Reform is winning approximately a third of all seats declared so far in English local elections, while Labour has lost nearly half of the seats it was defending, according to early results reported by the BBC on Friday morning.
The picture is still incomplete. Results from Scotland and Wales had not yet come in as of Friday morning, and many councils that have counted results only had a third of their seats up for election, which placed a ceiling on how many seats any party could gain or lose in a single night. Still, the trends visible in the results already declared are stark.
In Wigan, where cabinet minister Lisa Nandy holds the local parliamentary seat, Labour lost all 22 seats it was defending, every one of them to Reform. In Tameside in Greater Manchester, the patch of former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, Labour was defending 17 seats and lost 16, again all to Reform.
BBC political editor Chris Mason noted that while Reform is winning the most votes and taking a substantial number of seats, the party has so far won few whole councils outright. Because many of the councils counted first only had a portion of their seats up for election, the more common outcome has been Labour losing control without any single party taking over. Redditch, Hartlepool, Tamworth, Exeter, Tameside, Southampton and Wandsworth are among the councils that have moved to no overall control.
The broader political map shows votes splintering in five or more directions, with no party approaching a dominant position. Reform leads with roughly a third of the vote. Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party of England and Wales are all clustered in the teens as a percentage of the vote.
Labour's response has been to argue that mid-term local elections are unreliable predictors of general election outcomes. That argument has some historical basis, but Mason pointed out that the governing party did not lose seats in the comparable mid-term elections of 2011, 2015, 2017 or 2021. Labour is losing seats in significant numbers.
The Liberal Democrats made smaller gains but were able to claim control of Stockport and Portsmouth councils. The Green Party performed creditably in early results. The Conservatives, who held government until Labour's landslide general election win last year, were also losing ground in seats they had previously held.
How Labour's leadership handles the psychological weight of these results in the coming days is expected to shape internal party dynamics heading toward the next general election.
