In little more than a year, the pattern of local government in England has been upended.
Before the 2025 local contests, Conservative and Labour councillors together represented some 70 per cent of local electors. Two electoral cycles later, that figure has plunged to less than 45 per cent.
Reform UK, whose councillors could once be numbered on the fingers of one hand, now represent nearly 20 per cent of the electorate.
There is a similarly stark fragmentation at local authority level.
Before the 2025 elections, the Conservatives had a majority in more than 50 councils and Labour enjoyed the same advantage in exactly 100.
Today, the Conservatives and Reform both control 24 with Labour tenure having shrunk to 56.
The Liberal Democrats lead the way in 41 councils, with half of all authorities – 158 out of 316 in England – under no overall control, or ‘hung’.
Unless politics changes dramatically in the next 12 months, the all-out elections due next year in many unitary and district councils will further exacerbate that trend.
Some of the results this year were spectacular, but there were real variations in different parts of the country.
In the six county council elections held over from 2025, the Conservatives lost more than three-quarters of all the seats they were defending and all five counties where they enjoyed a majority.
Reform gained Essex and Suffolk, and would probably have taken Norfolk too but for the intervention in Great Yarmouth of candidates supporting local MP Rupert Lowe, who was suspended by Reform a year ago.
In West Sussex, the Liberal Democrats matched Reform, and in Hampshire alone do the Conservatives narrowly remain the largest party.
Elsewhere, the spotlight was firmly on Labour, who were attempting to retain half of all seats falling vacant across the country. With 16 of the 32 metropolitan boroughs choosing the entire council (14 following boundary changes), the jeopardy for the party was only heightened.
Like the Conservatives in the counties, Labour lost fully three-quarters of these seats amid some dramatic turnovers.
Eight boroughs went straight from the Labour to Reform column, four of them – Barnsley, Gateshead, Sunderland and Wakefield – having been Labour since the councils were first created in 1974.
In Wakefield, Labour fell from 56 out of 63 seats to return just a single councillor. In Featherstone, one of the wards in Wakefield not subject to a boundary change and a name long-famous in rugby league circles, a third fewer people voted Labour than in 2022, despite nearly 1,000 more ballots being cast.
There is some dispute about how far previous Labour voters are likely to have moved directly over to Reform. However, with many local authorities seeing turnout levels increasing well above the long-term average, it is clear that electors were keener than for some time to register their dissatisfaction with politics as normal.
It is not without significance that many of the places which posted the biggest swings to Reform also voted heavily to leave the EU at the 2016 referendum.
Sky News analysis showed the average Reform vote share at more than 45 per cent in places that voted decisively for Brexit but pegged back at below 20 per cent in Remain territory.
That comparative shunning of Reform can be seen in the results in some of the unitary and district councils.
The shadow authorities of East Surrey and West Surrey both returned substantial Liberal Democrat majorities, ready to slip into place when they go ’live’ in 2027, with Reform winning just 14 of the 162 available seats.
The Liberal Democrats came under no pressure in most of its long-term fiefdoms like Cheltenham, Watford, and Winchester, adding Portsmouth and Wokingham to its tally as compensation for falling short in Hull.
In Hastings and in Norwich, majority Green councils were returned for the first time, with Exeter, Cambridge and Oxford also registering Green gains.
But it was in London, once again cementing its reputation as a place apart politically, that the Greens really came into their own.
Reform’s one victory in the capital came in Havering, where the defection to the party of Romford Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell served to undermine many of the Residents’ Association councillors who had long-formed a substantial bloc in the council.
However, predicted Reform success in two boroughs on the Kent border – Bexley and Bromley – came to naught. Havering apart, Reform had just 40 councillors elected in London as a whole out of more than 1,750 vacancies.
The Conservatives actually made a modest net gain of seats in London.
However, even their much self-publicised achievement in winning back Westminster and depriving Labour of control in Barnet and Wandsworth was more a function of them losing a smaller share of the vote than their rivals rather than an explicit increase in their own support.
Labour’s real nemesis in London was the Greens.
Attacking Labour from the left and particularly prospering in areas with younger and often more ethnically diverse populations, they took the mayoralties and comfortable majority control in Hackney and Lewisham.
In Lewisham, Labour was reduced from all 54 seats to 14 as the Greens snapped up three-quarters of the vacancies. In Hackney, the Green mayoral vote jumped from 17 per cent in 2022 to 47 per cent now, on a turnout up more than 7 percentage points.
The Greens also took a narrow overall majority in Waltham Forest and came agonisingly close in Haringey.
In London and some other parts of the country, Labour also suffered inroads from candidates opposing the Government’s policies in the Middle East.
It lost further ground to Aspire in Tower Hamlets, and the Newham Independents – endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party – took 24 out of 66 seats and came second in the mayoral contest.
In Blackburn and Bradford, similarly orientated candidates helped deprive Labour of its decade-long majorities.
Labour’s problem and a general feature of the new multi-party politics can be encapsulated in the very final result to be declared. This was in the Glebe Farm and Tile Cross ward of Birmingham City, where council leader John Cotton and a Labour colleague lost their seats.
That the two victors came from Reform and the Workers Party of Britain demonstrates how Labour was often caught in a pincer between left and right.
The outcome also highlights the small percentage of the vote often now needed to win.
Taking the top votes of each party, the Reform winner received less than 30 per cent of the total vote and the Workers Party prevailed with just a quarter of the total. Once the level of turnout is considered, neither has a mandate supported by more than one in 10 of the ward electorate.
Many similar examples can be found across the country and should temper any hyperbole about one or another party carrying all before it.
In truth, the electoral system is delivering an exaggerated reward to whoever comes top in a particular area, with the electorate as a whole split – as evidenced by the polls and the detailed results of these elections – in fairly even measure across five parties each clamouring for attention.
Nothing can be certain, but there is currently little sign that local government will continue to provide other than a case study of this new electoral politics.