The shape of England’s local government this morning is one that neither of the governing parties of the previous century would recognise.
Reform controls councils across a geography that would have seemed fantastical three years ago: the coalfields of Yorkshire and the North East; the post-industrial heartlands of the West Midlands; the prosperous Essex commuter belt; a London borough; the county halls of ancient Conservative shires. The party that did not exist at a local level in 2022 is now the second largest force in English local government.
Labour has lost control of towns it has governed since the age of Harold Wilson. The Conservatives have lost county councils they held through Thatcher and Major and every convulsion since. Both parties are being eliminated simultaneously, Labour in the post-industrial north and midlands, Conservatives in the shires, by the same insurgency operating through different electoral vintages in different places.
The political establishment consoled itself after 2025 with explanations about protest votes and mid-term difficulty and the challenges of governing. Those explanations have not survived 2026. The protest vote does not win fifty-eight of seventy-five seats in Sunderland. The mid-term difficult does not take Wakefield from a party that held it for half a century. Something more fundamental has changed, and the thirds system means that those councils still holding on by accumulated history will find out, in twelve months, what Wakefield found out on Thursday.
The tide is still rising. The next wave is already dated.
If this midterm voting pattern were repeated at a General Election (there may be a Labour Party recovery by then – but let us play along, assume there is no Labour Party recovery) it would produce a hung Parliament – with the Reform Party as the largest party in the House of Commons, but lacking a majority.
Would all the other parties then “do an Austria” – do what the other political parties did to the Freedom Party in Austria, combine to keep it out of office?
I do NOT believe so – I believe that faced with a choice of joining with Labour and the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists (who are not really nationalists – but there we go) the Conservatives would, instead, ally with the Reform Party.
But we need not theorize when we can observe.
Between them the Conservatives and the Reform Party now have a majority on Birmingham City Council (the 2nd city of England – it is Birmingham not Manchester “Andy” Burnham), will the Conservatives and the Reform Party cooperate – or will they behave like cats-in-a-sack?
We shall have to wait and see.
Birmingham really is the test – the test of whether votes can be translated into governing.
And it is a very difficult test – as Birmingham is in a terrible mess, what is happening there is awful, the people of the city are suffering.
Of course, even 38 seats (the combined Reform and Conservative seat number) is NOT enough for a MAJORITY on Birmingham City Council – so the situation is incredibly difficult.
Demographic change has been radical in Birmingham – with the new demographic (the new population) mostly voting for various leftist groups, both the Conservatives and Reform tried to counter that by reaching out to the new demographic, but with little success.
In London the Reform Party worked very hard indeed to reach out to the new population – but, again, with very limited success (ditto the Conservatives – who only just retook Wandsworth, as well as Westminster).
Yes, of course one can never know, but I am expecting quite the opposite & with considerable confidence. By 2029, things will be so bad economically & socially the Labour party might as well be radioactive. Time is *not* on their side.
That looks like Hemingway’s line about going bankrupt.
Paul:
I tend to think that any attempt by right wing parties to “reach out” to people who fundamentally hate them is doomed to failure.
I note that the areas where Reform has done particularly well, such a Newcastle, Sunderland, Essex and Suffolk can fairly be described as white. There is no point trying to persuade someone who votes for Gaza independents to vote for Reform instead. It cannot and will not happen.
Even in Greater Manchester, the Borough of Tameside, which voted Reform, is largely white. It is comprised of white working class people whose families were moved out of Manchester after the war to populate council estates built out in what then was the countryside. Central Manchester would be a complete waste of time for Reform, It is my home city, I was born there, and now when I visit I am not sure if I am in Karachi or Mogadishu. I just don’t recognise the place, and it leaves me feeling depressed. Not exactly fertile ground for the Reform candidate.
Dominic Frisby’s 2020 remix of 17 Million F*** offs (to the political class) had a dig at a load of the usual suspects, and included ‘…most of Hackney…’ (a London Borough).
Now Hackney has ditched Labour for the Greens, which is a bit like dropping the Viet Cong and opting for the Khmer Rouge. The Left regard Labour as a failure for not being sufficiently extreme.
Cool. So this election really heralds the death of centrism?
Buy ammunition.
Contra Paul, I don’t think it would be wise for Reform to cuddle up to the Conservatives, as a fair chunk of Reform’s support is composed of people who loathe the Tories.
À better tactic would be to stand down in a few seats where the Tory is not wholly execrable, and where Reform are not going to win anyway. Ideally they could stand down in a few more seats where they are bound to lose, if they can find a non execrable non Tory to back.
That way they can look cooperative to a cohort of Tory voters in seats they can win, and hope to win those seats by squeezing the Tory vote.
But an open deal is a dead letter.
And another thing. Imagine a successful Reform-Tory deal that delivers, say, 250 Reform MPs and preserves 120 Tory MPs. How many Tory MPs would actually support the bare minimum of a Reform programme :
1. Overriding the Lords over two years to deliver a real immigration stop and actual repatriation
2. Completing an actual Brexit
3. Defanging the civil service, ie reversing the flow of orders back to the traditional Minister => Bureaucrat direction
4. Restricting the judiciary’s “judicial review” Blair-In-Exile powers
Five ? Ten ?
Admittedly, I am speaking from the United States and not Britain, so take this as you will.
Mention was made of “pulling an Austria”. In the previous posting there was mention of taxing Americans who do business in Britain. I think that issued was settled in the 1700’s, but one way or another it may need to be reinforced. Then there is the matter of the bureaucratic speech codes enforced in Britain if one offends someone in government. No freedom of speech. Then there is the matter of your Islamic invaders functionally not being subject to your criminal laws.
That does not sound like a country that is free, under the rule of law, or under a Constitution, written or otherwise. A country that is not free may well “pull an Austria” and ignore the will of the people as expressed in an election. Indeed, there is another Austrian who may provide an example.
Subotai Bahadur
Without newspapers and TV plus the education complex that tells the voices of these persons this is not sustainable.
@Lee Moore – May 9, 2026 at 9:57 pm
His comment regarding not joining with the Conservatives is spot on.
The Conservatives had 14 years while both in power and with a majority during that time period to actually DO SOMETHING that the electorate wanted and were repeatedly demanding. They repeatedly failed to deliver anything that their election manifesto promised.
They failed to conserve anything except the failed policies and insane laws that the Labour government inflicted on the country and, as a recent comment on this blog said, they seemed to be determined to run a socialist system better than the socialists could. So the electorate had the choice between a Socialist, tending towards full blown Communism party as rapidly as it could and a Socialist party that was tending towards full blown communism but at a slower pace.
It is highly unlikely (as in you have more chance of shagging the Pope unlikely) that those “conservatives” that jumped ship and joined Reform and the ones in the Conservative party that remained in that party and whose instincts, policies and attitudes are still “the nice face of socialism” unreformed characters would be trusted by the electorate. More likely they will see it as a betrayal and “more of the same”, correctly categorising Reform as just the Conservatives with a new look and a paler blue coloured banner. The tail will wag the dog and Reform will be held to ransom by the Conservaitves and ex Conservatives.
I don’t have a solution to that dilemma but unless Reform can be seen to be robustly and determinedly “Right Wing” and are prepared to abandon and destroy the soft socialism of the Conservatives, then it will be … more of the same. This is, needless to say, not what people voted for.
There are Great White Sharks, Great White Elephants, even Great White Hopes but I fail to see any Great White Politicians anywhere.
In Scotland the terrible failure of the SNP was rewarded by them getting MORE seats.
In Wales the people turned from one socialist party (Labour) to another socialist party (the Welsh Nationalists – who are not Nationalists) – ignoring the failure of Big Government.
Birmingham (the second city of England) I have already covered – even if the Reform Party and the Conservatives work together, they do not have a majority. And London remains a mess – gains for both the Conservatives and Reform, but the left remain dominant.
The overall situation is very serious – much (indeed most) of the population of the United Kingdom is so wedded to leftist ideology that they ignore all rational arguments and empirical evidence.
I suspect we will not get to the 2029 General Election – but, even if we do, it may result in a “Progressive Coalition” which would mean the utter collapse of this nation.
Remember no nation has an automatic right to exist – and Britain is a net importer both of raw materials and food – AND of manufactured goods.
A country like Russia (the “Treasure House of Nations”) can survive bad (terrible) government – Britain can NOT.
Perry may have been wise to leave – and other wealthy people will, likely, do the same (leave).
As for the rest of the British population – we are not going to do well.
Local councils have little power to take decisions and act. Every function controlled by central government. People know where the true power lays and local elections are largely opinion polls on the government.
David Betz has commented on these elections. He believes the results are entirely predictable. Abandonment of the mainstream parties due to their illegitimate government over the last 20 years. Voting along ethnic lines. He believes that if Reform dont achieve anything or the government doubles down, this will push up the likelihood of direct action as formerly predicted.
Sectarian/ethnic voting is here. You could map the demographics of Birmingham from the map of the local election results. Thing is, white British working/lower-middle class is still the largest demographic….
Read it there, but I’ll respond here.
I think we’re coming to the end of an era. Since 1945 the path to a good life has been to go to university, get a white-collar office job and buy a house. Now though, that arrangement is breaking down. Certainly getting a university degree no longer guarantees a good job, housing is completely unaffordable and AI threatens a lot of white collar work. The future path to a good life will be different, but it is still too early to ascertain what it will be.
Even if Reform turn out to be a one parliament wonder after the next generation there major work will have already been done. No more Uniparty. Perhaps Brexit will have been done properly.
No, Paul, they lost six. Mind you, after the last five years I can’t imagine why anyone would give them the time of day, let alone vote for them.
The Nat candidate won in my constituency with a greatly reduced majority, so there’s that I suppose. Clutching at more straws, the Reform woman beat the LibDem into fifth place, and pretty handily at that. It’s only a decade or so ago that the LibDems looked set to take this seat from Labour, so that’s… interesting, at least.
And there are now elected Reform MSPs. It’s jointly the second-largest party in the assembly, matching Labour’s 17 seats. ‘Course, the SNP has 58, so let’s not get carried away. But still, it’s achieved something that the Tories never could.
Turnout was 53%. Bear that in mind when the Nats start claiming a “mandate” for their shenanigans.
Paul Marks said: I suspect we will not get to the 2029 General Election – but, even if we do, it may result in a “Progressive Coalition” which would mean the utter collapse of this nation.
What would collapse look like? What would it entail?
IrishOtter49:
I suspect that at first it will look like an Islamic 1984 with widespread poverty and hunger.
Subotai Bahadur
Islamic 1984…
So not even the ration of Victory Gin!
The one thing that gives me hope is that the enemies of freedom are a very dodgy coalition of Islamists, Greens and Marxists. Not a happy threesome.
NickM – nearly the same coalition that took Iran back in ’79. Almost 50 years ago. (OK, Sunni not Shia.)
So, maybe not just a one-hit wonder.
bobby,
Interesting point. I did say “hope”. Maybe a fool’s hope but still hope.