The May local elections are upon us again, promising to be one of the most significant in recent memory. The two-party system that has defined British politics for generations looks close to shattering completely. A year of polling has seen Reform, the Conservatives, Labour and the Greens all clustered in the twenties simultaneously, a fragmentation without modern precedent. On 7 May, the ballot box is likely to confirm that picture.
The Conservatives will be braced to weather another bruising night and limit the damage, something they have grown accustomed to over the past five years. But these elections represent a different order of reckoning for Labour. Last year’s local elections largely bypassed their heartlands. This year’s does not. With over 2,100 seats to defend across northern metropolitan boroughs, London and the Midlands, all won when Labour polled 35% during Partygate, and now defended on around 20%, there is nowhere to hide. Some forecasters project losses of up to 2,000 councillors, enough to strip Labour of its status as the largest party in local government.
Reform and the Greens: The Twin Insurgencies
If 2025 was the year Reform arrived, 2026 is the year it wants to govern. Having taken control of 10 councils and delivered nearly 700 new councillors across England last May, Farage’s party now turns its full attention to Labour territory. Barnsley, held by Labour since the council’s formation, is a genuine Reform target. So are Sunderland and Bradford, where all-out elections put every seat in play. In the south, six county councils including Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk vote for the first time since 2021, when Reform barely existed as a force. Projections have the party taking outright control of all three, a historic realignment in England’s rural heartlands. The caveat is governing. Reform’s newly elected 2025 councillors discovered quickly that local authorities were already cut to the bone by years of austerity, making their promised efficiency revolution look considerably thinner in practice than it sounded on the doorstep.
On the left, the Greens under Zack Polanski have surged nationally and are contesting more wards than in any previous local election. The Gorton and Denton by-election earlier this year crystallised their momentum: Hannah Spencer won the seat, beating Reform into second and leaving Labour in third in what was once considered safe red territory. Their strongest ground is inner London and university cities such as Norwich and Sheffield, where progressive voters disillusioned with the government’s record are looking for an alternative that is not Farage. The challenge of first-past-the-post remains real, but the Greens are getting better at concentrating their support where it matters. Another key challenge for the Greens as they draw in many Corbyn voters is being able to get them to vote in sufficient numbers, an issue Corbyn’s Labour Party faced in 2017 and 2019.
London
Labour’s current control of 21 of London’s 32 boroughs is the most of any party in the capital’s history. That high-water mark now looks precarious. Reform is mounting a serious push in outer London, targeting Havering, Barking and Dagenham, Bexley and Bromley, where economic anxiety and a sense that public services have long since retreated runs deep. Farage has claimed a genuine chance in half a dozen boroughs. In the west and south, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are squeezing Labour’s more moderate vote. Even Lewisham, one of the strongest Labour areas in the country, is being treated as a council the party must fight to hold. The Greens are expected to make significant inroads in inner London. Some polling would leave Labour in control of only two councils, representing a collapse in a city it has dominated for three decades, while the Greens would hold the most London councils of any party.
Wales
Wales is the birthplace of the Labour movement, home of Aneurin Bevan, and the nation where the party has led government without interruption since devolution began in 1999. That unbroken run is now all but over before voting even starts. Polling for months has shown Labour finishing a distant third in the Senedd elections behind both Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, with some polls even suggesting they’ll have fewer seats than the Greens. The new proportional voting system for the Senedd means Reform’s strong Welsh polling will translate into actual seats in a way the old system would have denied them. For Welsh Labour, some time in opposition may have been preferred following controversies and the stagnation that comes with long runs in power. The nightmare facing Labour though is becoming an irrelevancy even in coalition discussions.
Starmer on the Brink
Whatever happens on the night of 7 May, the political conversation of 8 May will centre on one man. Sir Keir Starmer entered Downing Street less than two years ago with a parliamentary majority of historic proportions but with a weak foundation, the lowest ratio of vote share to seats in recent history.
He now faces the prospect of presiding over the worst local election result the Labour Party has ever recorded. Polling from JL Forecasters project a net loss of around 1,900 Labour councillors, and separately, YouGov’s March tracker suggested just 22% of Britons viewed the Prime Minister favourably, against 70% unfavourably, a net rating of minus 48.
While conversations around leadership challenges from the likes of Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner, there is no real stomach to replace him currently as some ambitious politicians may view the current premiership as a poisoned chalice. This though could change depending on how badly the local elections go.
Starmer’s defenders argue, not without merit, that many of the forces battering the government are structural rather than personal. The legacy debt from the Truss mini-budget, a decade and a half of stagnant growth and the fiscal pressure of rising defence commitments would land on any successor with equal force, while seismic geopolitical events are happening not once in a generation or once in a year but once every few months.
Elections are fought on sentiment, not structural analysis though. The sentiment on 7 May, from the red wall towns of the north to the inner boroughs of London, is that the electorate is not waiting any longer. The question is not whether Labour loses badly. It is whether Keir Starmer is still Prime Minister by the end of the summer.
