Britain’s local elections saw many left-wing votes shift to Zack Polanski’s Greens. But while the Labour Party’s support is plummeting, the big winners were Reform UK, as Nigel Farage conquers former Labour heartlands.
Speaking to the press early on Friday morning, the chairman of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, David Bull, described the incoming results — delivering a sweeping victory for his party — as a “referendum on the Labour Party.” Farage concurred, adding that the unprecedented collapse of Labour majorities across the country represented a “truly historic shift.”
As the dust settles, it’s hard to disagree. In Wales, First Minister Eluned Morgan became the first leader of a British administration to lose her seat while in office. Welsh Labour fought a lackluster campaign under her leadership after her Starmerite predecessor resigned following revelations that he had lobbied environmental regulators to ease restrictions on a company owned by a businessman convicted of dumping waste into Welsh waters — from whom he also happened to have accepted £200,000.
A similar disaster unfolded in Scotland, where Labour leader Anas Sarwar returned the party’s worst result since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. In northern England, Labour fared little better. In Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy’s Wigan, twenty-four of twenty-five seats went to Reform UK. Elsewhere the Reform insurgency cost Labour control of Tameside, Redditch, and Halton. In Hartlepool, too, Reform became the largest party, while extreme fragmentation between the Greens and Reform in Newcastle left Labour with just two seats.
The Mandelson Referendum
In nearly every part of Britain, the historic collapse was reflected in Labour’s ground operation. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s unashamed hollowing out of the party has created a level of disenfranchisement unseen even in Tony Blair’s worst days. Most local branches struggled to attract any volunteers whose salaries weren’t related to campaigning, while a social media strategy focused entirely on extreme personal nastiness toward rivals — the Labour right’s one trick — was enough to put off even the most loyal Labour members.
Those that dragged themselves door knocking were lucky to only encounter hissing antipathy, with many experiencing physical confrontation. A Tribune reader in Manchester reports being threatened with an industrial-strength water-pressure gun and getting called a “pedo lover,” while another canvasser in Newcastle described an “active hatred” that “made [Labour’s defeat in] 2019 seem like [Blair’s landslide in] 1997.”
Labour’s leadership, meanwhile, seemed largely oblivious. One member tells Tribune that Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy arrived to canvass in a London borough and was told his presence may negatively impact the vote. “If you know anyone who wants to shake David Lammy’s hand,” he replied, speaking in the third person, “they know where to find him.”
As the scale of the defeat became apparent, Jeremy Corbyn–era Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell called for broad discussion over how the party’s “worst nightmare” had come to pass. Many others delivered a harsh judgement on the leader.
Alongside the more than fifty MPs reportedly demanding Starmer’s resignation, former party chair Ian Lavery warned that “as Keir Hardie founded the Labour Party, another Keir may end it forever.” Leeds council chief whip Luke Farley remarked that “clearly, this leadership of the party is now coming to an end,” while MP Catherine West threatened to challenge Starmer for the leadership if no cabinet ministers moved against him by this Monday.
It would take a considerable craftsman to chisel the smile off the face of left-leaning voters contemplating Starmer’s difficulties. But beyond the schadenfreude that many will feel, these results are not pointing anywhere progressive.
In Lancashire, Preston’s socialist council fell to no overall control, weakening — though certainly not defeating — the redistributive radicalism of the “Preston Model.” In Salford, a council that has set no-cuts budgets, insourced social care services, pursued one of Britain’s most ambitious council house building schemes, and created one of the most hostile environments for rogue landlords, Labour shed thirteen of twenty-one seats, losing principled socialists such as deputy mayor and Unite union militant Jack Youd.
Yet the worst blow was in Wandsworth. In the London borough long considered a policy laboratory of Thatcherism, a dedicated Labour branch of socialists and community activists seized control in 2022 after a surprise Tory defeat. Once elected, they engaged in an ambitious program of council house building, neighborhood beautification, higher wages for local workers, expanded free school meals, and divestment from companies connected to Israeli war crimes. Despite the national picture, Wandsworth Labour defied expectations and won the popular vote. But though it held on to twenty-eight seats, the decisive twenty-ninth was lost by just sixteen votes.
The Greens, who doubled their vote share to 17.3 percent, deprived Labour of its majority and denied one of London’s most progressive councils another term in office. Now the socialist ambitions of councilors like Aydin Dikerdem have been voided for no gain.
But if Wandsworth was the base of Thatcherism’s cadre, then Lambeth occupies the same position in the Blairite imagination. The council Blair hailed as a “beacon of light” under Steve Reed’s stewardship is now dominated by the Greens. In Lewisham, where Labour bullied Councilor Liam Shrivastava out of the party for opposing genocide in Gaza, he returned as the Green mayor. In Manchester, where a developer-friendly council has treated local people with contempt for decades, eighteen of thirty-two seats went Green, knocking out senior Labour figures at town hall.
After Starmer
Bloodied noses are in abundance in the Labour camp. And yet the results still do not bode particularly well for the Left. Despite Zack Polanski claiming that “it’s very clear that the new politics is the Green Party versus Reform,” the overall picture inspires less confidence.
In London, downwardly mobile graduates and ethnic minority workers who have — with the exception of the Corbyn years — been treated contemptuously by Labour for much of this century have gone elsewhere in droves. The Greens’ willingness to run campaigns rooted in enthusiasm, idealism, and political conviction, rather than smears and fearmongering, contrasts sharply with Starmer’s Labour — and clearly inspired thousands of activists and voters. But outside the major cities, there are still too many places where the Greens’ impact has been minimal at best — or where, at worst, a split left-of-center vote has helped the Right advance.
Despite the obvious strengths of voting Labour and Green in different places, it’s hard to imagine any successful attempt to create an electoral pact. Any successor to Starmer will face pressures to appeal to the “Labour family,” while Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s upcoming appearance alongside Greens at an event later this month has already provoked fury among Starmerite officials who have corroded Labour’s base while retaining institutional control over the party. By the same stroke, many decent people who were shown the door by the Labour leadership have now found a welcome political home in the Greens and have little interest in returning to a party that treats them with open contempt.
As a sleep-deprived Dikerdem said in a video mourning the end of the progressive gains he and his comrades made in Wandsworth, this council is the “canary in the coal mine.” Is every Labour council as good as Wandsworth? Obviously not. But equally, no Labour administration could be as aggressively reactionary as a Reform one — whether at the local level or in Westminster.