The council elections on 1 May opened a fissure in the pattern of local government in England.
Everybody assumed that Reform UK was going to do well but the scale of its victory came as a surprise, with the party winning nearly 700 council seats from a standing start.
Much of the discussion among other political parties since has been about the potential longer-term implications of the Reform surge.
However, Nigel Farage’s party already has a significant role to play as the majority or largest group in no fewer than 14 of the 23 councils which had elections – not to mention its success in winning inaugural elections to two new mayoral combined authorities (Greater Lincolnshire, and Hull and East Yorkshire).
More than eight million electors (about a fifth of the English total) will now have a chance to judge the performance of Reform in office, and how it grapples with the funding and delivery issues that have plagued local government in recent years.
Many of the new Reform councillors will – unlike ex-MP Andrea Jenkyns, the new Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire – be political novices.
The Conservatives lost every council they were defending, including Buckinghamshire, which was retained by the party even in the dog days of the mid-1990s, when it held just 13 local authorities across the country.
The Conservatives have now been overtaken by the Liberal Democrats in terms of total councils controlled – 35 to their 40 – for the first time in nearly 30 years.
In five counties – Devon, Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire and Warwickshire – the number of Conservative councillors is now in single figures, in sharp contrast to the clear majorities secured four years ago.
Elsewhere, some consolation was provided by Paul Bristow, the former Conservative MP for Peterborough, who secured election as the third Mayor of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority.
Labour, too, had a poor election, notwithstanding that it was coming from a low base after 2021.
Like the Conservatives, it lost two-thirds of the seats it was defending and failed to replicate its performance at last year’s general election. Its huge majority then, based on a modest vote share, can in part be attributed to being the beneficiary of a split vote among its opponents. It won the odd seat in a similar way this time, but in general did not do as well as hoped.
In Cornwall, in a sign of this fickleness, a mere four Labour councillors were elected in the 87-member authority; last year, the party won four of the county’s six parliamentary constituencies.
Our calculation of the ‘national equivalent vote’ (NEV) at this election – a measure of how the various parties would have fared if these elections had taken place in every part of the country – puts Labour on just 19 per cent, by far the lowest we have ever recorded for the party.
Labour just hung on to local mayoralties in North Tyneside and Doncaster, even as it was swept aside in the latter by Reform at council level.
Labour also retained the West of England Combined Authority mayoralty, but there, too, is an example of the impact of our now multi-party system.
Helen Godwin came first with 25 per cent of the total vote on a turnout of 30 per cent. In other words, her mandate rests on the positive endorsement of fewer than one in 13 eligible electors.
The Liberal Democrats did little better in overall votes than four years ago but were more successful than Labour in retaining support from last July.
In the counties they targeted they, like Reform, gained seats from both Labour and the Conservatives.
They took over in Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and Shropshire – electing 29 additional councillors in Shropshire alone – and are now the largest party in Devon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. All are areas where new Liberal Democrat MPs were elected in 2024.
The Greens more than doubled their number of councillors, but their gains were spread wide. They are, however, now well placed to help the Liberal Democrats govern in Devon and Gloucestershire, if they choose.
One other interesting by-product of the impact of Reform was a reduction in support for Independent and community candidates in some areas.
In Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, for example, the local Independent group won a single division compared with all 10 in 2021; in Durham, non-party representation halved to 13 councillors.
All this of course brings next year’s local contests into sharper focus. Many will take place in what look to be Reform ‘deserts’. It is hard to see the party making much headway in London or in big conurbations such as Liverpool and Manchester.
On the other hand, the seven counties where elections were postponed this year are likely to go the polls and under current circumstances Reform will expect to repeat its success in parts of East Anglia (the base for three of its five MPs elected in 2024) and on the south coast.
In addition, several potentially Reform-friendly councils will have all-out elections following boundary changes, thereby enhancing the scope for a big turnover in seats.
Among the metropolitan boroughs, Barnsley, Sandwell, South Tyneside and Walsall have shown support for euro-sceptic parties in the past.
Unitary councils with all-out elections in 2026 include North East Lincolnshire (which voted 45 per cent Reform in the recent mayoral contest) and Thurrock in Essex, where UKIP came within 1,000 votes of grabbing the parliamentary seat in 2015.
Summary of council results for England 2025*
*compared to seats/councils won in 2021, taking boundary changes into account
County councils (14)
| Con | Lab | Lib Dem | Green | Reform | Ind/Oth | NOC | |
| Seats | -441 | -84 | 82 | 35 | 414 | -6 | – |
| Councils | -11 | – | 2 | – | 6 | – | 3 |
Unitary councils (8)
| Con | Lab | Lib Dem | Green | Reform | Ind/Oth | NOC | |
| Seats | -228 | -75 | 81 | 9 | 226 | -13 | – |
| Councils | -5 | – | 1 | – | 3 | – | 1 |
Doncaster
| Con | Lab | Lib Dem | Green | Reform | Ind/Oth | |
| Seats | -5 | -28 | – | – | 37 | -4 |
Councils controlled (England) 2025
| Con | Lab | Lib Dem | Green | Reform | Ind/Oth | No overall control |
| 35 | 99 | 40 | 1 | 10 | 8 | 123 |
Councillors (England) 2025
| Con | Lab | Lib Dem | Green | Reform | Ind/Oth |
| 4,117 | 5,402 | 3,050 | 845 | 776 | 1,870 |