Dem
47
GOP
53
Regular correspondent A.B. in Lichfield, England, UK sent in a report on the recent local elections in the U.K., which we wanted to pass along. The floor is yours, A.B.:
While the recent election results in Canada and Australia appear to strengthen the belief that there's mileage to be had in openly opposing Donald Trump's worldview and MAGA policies in English-speaking (with apologies to my Quebecois friends) democracies, the recent May 1 local elections here in the U.K. perhaps give some pause for thought.
Local elections in the U.K. are staggered, so there are local elections most years, sometimes taking place alongside elections for the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments and the Northern Ireland assembly, sometimes not. This year's elections took place in England only, and contested 1,641 council seats across 24 local authorities, alongside elections to choose six regional mayors (note that in England 'mayor' doesn't just apply to the elected leader of a city, but rather to any elected leader of a local government with a directly elected executive, urban or rural).
These local elections were the first major electoral test in this country since the 2024 general election that brought Sir Keir Starmer's government to power. They took place in a political climate where the Conservative Party that led the country for 14 years until last year is still deeply unpopular after the disasters of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, but where the Labour Party government elected last year is increasingly considered a disappointment. Meanwhile, the populist right-wing Trump-supporting and MAGA-embracing ReformUK party led by Nigel Farage (and which won just 5 seats in last year's national election) was surging in the polls, the traditional centrist Liberal Democrats—the party most openly running on an anti-Trump platform—were continuing to make modest polling gains, and the Greens were hopeful of doing well by their historical standards, meaning that at least five parties were likely to win at least 10% of the vote.
The last elections for this tranche of local government seats took place in 2021, when Boris Johnson was still popular, and was still given broad credit for the success of the national vaccination program—before it was discovered that 10 Downing Street had been ignoring lockdown rules that it had imposed on the rest of the country. It's been all downhill for the Tories since then, so the Conservative Party was expected to do badly last week. No one, however, really expected the final outcome:(Note: The above figures don't include independents or small regional parties, so don't add up to 1,641.)
- ReformUK: 677 seats won on 30% of the vote; +677 compared to 2021
- Liberal Democrats: 370 seats won on 17% of the vote; +163
- Conservatives: 317 seats won on 15% of the vote; -676
- Labour: 98 seats won on 20% of the vote; - 186
- Greens: 80 seats won on 11% of the vote; +45
It was a disastrous night for the Conservatives, who lost all 16 local councils they had previously controlled, and came fourth in vote share. It was a poor night for Labour, which lost a significant number of seats, though at least had the comfort of narrowly clinging on to two of the three mayoralities they were defending, and winning a third. The Greens are moderately pleased with their gains. The Liberal Democrats are thrilled at coming second in seat totals, third in vote share, and taking control of three councils. But ReformUK are ecstatic at winning nearly 700 seats, taking control of 10 councils, and winning two brand-new mayoralities.
The upshot is that the party that unambiguously won the election is the most pro-MAGA party, an insurgent populist political party led by one of the strongest proponents of Brexit, someone who hugs Trump as closely as possible, while the party that came second in number of seats is the most overtly anti-Trump of the national parties. Meanwhile, the two traditional main parties came third and fourth in terms of seats won, and won a combined total of 35% of the vote.
ReformUK and party leader Nigel Farage are going all-in for MAGA in the wake of the elections. Farage is calling for instituting "local DOGE" in the councils they now control, and has declared that any employees involved in climate or DEI initiatives in one of those councils should start looking for new jobs. The newly elected mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, Dame Andrea Jenkyns (previously a cabinet minister under Boris Johnson before jumping ship to Reform) has openly stated that a vote for Reform is a vote to "reset Britain to its glorious past"—presumably this doesn't mean invading India and Pakistan, but who knows.
It's likely the LibDems will meanwhile feel encouraged to continue their direct opposition to Trump, but the momentum is clearly with ReformUK.
We suddenly find ourselves in a five-party system in England—and a six-party system in Scotland and Wales, where the nationalist SNP and Plaid Cymru parties are strong (Northern Ireland, as always, exists in its own unique party political system that can't be easily compared to the rest of the UK). British politics is simply not set up for this. Like Canada and most of the U.S. (but unlike the Australian House of Representatives, which uses ranked-choice voting), the U.K. uses first-past-the-post winner-takes-all voting. This worked fairly well when we were a two-party dominant system, but is increasingly throwing up distorted results as our political system fragments. In the last national election, Labour won over 60% of the seats in Parliament on a 33.7% vote share. And then there's this result from Cornwall in last week's elections:
Truro Moresk & Trehaverne:That's right, the Liberal Democrat won with less than 20% of the vote, despite being opposed by more than 80% of the local electorate, and six candidates won at least 10% of the vote. I vote LibDem, and I'm happy to concede that this is insane.
- LDM: 18.9%
- RFM: 17.4%
- CON: 17.0%
- GRN: 14.1%
- IND: 13.3%
- LAB: 11.4%
- IND: 7.9%
It would be easy to overplay ReformUK's success last week. They did only win 30% of the vote. Because our local elections are staggered, they now have 805 councillors compared to 6,132 for Labour, 4,358 for the Conservatives, and 3,179 for the LibDems. All the same, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that MAGA-like policies work with nearly a third of the English electorate (Scotland and Wales may be harder nuts to crack), and that ReformUK are well-placed to exploit a landscape where Labour are struggling and the Conservatives seem hell-bent on committing political suicide. The LibDems are making some headway, yes, but remain distrusted with some sectors of the voting public for their decision to enter a coalition with the Conservatives, as the junior partner, from 2010-2015.
Nigel Farage is now openly talking about destroying the Conservative Party and replacing them on the right. There is precedent for this in the U.K., but we have to stretch back just over 100 years to the period 1918-1923, when a combination of universal male suffrage, partial female suffrage, post-war instability, and disastrous splits in the Liberal Party led to the Labour Party replacing the Liberals as the main party on the left of U.K. politics (the much-reduced Liberals would eventually merge with another party to form the modern Liberal Democrats). That was a long time ago, but it's a useful reminder that nothing is permanent in politics, and that no party has the right to assume a perpetual place on the political landscape. It's also very clearly the precedent Farage has in mind.
In any case, whatever successes the Liberal Party of Canada and the Australian Labor Party might have had in winning elections in large part in opposition to Trumpian politics and a conservative opposition discomforted by Trump, the U.K. local elections serve as a counterpoint. Yes, 70% of voters who took part in the local elections last week voted against ReformUK; but 30% of the vote was also enough to unambiguously emerge as the winners in a five-party system distorted by first-past-the-post. Whether hugging Trump so closely will prove a viable long-term strategy for Reform, especially when the next U.K. election isn't due until after Trump leaves office (assuming he doesn't circumvent the Twenty-Second Amendment) is anyone's guess.
And as long as we are on the foreign affairs beat, allow us to pass along this, from reader K.J in Melbourne, VIC, Australia:
There is some nuance that I want to add to the comments from K.W. in Sydney. What we tend to call the Liberal Party is actually a coalition between the Liberal Party, the National Party, and the Liberal National Party. In previous elections, the Liberal Party had a strong urban base while the National Party and Liberal National Party captured the rural and regional areas. This partnership dates back to 1946.
By convention, the leader of the Liberal Party serves as the overall leader, serving as Prime Minister when the Coalition is in government, while the leader of the National Party becomes the Deputy Prime Minister during periods of Coalition government.
What is notable, is the results for each over the last two elections:2025There has been a massive swing against the Liberal Party in urban areas, which means that the parties representing the rural and regional areas will suddenly have a lot more power within the coalition. It also means that the Liberal Party is going to have to take a long hard look at its policies and whom it represents. It is no longer the party of the urbanites.
Liberal Party (urban): 14 seats
Liberal National Party (rural & regional): 15 seats
National Party (rural & regional): 9 seats
2022
Liberal Party (urban): 27 seats
Liberal National party (rural & regional): 21 seats
National Party (rural & regional): 10 seats
In addition, the Greens Party has lost seats at this election and at this point in time, it is not clear whether the party leader will retain his seat.
I am not a political analyst, I am a social researcher and don't feel comfortable positing causal or correlational relationships. However, if someone asked me to sum the results, I would say that global uncertainty, Trump, and Peter Dutton parroting MAGA values led to "regression to the mean."
Thanks, A.B. and K.J.! (Z)