UK Local Elections Held Amid Expectations of Heavy Losses for Starmer's Labour

On 7 May 2026, voters across 136 English local authorities went to the polls to elect more than 5,000 councillors in what forecasters called the most consequential set of local elections in a generation [1]. For Keir Starmer's Labour government, less than two years into its parliamentary supermajority, the elections represented a reckoning: pre-election projections pointed to the loss of between 1,500 and 1,900 council seats, which would mark Labour's worst local performance in fifty years [2][3].

The scale of the projected losses is driven partly by arithmetic. Most of the seats contested in 2026 were last fought in May 2022, when Labour was polling at roughly 35% nationally and riding a wave of anti-Boris Johnson sentiment fuelled by the Partygate scandal [4]. That 2022 baseline — in which Labour gained 108 seats while the Conservatives shed 487 — now acts as a high-water mark from which any retreat looks steep [5]. With Labour's national polling average sitting at just 19.1% by April 2026, the gap between the party's 2022 vote share and its current standing is the single largest such deficit any governing party has faced heading into a mid-term local cycle in modern British politics [6].

Source: UK Polling Aggregators

Data as of Apr 30, 2026CSV

What's at Stake: The Numbers

The elections cover 5,066 council seats across England, along with six local authority mayoral contests [1]. Labour is defending just over half of the total — approximately 2,557 seats — and projections from PollCheck's ward-level model suggested the party could retain as few as 26% to 50% of them [2].

Analysts at the University of Plymouth's Elections Centre and UK in a Changing Europe published benchmarks for interpreting the results. For Labour, losing 800 seats would constitute a "good" night; 1,000 losses would be "okay"; 1,500 losses would be "bad"; and anything above 2,000 would be "terrible" [3]. Stephen Fisher, professor of political sociology at Oxford, forecast 1,900 losses — firmly in "terrible" territory [2]. PollCheck's central estimate projected 57 of the 136 councils changing political control, with 55 councils falling into no overall control — a sign of the extreme fragmentation now characterising English local government [7].

Source: UK in a Changing Europe / PollCheck

Data as of May 6, 2026CSV

The geographic pattern of projected losses tells its own story. Labour was expected to lose control of metropolitan boroughs in its northern English heartlands — Wigan, Sunderland, Barnsley, Gateshead, Wakefield, and Calderdale — to Reform UK [2][7]. In London, traditionally safe Labour territory, the party faced the prospect of losing Camden, Lewisham, Hackney, Islington, Haringey, Southwark, and Lambeth to the Greens and Liberal Democrats [2].

Reform UK: From Zero to Front-Runner

The most striking feature of the 2026 local elections is the scale of Reform UK's ambition and projected gains. The party fielded nearly 4,800 candidates, contesting 99.3% of available wards — far exceeding the 80% coverage that UKIP achieved at the height of its popularity in 2013-2014 [8][9].

Reform's trajectory in local government has been remarkably rapid. The party's predecessor organisations — UKIP and the Brexit Party — had a patchy record in council elections. UKIP won more than 160 seats in the 2014 local elections but suffered near-total collapse in 2017, losing over 140 seats as its voters returned to the Conservatives [10]. By 2023, UKIP had lost all remaining council representation [10]. The Brexit Party never contested local elections seriously.

Reform itself entered local government only in 2025, when it won 677 seats and took control of 10 councils — the first time any party in the Reform/UKIP lineage had controlled a local authority [11]. Nigel Farage committed over £5 million to the 2026 campaign, framing it as a "double or quits" test of the party's ability to build a permanent local government presence [9].

PollCheck's central estimate projected Reform winning approximately 1,580 council seats, which would make it the largest single-party gainer and give it projected control of county councils in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk [7]. However, analysts cautioned that the first-past-the-post system has historically punished parties with evenly spread support. In 2013, UKIP won more than a fifth of all votes cast but secured only a tenth of the seats [8]. Reform faces a similar structural challenge: at the 2024 general election, it won a higher national vote share than the Liberal Democrats but took just five parliamentary seats compared to the Lib Dems' 72 [8].

The Five-Party Fracture

The April 2026 polling averages revealed an electorate more fragmented than at any point in modern British history. Based on an average of ten polling companies, Reform UK led on 26.4%, followed by Labour at 19.1%, the Conservatives at 18.6%, the Greens at 15.6%, and the Liberal Democrats at 12.2% [6]. The combined Conservative-Labour vote share had collapsed to 37.7%, down from 57.4% at the July 2024 general election — itself a historically low figure [6].

Source: Electoral Reform Society / Polling Averages

Data as of Apr 30, 2026CSV

This five-way fragmentation has different implications depending on geography. In northern post-industrial towns and Leave-voting shires, Reform is the primary challenger to both Labour and the Conservatives. In southern England, the Liberal Democrats are squeezing the Conservatives. In inner London and university cities, the Greens are the main beneficiary of Labour's decline [2][7]. The Greens were projected to win around 503 seats — a record for the party — with potential breakthroughs in Hastings, Norwich, and Sheffield [7].

Who Is Leaving Labour — and Why

Labour's vote erosion is not uniform. Three distinct demographic streams are driving the party's decline, each motivated by different grievances.

Working-class voters in post-industrial towns have shifted toward Reform UK in significant numbers. This pattern, visible in by-elections and the 2025 local elections, represents a continuation of the realignment that began under Jeremy Corbyn and accelerated with Brexit [11]. The February 2026 by-election in Gorton and Denton — a constituency combining working-class white and Muslim communities in Greater Manchester — saw Labour lose to the Greens, in a result interpreted as evidence that both demographic groups have viable alternatives [12].

Muslim voters represent Labour's most dramatic single-group collapse. Support among British Muslims has fallen from a historic baseline of roughly 80% to just 33%, according to polling ahead of the 2026 elections [13][14]. The decline is sharpest among younger Muslims: support among 18-24 year olds has dropped below 30%, with the Gaza conflict cited as the dominant voting issue [13]. Six in ten Muslim voters in battleground councils said they would back pro-Gaza independent candidates specifically to prevent Labour from winning [15]. At the 2024 general election, Labour's vote share fell by 21 percentage points in wards where more than 20% of residents are Muslim, and by 33 percentage points in majority-Muslim areas [14].

The government's handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict has been the proximate trigger. Labour Party members voted at the September 2025 conference to recognise that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, but Starmer argued the question should be determined by international courts [16]. While the government recognised Palestine as an independent state in September 2025, critics within Labour's base viewed this as insufficient [16].

Younger renters and cost-of-living-squeezed voters in metropolitan areas have drifted toward the Greens and Liberal Democrats. The Green Party's rise to 15.6% nationally reflects its strength among voters under 40 in cities where housing costs and climate policy are dominant concerns [6].

The Policy Ledger

Several specific policy decisions since Labour's July 2024 general election victory have been linked to the party's polling decline.

The winter fuel payment cut, announced in July 2024 — within weeks of taking office — removed the universal winter heating subsidy for pensioners, means-testing it to only those receiving pension credit [17]. The decision was widely criticised across Labour's own backbenches and among trade unions as an unnecessary assault on a vulnerable constituency.

The two-child benefit cap — a Conservative policy limiting child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in a family — became an early flashpoint. Starmer initially refused to scrap it, suspending seven Labour MPs who voted against the government's position in July 2024 [18]. The reversal eventually came in November 2025, with Starmer calling the cap a "failed social experiment," but the delay cost the government credibility with anti-poverty campaigners and left-wing supporters [19].

These decisions occurred against a backdrop of persistent inflation. UK consumer price inflation peaked at 7.9% in 2022 and remained elevated through 2023 at 6.8% before easing to 3.3% by 2024 [20]. The cost-of-living crisis shaped voter expectations of a new Labour government, and the perception that Starmer prioritised fiscal restraint over immediate relief eroded the party's coalition.

Source: World Bank Open Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2024CSV

Historical Precedent: How Bad Is This, Really?

Mid-term local election losses are a routine feature of British politics. The question is whether Labour's projected losses fall within the normal range or represent something structurally different.

The most frequently cited precedent is the 1995 local elections, when John Major's Conservative government lost over 2,000 council seats amid the fallout from Black Wednesday and internal divisions over Europe [21]. Labour, then in opposition under Tony Blair, won 48% of the vote — a record for any party in local elections [21]. The Conservatives went on to lose the 1997 general election in a landslide.

In 2004, Tony Blair's Labour government was punished for the Iraq War, finishing third in vote share behind the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and losing control of traditionally Labour councils including Newcastle and Leeds [22]. Yet Labour won the 2005 general election with a reduced but still comfortable majority.

The 2021 local elections broke the pattern entirely: the governing Conservatives, buoyed by the COVID vaccine rollout, gained 234 councillors and 11 councils, while Labour lost 326 councillors and control of 10 councils [23]. This anomaly underscores that mid-term results are not mechanistic predictors of general election outcomes.

The steelman case for Labour's eventual recovery rests on these precedents. Governing parties routinely lose between a fifth and a third of their council seats at mid-term [3]. The next general election is not required until 2029, giving Starmer's government time to recover if economic conditions improve or if the opposition vote fragments at a general election in ways that benefit Labour under first-past-the-post.

However, several factors distinguish 2026 from previous mid-term cycles. Labour's national vote share has halved in under two years — a rate of decline without precedent for a governing party. The two-party system itself appears to be fracturing, with five parties within 14.2 percentage points of each other [6]. And unlike in 1995 or 2004, the main beneficiary of the governing party's unpopularity is not the official opposition but a populist insurgent party — Reform UK — whose voters may not transfer to the Conservatives at a general election the way UKIP's eventually did.

The International Picture

Labour's difficulties mirror a broader pattern among centre-left and centrist governing parties across the developed world.

In France, Emmanuel Macron's centrist Renaissance party was crushed in the 2024 European Parliament elections, winning just 15% of the vote — less than half of Marine Le Pen's National Rally at 33% [24]. In Germany, the SPD lost roughly a third of its support during its time in the governing coalition, contributing to the collapse of Olaf Scholz's "traffic light" coalition [24]. In both cases, the beneficiaries were parties of the populist right.

Political scientists have used the term "Pasokification" — named after the Greek socialist party PASOK, which collapsed from governing-party status to single-digit vote shares — to describe this phenomenon [25]. The pattern has repeated across Europe: Finland's Social Democrats fell from 19.1% to 16.5% between 2011 and 2015; Croatia's SDP lost 19 seats after a single term in government [25].

The common thread across these cases is a post-pandemic, high-inflation environment in which centre-left parties that promised material improvement struggled to deliver it while maintaining fiscal credibility. The cost-of-living crisis created expectations that incoming progressive governments could not meet, and voters punished them for the gap between promise and performance.

Whether this constitutes a structural crisis for social democracy or a cyclical trough remains debated. The Australian Labor Party, elected in 2022, has maintained more stable polling than its European counterparts, suggesting that country-specific factors — including the state of the opposition and the electoral system — matter as much as global trends.

What the Results Will Mean

The 2026 local elections are, formally, about who runs local councils — who sets council tax, maintains roads, collects rubbish, and manages social care. But in practice, they function as Britain's most comprehensive mid-term opinion poll: thousands of individual contests aggregated into a national verdict on the government's direction.

For Labour, any result in the range of 1,500 or more seat losses would intensify pressure on Starmer's leadership and raise questions about the party's strategic direction. The loss of historically safe councils in northern England to Reform UK would represent a symbolic rupture comparable to Labour's loss of the "Red Wall" parliamentary seats in 2019.

For Reform UK, the elections are a test of organisational capacity. Winning hundreds of council seats is one thing; governing effectively in town halls is another. UKIP's rapid local-government implosion after 2014 — caused in part by a lack of experienced councillors and internal discipline — is a cautionary precedent [10].

For the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch, the elections present a different dilemma. The party is being squeezed from both flanks — by Reform in Leave-voting areas and the Liberal Democrats in the south — and any result that confirms this pincer dynamic will raise existential questions about the party's future electoral coalition [7].

And for the Greens and Liberal Democrats, strong performances could consolidate their positions as the primary alternatives to Labour in urban and suburban England respectively — reshaping the competitive dynamics of British politics for the remainder of this parliament.

The results will begin to be declared from approximately 1am on Friday 8 May, with most councils reporting through Friday and the final tallies expected by 9 May [1].