Voters in 136 local authorities went to the polls on May 7 to elect more than 5,000 councillors. By the early hours of May 8, with around a third of councils declared, Reform had gained more than 300 seats, while Labour had shed over 220 and the Conservatives more than 100. Seven councils had already slipped out of Labour control, with more results still to come.
Reacting to the results, Prime Minister Keir Starmer ruled out stepping down, telling supporters in west London he took “responsibility” for the defeats but would not abandon his five-year mandate.
The vote was the largest electoral test since Starmer’s July 2024 general election landslide and was widely seen as a midterm verdict on his government. It also confirmed the rise of Reform UK, which took its first 10 councils at the May 2025 local elections and has since polled level with or ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives in most national surveys.
‘RED WALL’ BREAKTHROUGH
In Tameside, a metropolitan borough of Manchester, Labour retained 25 seats but lost 14, while Reform secured 19 after gaining 18. A similar pattern emerged in Redditch, south of Birmingham, where Starmer’s party fell to 13 councillors after losing five and Reform took eight.
In Tamworth, in central England, Labour slipped to 14 seats after losing one, while Reform climbed to 10 after gaining nine. The most striking result came in Hartlepool, in northeast England, where Labour and Reform tied on 15 councillors each, the former having shed six and the latter added 11.
Reform also took its first outright majority of the night in Newcastle-under-Lyme, in west-central England, and seized the east London borough of Havering, in what the party described as a historic realignment.
LABOUR HOLDS LONDON CITADELS
Labour held Reading (29 seats) and Plymouth (31), and retained the London boroughs of Ealing (46), Hammersmith & Fulham (38) and Merton (32). In Oxford, the party took 20 seats against the Greens’ 13. In Southampton, Labour fell seven seats to 24, with Reform on eight and the Greens and Conservatives on six each.
The Conservatives made gains at Labour’s expense in Wandsworth, south London, where the borough fell into no overall control with 29 Tory seats against 28 for Labour. The Tories also retook Westminster City Council from Labour, the first such gain of the night for the former governing party, and looked set to retain Harlow with 22 councillors and Broxbourne, in Hertfordshire, with a majority of 24.
The Liberal Democrats advanced too, taking control of Stockport, in Greater Manchester, and Portsmouth, on the south coast, while gaining seats in several London boroughs.
STARMER REFUSES TO STEP ASIDE
Speaking to local activists in west London, Starmer acknowledged the scale of the defeat but rejected calls to resign. “The results are tough, they are very tough, and there’s no sugarcoating it,” he said. “Days like this don’t weaken my resolve to deliver the change that I promised.”
The Prime Minister said the loss of Labour councillors “hurts, and it should hurt, and I take responsibility”, but insisted he would not “walk away and plunge the country into chaos”, according to the BBC.
He also pointed to the scale of his 2024 general election victory. “I led the party to that victory, which is a five-year mandate to change the country,” he said, confirming that he intended to serve out his term and stand again at the next general election.
Voices within the party have nevertheless called on him to stand aside. Daren Hale, leader of the Labour group in Hull, where the party lost seven seats, told the BBC: “I don’t wish Keir Starmer any ill, but I think that, ultimately, he is not the right person for the job to take us to the next level.”
Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour MP for Salford and a 2020 leadership contender, said the party had lost a number of really good councillors and candidates because of what it had been doing nationally on a range of issues.
Pressure on Starmer has built in recent months over the Mandelson scandal, the controversy surrounding his appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington despite the peer’s friendship with the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson was dismissed in September 2025 after emails detailing the relationship were published. In February 2026, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar publicly called for the Prime Minister’s resignation, the most senior figure in the party to do so.
FARAGE DECLARES REFORM ‘HERE TO STAY’
Farage said the country was witnessing a “historic shift in British politics”, traditionally dominated by Labour and the Conservatives. “We are now the most national of all the parties. We are here to stay,” he told reporters.
Founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party and rebranded in 2021, Reform UK has built much of its momentum on opposition to migration, criticism of net-zero climate policies and pledges to dismantle local diversity programmes. It secured its first councils in May 2025 and now appears to be consolidating that base into a national force.
In a social media post, the party claimed Labour voters were switching directly to it and that it was “breaking through the red wall in a way that neither pollsters nor pundits had predicted”.
DEVOLVED VOTES TO COME
The English contests coincided with elections to the 129-seat Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, in Edinburgh, and the debut of an expanded Welsh electoral system that will see the Senedd, in Cardiff, grow to 96 representatives. Counting in both devolved legislatures was due to begin on the morning of May 8.
Polling before the vote suggested Labour could lose control of the Senedd for the first time since devolution, with Reform and Plaid Cymru expected to advance. In Scotland, the governing Scottish National Party was projected to remain the largest party, with Labour and Reform contesting second place.
