Sir John Curtice
Professor of Politics, Strathclyde UniversityBritain’s foremost polling expert argues that May 7 will expose Labour to losses from both Reform and the Greens across England, and nationalists in Wales and Scotland, making this midterm contest a crucial test of whether the Party can withstand an increasingly fragmented electoral landscape.
The local and devolved elections that will take place on May 7 will be the biggest mid-term test of the popularity of the parties in this Parliament. Not only are there elections to the Devolved Parliament in Scotland and the Senedd in Wales, but there are local elections in most of urban England, including in all the London boroughs and in most of the councils located in and around the biggest cities outside the capital. They are taking place, of course, at a time of unprecedented electoral turbulence.
A Fragmented Political Landscape
Reform have been continuously ahead in the polls since last spring, consistently averaging at or around 30 per cent. Labour (currently on 20 per cent) and the Conservatives (19 per cent) have persistently been struggling to scrape together two-fifths of the vote between them. Since the election of Zac Polanski, the Greens have been averaging around 13 per cent and challenging the Liberal Democrats for fourth place. Never before has British politics looked so fragmented.
Labour seemingly have most to lose on May 7. In the English local elections, around two-thirds of the seats up for grabs this year were previously contested four years ago, a very different world politically from now. Boris Johnson was still Prime Minister, though by this stage, wounded by ‘partygate’. Labour, on 40 per cent, were ahead of the Conservatives in the polls by six points. The Liberal Democrats were still shuffling along on just 10 per cent, while both the Greens (6 per cent) and Reform were still minnows. Although, as is typically the case in English local elections, the Liberal Democrats performed better than their current Westminster poll rating, the BBC estimated that Labour’s performance was the equivalent of the Party being five points ahead of the Conservatives across Britain as a whole. In short, Labour is defending a relatively good performance from the last time most of the seats up for grabs this year were previously contested.
Labour on the Defensive in England
Meanwhile – in sharp contrast to last year’s county council elections – this year’s local elections take place predominantly in what would normally be regarded as safe Labour territory. Nowadays, London is the Party’s strongest region anywhere in Britain. In 2022, the Party won an overall majority on 21 of the 32 borough councils and nearly two-thirds of all the seats in the capital. Labour is currently in charge of 25 of the 32 metropolitan councils in and around England’s major provincial cities where voters are going to the polls. Even in the mostly smaller councils elsewhere where there are elections this year, Labour is in sole charge of more administrations (32) than any other party. Across all the 136 English councils where a ballot is taking place, the Party is defending over half of the 5,000 seats being contested.
Green Challenge in London
With its current support standing at just half of what it was four years ago, Labour is clearly at risk of suffering serious losses. It probably faces a battle on two fronts – one with Reform, the other with the Greens. Reform are primarily dependent on the support of those who back Brexit. Remain voting London is therefore unlikely to be fruitful territory for Nigel Farage’s Party. However, the capital is full of the kind of young middle-class professionals among whom the Greens are polling especially well, seemingly at Labour’s expense. Much of the capital also has a substantial Muslim population, among whom Labour lost a lot of ground in 2024.
Moreover, the Greens already have a track record of good local election performances in the city – in 2022, the party won 12 per cent of the vote even though it only contested half the wards. Labour’s one hope is that, because it has a large majority in many wards, even if the Greens do well in votes, they might not do so well in terms of seats.
Outside London, however, Labour do have to worry about Reform. Unfortunately for Labour, because of ward boundary changes, all the seats are up for grabs for a number of key councils the Party currently controls but which voted heavily for Brexit in 2016 – including Barnsley, Sunderland, and Wakefield. Reform will at least be hoping to deny Labour control of these citadels. Meanwhile, in Bradford, the Party’s grip on a council that includes many Muslim voters is already not that strong.
Trouble in Wales and Scotland
Wales, of course, is very much traditional Labour territory. Labour has won the largest share of the vote at every general election bar one (1931) since 1922. The Party has been either the sole or the principal party in the Welsh Government ever since the advent of devolution in 1999 – even though, for example, at the time of the last Senedd election five years ago (in May 2021), the Party was struggling in the Britain-wide polls. Following a decision to move to a new system of proportional representation, it was already quite likely the Party would win well under half the seats this time. Even so, polls of the Senedd election, while limited in number and somewhat divergent in their findings, all agree that Labour are running in third place behind both Plaid Cymru and Reform.
True, Labour’s one-time dominance of Scottish politics is long lost in the mists of time. The Party came a miserable third at the last Holyrood election in May 2021. However, after coming first in Scotland in the 2024 election and sweeping aside the SNP in most constituencies, there were high hopes the Party’s Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, would be able to end 19 years of SNP rule in Edinburgh in May. However, the polls suggest that in the wake of the unpopularity of the UK Government, the Party is potentially heading for third place once again.
A Storm for the Two-party System
However, the Conservatives cannot afford to be complacent. They have their vulnerability too. The Party will be defending over 1,300 seats. Meanwhile, thanks to the reversal of the Government’s original decision to postpone some of the elections, elections will now take place for six shire county councils where the elections were postponed last year. In each case, the seats being defended were last contested in 2021, when the Conservatives were riding high in the polls. And in the similar county council elections last year, the Party lost control of every single council it was trying to defend, not least because of heavy losses to Reform. Meanwhile, the Party seems set to slump from second to a record low fourth place in both Scotland and Wales.
Britain’s two traditional parties of government are likely to be severely tested on May 7. Much may yet rest on their ability or otherwise to withstand the coming electoral storm.
This article features in the new edition of ChamberUK. Our parliamentary journal.
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