English Local Election Results Explained

Last night was a big night for British politics.Three elections took place simultaneously.The local elections, the Scottish elections, and the Welsh elections.As of the time of this video's release, we're only starting to get results from the local elections, but clear trends are already emerging.With big gains for Reform and the Greens, and big losses for Labour and the Conservatives, it seems that the elections are providing evidence for what many of us had already assumed.The two -party system in Britain is starting to collapse, and smaller third parties are on the precipice of real power.

Looking at the specifics, Labour have already lost control of a number of councils.In Tameside, they lost 16 out of the 17 seats they were defending, leading to a loss of control of the council for the first time in 47 years.In Wigan and in Hartlepool, Labour lost all the seats they were defending, while Reform has already gained control of Newcastle -under -Lyme, and made significant gains elsewhere.

So in this video, we're going to have a look at exactly what happened last night, the local election results that we've already got, and what this really means for both British political parties and the country.

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news.Now, we should explain off the bat that at the time this video was written, in the early hours of Friday morning, there had only been a handful of election results announced.Only around a third of the councils up for election have declared results, and only around 1 ,200 councillors have been elected, roughly a quarter of the total.No results in Scotland or Wales have yet been announced, as counting only really got started this morning.As such, in this video, we're going to focus on the results we did get.have, and we'll be making a separate video, released on this channel tomorrow morning, explaining the results from Scotland and Wales.

So make sure you're subscribed for that one.With that caveat out the way, let's get into it.Due to the weird way that council elections work in the UK, yesterday only around 136 of the 317 English councils were up for election, meaning that there are around 5 ,000 councillor positions up for election.In most cases, the last time these councils were up for election was back in 2022, when Labour were first in the polls and were averaging around 40%.As a result of this, most of the councils that were up for election yesterday were Labour controlled, 83 of the 136 up for election.Conversely, as the Tories were behind in 2022 and the Greens and Reform hadn't yet surged in the polls, these parties controlled very few of the councils up for election yesterday.

22, 1 and 0 respectively.However, given that Labour's national polling has collapsed since 2022 to under 20%, and given the surge in the polls for both Reform and the Greens, we've already seen some pretty big changes.It's obviously still early, but as of the time of recording, Reform have won 401 seats, the Conservatives 256, Labour 253, the Lib Dems 250, and the Greens 53.That's 399 seats gained for reform, while the Tories and Labour see pretty major losses.When it comes to control of councils though, Labour are still ahead, with 10 down 8.The Conservatives have 6 down

1. The Lib Dems control 5 up1. Reform have 2 up

2. And the Greens control no councils yet.So let's dive a little deeper into some of the council results that really set the mood music for Labour.Hartlepool was one of the first councils to announce their results, at around 2am, so it was seen as an early warning.of how the night might go, and it was a sign that things probably weren't going to go Labour's way.12 of the 36 seats on the council were up for election, and every single one of them went to reform.And as a result, Labour lost control of the council as a whole.

Later in the night, at just after 3am, the results from Wigan council came in.Wigan Council has been Labour for decades, and is seen as something of a Labour stronghold.It's also the place that Lisa Nandy, a significant figure in the Labour Party, represents in Parliament.Again, only a third of the council was up for election, and again, Labour lost all 22 of their councillors, with reform picking up 24.Now despite this, Labour will retain control of the council, because as two thirds of the council wasn't even up for election, it wasn't mathematically possible for them to lose control.Not long after this, at 4 .30am, Tameside Council's results came in, and, once again, it served to show how bad the night was likely to be for Labour.

19 of the 57 council seats were up for election, and Labour lost 16 of their 17 councillors, while Reform won 18.This means that while Labour still has a plurality of councillors overall, it no longer has a majority, and they will likely have to form a coalition administration.At this point in the night though, reform may have performed well, but they hadn't yet actually won a council.This changed with the results of Newcastle under Lyme, which were announced just before 7am.The whole council was up for election here, all 44 seats, and Reform were able to win 27 of them, giving them a majority on the council and depriving the Conservatives of control here.As you can hopefully see, Reform has made sweeping gains up and down the country, and Labour appear to have really struggled, even in areas they traditionally perform well in.

It's worth pointing out too that the Conservatives have also suffered at the hands of Reform, although this blow will be softened by the fact thatactually gained certain councils, notably Westminster, and have emerged as the largest party in others, notably Wandsworth.As of the time of writing, the Greens haven't won any councils, because most of their target councils declare their results this afternoon, but it's fair to say that they're on track to win a handful.Key councils to keep an eye on for them include Lambeth, Lewisham, Hackney and Waltham Forest in London, as well as Norwich.Anyway, back to the results we do have.How bad is this compared to the expectations that we went into the elections with?

Well, Labour are now projected to lose around 1 ,200 councillors, while the Conservatives are on track to lose around 500.Conversely, Reform are now expected to gain 1 ,400, the Greens are projected to gain around 600, and the Lib Dems about 170.If we compare that to the predictive results before the election, we can see that Labour were always expected to lose a lot of seats, around 1 ,000, while Reform and the Greens were predicting a decent number of wins, 800 and 350 respectively.This broadly tracks onto the projections we now have of what happened yesterday, although Labour have potentially done even worse than expected, and Reform even better.The biggest unknown at this point though is the green, so keep an eye out on the councils we mentioned earlier as further results come in this afternoon.So that's where we stand with the local elections at this point, but what does this mean for the government?

Well obviously this really isn't good news for Prime Minister Keir Starmer.Even prior to the local elections he was under a lot of pressure from the party.The polls continue to show Labour behind Reform, the Conservatives and even at times the Green Party.The Prime Minister is still massively unpopular and the Mandelson saga has continued to cast doubt on his judgement.The loss of so many councillors and councils will only pile more pressure onto him and embolden potential leadership challenges, including Angela Rayner, West Streeting andAndy Burnham.

There continues to be frenzied speculation about when and how each of these could challenge Starmer, and as a result of the election, this speculation is only set to continue.Whether Starmer can cling on will likely depend on how the rest of the results look, and whether the situation gets even worse for Labour in Scotland and Wales.As we mentioned at the start, we'll have another video out about that tomorrow morning, so make sure you're subscribed and keep an eye out for it.Regardless, there's much more to examine here, and we'll be doing so in the next issue of our magazine, Too Long, with a whole section dedicated to UK politics.There we'll be diving even deeper into these elections and their impact, with our most detailed analysis.We'll also be discussing whether the UK has become ungovernable, unpacking Stalmer's attempt to cosy up with the EU, as well as the state of the special relationship.

If you're interested in that, then you should subscribe using promo code SUMMER26.That way, you'll get 20 % off every copy as long as you stay subscribed.Plus, you'll get an additional £3 off your first copy, bringing the cost as low as £4 .99.old and many more.It's not all bleak though, we also discuss what unites us and how Britain could be fixed.Both issues of Too Long are in the store right now, along with the whole archive.

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