A new government’s first local elections are typically a tricky affair. In opposition, they likely benefited from years of gains in local elections as the electorate became increasingly unhappy with the incumbent government, and this is the day that those gains begin to go into reverse. In 1980, Margaret Thatcher lost 484 councillors. Tony Blair lost 88 in 1998. Between them, the coalition parties lost 662 (admittedly thanks to the Liberal Democrat collapse) in 2011.

The local elections held in England yesterday should have been different. The last time most of those seats were contested was in 2021, amid the vaccine bounce, and they are in historically conservative parts of the country. The Conservatives won 1,182 of the seats that were up for grabs yesterday, to Labour’s 336, on the same day that Labour lost the Hartlepool by-election – a seat Labour had held since 1974. Under normal circumstances, Labour should have made huge gains yesterday. But these are not normal circumstances.

The difference, in short, is Reform UK. Reform was a nonentity in 2021 polling at around 2% nationally. In comparison, the Conservatives were on 43% and Labour were on 34%. By last year’s General Election the Conservative vote had collapsed to 24% and Reform’s had grown to 14%. Today, the three parties are neck-and-neck in the polls. Taking the average of polls conducted in the past week, Reform leads Labour by 26% to 24%, with the Conservatives on 21%.

Read more by Mark McGeoghegan

At the time of writing, I don’t know the exact results of these elections. Voters are going to the polls as I write. But we have a clear idea of the direction the results will likely point in. In the areas with council elections, More in Common........

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