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1 month ago | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
The council elections on 1 May opened a fissure in the pattern of local government in England. Everybody assumed that Reform UK was going to do well but the scale of its victory came as a surprise, with the party winning nearly 700 council seats from a standing start. Much of the discussion among other political parties since has been about the potential longer-term implications of the Reform surge.
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1 month ago | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
The council elections on 1 May opened a fissure in the pattern of local government in England. Everybody assumed that Reform UK was going to do well but the scale of its victory came as a surprise, with the party winning nearly 700 council seats from a standing start. Much of the discussion among other political parties since has been about the potential longer-term implications of the Reform surge.
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2 months ago | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
Many of the Conservative councillors who face re-election on 1 May have benefited from events. In 2017, in the midst of a general election campaign, their party gained hundreds of seats. In 2021, the so-called ‘vaccine bounce’ helped the Conservatives, under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to win nearly two-thirds of all vacancies as they registered their best local election performance since 2008. Now things look rather different.
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2 months ago | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
Recent by-elections show a trend towards higher candidate numbers: almost half the contests last year had five or more candidates on the ballot. This year, that proportion has risen to almost 60 per cent, largely because Reform is now contesting more vacancies. Nominations for the 1 May elections, too, show Reform leading the way with 1,630 candidates for the 1,641 seats on offer, a 99.3 per cent contestation rate.
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Mar 18, 2025 | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
In 12 of the remaining 25 seats considered here, Reform candidates finished in second place. Conservatives enjoyed success against Labour and the Greens but internal divisions continue to undermine its recovery. Labour’s seven defeats brought its total net losses to 33 seats since coming to power nationally. The resignation as councillors of two recent additions to the House of Commons resulted in a two-seat vacancy in Medway’s Rochester East & Warren Wood.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
The final by-elections of 2024 only served to emphasise what we have been pointing out for months – that the electorate appears both volatile and disengaged. Labour lost four seats – two each to the Conservatives and Reform. Its share fell back in every case where a comparison with a previous election could be made; the Conservative share was also down in both cases where Reform was victorious.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
Electoral volatility continues unabated. From a total of 54 recent by-elections, 24 (44 per cent) changed hands. While turnover of Labour seats was greatest, others were being exchanged elsewhere. Labour faced 24 defences, losing half of them, including some where newly elected MPs had resigned as councillors. In the run-up to the May general election, we highlighted the proportion of losses suffered by the Conservatives. Labour’s rate over the past month exceeds that.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
Thirteen by-elections followed the resignation of Labour councillors after being voted into Parliament, with a net loss of nine seats. The Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats all profited, but notably, Reform UK gained a seat from Labour in Blackpool’s Marton ward. This was the party’s second local by-election gain, the first coming on general election day in a Conservative seat on East Riding of Yorkshire.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
Following a general election, especially one as dramatic as 4 July’s, council by-elections can provide evidence about voters in the new political environment. Labour’s victory owed less to its own performance – barely increasing its vote share and polling half a million fewer votes than it did in 2019 – and more to a 20-point decline in Conservative support, triggering the loss of 251 seats. The Conservatives have been reduced to 121 MPs – their lowest ever total.
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May 9, 2024 | 
lgafirst.co.uk | Professors Colin Rallings |Michael Thrasher
The 2 May local elections saw the Conservatives hit their lowest number of councillors and councils controlled for a quarter of a century. They slipped below the symbolic figure of 5,000 councillors in England and Wales and have an overall majority in just 54 out of 315 local authorities. This may all, of course, be inevitable for a party which has been in power nationally for so long, but it is only three years ago that they were still gaining both seats and councils.
