroughs in places such as Westminster, Hammersmith and Ealing, but these did not manifest.

The electoral system can be unforgiving. Britain’s voting system amplifies some forms of support while erasing others entirely. For Green supporters, the numbers may only cause their disillusionment to harden. And who could blame them.

4. The Conservatives are down — but reports of their death may be exaggerated

These elections were unquestionably bad for the Conservatives, but not quite the total annihilation some had predicted.

At the time of writing, the party lost roughly 44 per cent of the seats it was defending — disastrous by normal standards, but still an improvement on last year’s catastrophic local election performance, when it lost closer to 68 per cent. Gains in places such as Wandsworth and Westminster offer at least some evidence that the Conservative collapse may be slowing.

That said, there is no serious sense in which a main opposition party making net losses can claim victory. The more important reflection is what kind of Conservative Party emerges from this moment. The Lib Dem sweep of Richmond underlines how decisively affluent, socially liberal southern voters have drifted away from the Conservatives.

Meanwhile, Reform is cannibalising large chunks of the party’s older, more culturally conservative base in places like Essex and Suffolk. The coalition that built modern Conservatism is fracturing everywhere, all at once.

That fragmentation may force increasingly uncomfortable decisions. In some councils, viable administrations may now require some form of tacit arrangement or cooperation between Conservatives and Reform. Hampshire and Peterborough are already being discussed in those terms.

If those relationships deepen and are deemed successful, we could perhaps see a thawing between the two rival right-wing parties and prospective electoral plots. But the question will remain which party will come out on top, and whether either can thrive while the other exists.

5. The devolved picture is fragmenting too

The turbulence is not confined to England. In Wales, Labour figures are already openly conceding that a historic run of dominance is coming to an end. Counting is still underway in the Senedd elections, but the expectation is clear: Labour is on course to lose the ground it has held for generations, with senior figures warning that First Minister Eluned Morgan will lose her seat.

The significance cannot be underplayed. Labour has won every Senedd election since devolution began in 1999. But that era now looks set to end, with Plaid Cymru and Reform emerging as the main contenders to shape what comes next.

In Scotland, meanwhile, the SNP is already declaring with confidence that it will be the largest party, even as the full results are still being counted. The Scottish Greens are also reporting gains, while Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has admitted the party has “lost the argument for change” and is “hurting” after a difficult set of results.

Taken together, the picture across the devolved nations points to something broader than a single bad night or a familiar midterm correction. This is not a wobble at the edges, but a loosening across the whole political map. Long-standing governing parties are slipping in England, Scotland and Wales at the same time.

6. Starmer is in deep, deep trouble

Inside Labour, much of the post-election autopsy will focus on the wisdom of Keir Starmer, the legacy of his former adviser Morgan McSweeney, and whether the party moved too far left or right.

Political Editor of Byline Times Adam Bienkov argues that McSweeney essentially handed Reform “massive gains in Labour’s former Northern heartlands, whilst ensuring a similar surge in support for Zack Polanski’s Green Party in the South.”

He writes: “Not only did McSweeney’s strategy achieve the complete opposite of its stated aim in winning over Reform voters, but the collapse of a big chunk of Labour’s support to the Greens has also actively helped to hand Reform a series of stunning gains across the country.”

But the deeper problem may be more fundamental than positioning. Pollster Luke Tryl recently argued that the voters Keir Starmer should fear most are not those who actively dislike him, but those who once believed in him and have quietly concluded he simply does not have what it takes. Once that perception hardens, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to reverse.

That mood surfaced repeatedly during these elections. On doorsteps, canvassers reported that voters were still raising the government’s early decision to cut the winter fuel allowance — a policy that the government may wish to forget, but the public have certainly not forgiven.

But so too did Starmer himself, a man who insiders fear has suffered a fatal collapse in public confidence. Voters either despise him, distrust him, or simply pity him — three conditions that rarely end well for a prime minister.

This is the danger for Labour. Governments can survive unpopular decisions, but it is far harder to survive the creeping sense that voters no longer believe you instinctively stand on their side.

Eh, what now?

These elections offer less a single verdict and more a set of overlapping, sometimes contradictory, signals. Parties will spend days insisting they have “understood” the message. In truth, there are several messages here, and they do not yet add up to a coherent whole.

What is clear is that the old political map is breaking. Votes are fragmenting, loyalties are thinning, and the system is increasingly rewarding those who can turn instability into advantage.

For now, there is little to do but take stock. Step away from the noise, let the dust settle — and remember that, whatever this was, it is not finished yet — and it’ll all still be here on Monday morning. ■

About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead and a freelance political journalist and broadcaster.

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