As far as I am aware, most places which have a local election have now published a statement of persons nominated for the upcoming local elections. Same day as the Runcorn by-election.

Most of these are councils that last had their local elections in 2021, when the Conservatives made advances due to being more popular than the opposition at that time. Some of those planned elections have been delayed to 2026 due to council restructuring. While it's not one-to-one, odd-numbered years and particularly this year of the cycle tends to be for rural councils in England, while even-numbered years tend to have more metropolitan elections.

As with last year, potentially a lot of council seats for Conservatives to lose. Probably more than Labour, although most of the areas with elections are not areas naturally friendly to Labour and they don't control any of the councils up for election except Doncaster. Politicos will be watching to see if Reform's candidates and campaign can give them a respectable number of council seats, though they've been pretty bad at the council by-elections so far.

6 mayorships are also up, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, West Of England, Doncaster and North Tyneside, which were Labour before and the 2 new mayorships of Greater Lincolnshire and Hull & East Yorkshire.

Out of the 1641 council seats up for election, the last election (rough) results are:

CON: 1182

LAB: 336

LDM: 247

GRN: 37

REF: 0

Currently Reform do have 120 councillors (mostly defectors), but those are split among seats with elections in all 4 annual cycles.

Is there an election in your area? How many seats will the major parties get?

Deadline to register to vote in these elections is 11:59pm 11th April 2025.

It feels like Nottinghamshire will go into No Overall Control this time, with the talk being the most likely leadership outcome is Reform (as the largest party) leading a coalition with the tories.

I thought for a while that no party would come close to a majority but it's only recently the realisation that Reform will likely be the largest party, rather than have simply having a significant amount (10-12) of councillors in opposition.

It's an interesting place with such a wide variety of demographics and voters. In General Elections the patten has been of safe tory seats now being comfortable Labour (Rushcliffe was Ken Clarke's seat fgs) and vice versa with tories sweeping the northern working class towns with more deprivation (Ashfield, Mansfield, Bassetlaw) with huge majorities. It felt like moves back to Labour last year were reluctant.

Council-wise, Conservatives have a wafer thin majority and aren't popular anywhere, will keep 10-15 seats in some old rural safe seats across the county, don't see them getting to 20. Labour start on the back foot as they've completely messed up bankrupting Nottingham City Council, and people now have less trust with the national parties current local government Reform act of creating unitary authorities, and the places most likely to vote Labour (West Bridgford, Gedling, Broxtowe) border the city and do not want to join the city council. I don't see them improving much (if at all) on their 14 current seats.

The big question is what happens in Ashfield. For the last couple of elections, the Ashfield Independents have dominated, winning 10/10 seats in 2021. Led by the somewhat controversial Jason Zadrozny, they hoover up support from all over the place, but are fundamentally tories where in a place where tories couldn't ever actually win. Ordinarily I'd expect there to be no (or at least very little) change but Asfield is of course the seat of Lee Anderson, who continues to be popular amongst the population who vote for him, so Reform could possibly make significant inroads there.

So, what of Reform? Outside of Ashfield they polled at 15-25% of the vote consistently in the other consistuencies at the GE last year, a bit of the national swelling of that vote coming their way and they'll comfortably hit the number of seats Labour and Conservatives do. I think 5-7 in both Mansfield and Bassetlaw, 1-2 in each of Gedling, Broxtowe and Newark & Sherwood. Ashfield? Well as we'd say round here, it could be owt.

What will they do in charge of a council? Well there's only so much anyone can do with a county council, given how few services they're actually responsible and how much of it is statutory within social care. Locally, so much has been outsourced to joint venture type deals too. They've said money was wasted on the new HQ, council tax bills are too high and want to lower them, there will be the standard DOGE style audit to remove pointless jobs and waste (hi Equality Officer), the roads are terrible and brought back in house, and Nigel Farage was at an event last week with Anderson stating too many work from home and Reform will get everyone back into the office.

I've worked at the organisation since 2012, for at least 70% of the time I've been here there's been active searching for ways to save money and cut waste, so I'm not sure how successful that cam be. As for office working, it really was quite a progressive organisation (for the public sector at least) in terms of flexibility, staff were enabled to work from home and office space reduced long before Covid and home working became common. They won't get staff back to the office en masse without paying significant amounts to improve offices and increase capacity, not that there's anywhere to park, which somewhat goes against their slashing costs and bills mantra. Theleaflet I got from them talked about infrequent bin collections, not a county council service so nothing they can actually do, but from experience it would appear that looking incompetent and taking voters for idiots is quite common amongst all parties in 2 tier areas.

Edited April 16Apr 16 by RabbitFurCoat

Interesting insight, thanks for that RFC! I have been minded to keep an eye on Ashfield, it's an interesting place politically and hopefully something gets in the eye of Lee Anderson.

Keeping an eye on Cornwall Council, I don't live there anymore but I was acquainted with some in the Cornish Lib Dems back when I did, and it may well go back into their control.

Looks like Reform are going to win Linconshire & Hull mayorships. No real surprise there, especially with the former. Reform definitely eating in to the Tory vote.

I think Reform will do very well in the local elections at the expense of the Tories. Shame really, as populism is never the answer.

Especially discouraging when people use local governance to 'send a message' to national politics, that's not sending much of a message while you screw up your local council for ages, who'll do far more that affects your lives in their 4 year term. Not looking forward to the amount of Reform councillors who shouldn't be running anything getting their own little fiefdom.

My one hope is that Reform just haven't been doing well in council by-elections where you'd think they might if their protest vote was going to translate well into local elections.

Still, entirely expecting a series of Lib Dem gains and possibly Green gains all across the south to be dwarfed by the media banging on about 'a record night for Reform' with a smiling Farage on the cover photo, regardless of whether or not they took more councils than the LDs off of the Tories (in part because the big story may well be them winning Runcorn).

Possibly biggest outcome of this will be Badenoch's hold weakening.

Almost all the councils won't start counting until Friday morning. Therefore, if Farage's mob do win Runcorn, that will be the headline for hours. The Lib Dems should do well in the South East in particular. However, if it is anything like the coverage of the general election results, those gains might be mentioned once or twice at most.

Yeah looks like reform will do pretty well. No real surprise given the state of the country ATM. I’ll be rooting for any party against Labour. Never seen such a hopeless Gov in my lifetime. I’ll have to check if they’re doing any elections here if they are I’ll vote for whoever is closest to beating Labour

10 minutes ago, Liam S said:

Yeah looks like reform will do pretty well. No real surprise given the state of the country ATM. I’ll be rooting for any party against Labour. Never seen such a hopeless Gov in my lifetime. I’ll have to check if they’re doing any elections here if they are I’ll vote for whoever is closest to beating Labour

If you're too young to remember the last government, you shouldn't be here. We have a minimum age of 13.

12 minutes ago, Liam S said:

Yeah looks like reform will do pretty well. No real surprise given the state of the country ATM. I’ll be rooting for any party against Labour. Never seen such a hopeless Gov in my lifetime. I’ll have to check if they’re doing any elections here if they are I’ll vote for whoever is closest to beating Labour

If you care about your area and its council providing good services, good advice is that you should vote for the best 'fix the church roof' type you see on the ballot paper/leaflets the candidates will likely have been dropping around your ward. While this isn't uniform across parties these are often Lib Dems or independents, though certainly possible to be Labour or Conservatives depending on who's got involved with their local area, Reform candidates are rather more likely to be drooling racists with a dodgy history of being the Facebook weird uncle.

1 hour ago, Liam S said:

Yeah looks like reform will do pretty well. No real surprise given the state of the country ATM. I’ll be rooting for any party against Labour. Never seen such a hopeless Gov in my lifetime. I’ll have to check if they’re doing any elections here if they are I’ll vote for whoever is closest to beating Labour

Surely after 10 months in power Labour are doing their best to clear up the chaos of the 14 years of Tory government??

8 hours ago, Steve201 said:

Surely after 10 months in power Labour are doing their best to clear up the chaos of the 14 years of Tory government??

They’ve made the Tories look competent. Couldn’t stand Sunak but wouldn’t mind him back right now.

9 hours ago, Iz 🌟 said:

If you care about your area and its council providing good services, good advice is that you should vote for the best 'fix the church roof' type you see on the ballot paper/leaflets the candidates will likely have been dropping around your ward. While this isn't uniform across parties these are often Lib Dems or independents, though certainly possible to be Labour or Conservatives depending on who's got involved with their local area, Reform candidates are rather more likely to be drooling racists with a dodgy history of being the Facebook weird uncle.

The area Is a good area due to the people def not due to Labour and the sooner that party is punished for their betrayals the better. It’s obviously a commie centric area so it’ll probably be some far left loon but they’re usually better intentioned people than these self serving Labour candidates anyway

22 minutes ago, Liam S said:

They’ve made the Tories look competent.

Nope! They really haven't

Edited April 26Apr 26 by ElectroBoy

I mean, what do you expect from someone who calls Labour supporters 'commies'*? Labour are not without fault as a government but the metrics of good governance are slowly turning in the right direction because they've been replacing Conservative do-nothings with people who actually care to tackle the scale of the problem in the mechanisms of government, that's why numbers on NHS, immigration, economy etc, while still far from fixed, are showing promising signs to bear fruit later in the term. Not that Liam S isn't right about far left candidates being well intentioned, but outside of a few truly horrendous grifters, most Labour candidates are well intentioned, just likely more pragmatic about what they can achieve.

However I am attempting to keep this thread from running away with arguments about national governance, you can do that in plenty of other threads, because it's literally about the local elections. In that it is fortunate for Labour that they are not defending very much this year and instead it is likely Conservative councils that will choose one of three paths, hold onto a dying party as they always have, give over to a likely hard-working Lib Dem council, or be swallowed by the tides of social media misinformation and elect a bunch of Reform cretins.

*fortunately if said area is a large city like London, Manchester, Bristol or Brighton, possibly the only places in the UK even the most detached from reality would describe as 'commie centric', there's no election there this year anyway. Except for mayoral in the case of Bristol.

Actually yeah mayoral, to go back to one of the more likely Reform victories that Rooney posted way up the thread, it's likely that Reform will win two mayors in Lincolnshire and Hull. Let's take a look at those candidates.

In Lincolnshire, they've drafted Andrea Jenkyns (after a kerfuffle about her residency criteria), who you may remember for being one of the architects of Brexit, a low-level but enthusiastic one, and a key member of the Johnson (to the point she gave a middle finger to crowds as she went to his resignation) and Truss governments. Not exactly a break from the Tories and she lives outside the area, but then Lincolnshire is a pretty conservative area anyway. Sure.

In Hull it's even worse, the Reform candidate is Luke Campbell, a local lad who's known for being a boxer and Olympic medalist primarily. Of course that means people from the area will vote for him because they know of him and like him. Does he have any political experience? No, so probably nothing wrong to put him in a devolved mayoral position at first asking, right? He seems to have missed all his hustings appointments, so that's not a good sign. Something Reform clearly have asked him to do, because him speaking would probably worsen his chances.

2 hours ago, ElectroBoy said:

Nope! They really haven't

What’s the approval ratings like? You guys are fiercely anti-right wing everything so you can’t judge it correctly but I’m coming from a default position. Not pro or anti anything I just take things for what they are and this Labour Gov have shown me why they could never get in power for all them years. You can’t trust them with anything at all. Not a single issue I can trust they won’t betray at the drop of a hat at any given moment. Anyone with decent money must be thinking of leaving. Oh well. We shall see the results especially the Runcorn result where they had a majority of 15k just 10 months ago. It’s pretty tough to lose a majority like that so quickly but all indications are they will. You have to laugh at the people doing PR for Labour why do you think they feel comfortable making terrible decision after terrible decision? They can’t lose these people but unfortunately they’re losing everybody else to the point they might never come back so the next time Labour are out of power for decades remember it’s the PR merchants who let Starmer run amok to blame

"I'm the objective one in this conversation, I'm not pro or anti anything, my views are the default ones. Also I hate the Labour party with every fibre of my being and will never trust them on anything".

Mate, time to check your own biases. It's okay to believe in something, but try and augment that with a reliable picture of how the world looks and what parties are actually doing on your pet issues and how they have moved the needle over the long term, I was always fair to the Conservative government, even if I personally hated most of their key figures and they were normally doing things that I disagreed with, they sometimes had good policy in some areas.

1 hour ago, Iz 🌟 said:

However I am attempting to keep this thread from running away with arguments about national governance, you can do that in plenty of other threads, because it's literally about the local elections.

Being as such, the only major thing I'm expecting to happen on Thursday is a shift away from Conservative councils. Labour won't even be in the picture for most of it and even Runcorn won't be that crippling, it could even shock the party into responding.

1 hour ago, Liam S said:

What’s the approval ratings like? You guys are fiercely anti-right wing everything so you can’t judge it correctly but I’m coming from a default position. Not pro or anti anything I just take things for what they are and this Labour Gov have shown me why they could never get in power for all them years. You can’t trust them with anything at all. Not a single issue I can trust they won’t betray at the drop of a hat at any given moment. Anyone with decent money must be thinking of leaving. Oh well. We shall see the results especially the Runcorn result where they had a majority of 15k just 10 months ago. It’s pretty tough to lose a majority like that so quickly but all indications are they will. You have to laugh at the people doing PR for Labour why do you think they feel comfortable making terrible decision after terrible decision? They can’t lose these people but unfortunately they’re losing everybody else to the point they might never come back so the next time Labour are out of power for decades remember it’s the PR merchants who let Starmer run amok to blame

I mean, I can’t say that I’ve loved this Labour government so far but I’m much more interested in examples from you about what the last Tory government were actually doing better?

29 minutes ago, T Boy said:

I mean, I can’t say that I’ve loved this Labour government so far but I’m much more interested in examples from you about what the last Tory government were actually doing better?

It'll be the classic "they're terrible" but can't name one terrible thing outside of the winter fuel allowance, which everyone will forget about by 2029.

I Very much look at British political history to understand the present and the Labour Party have far and away done more to make Britain a better, more equal country than the tories going back 150 years. They aren’t perfect (no one is) but to say Labour are at fault for macro economic and social issues today is nonsense when they arent the party who’s policies have created much of the terrible things about the Britain you live in going back 50 years.

Edited April 26Apr 26 by Steve201

1 hour ago, Steve201 said:

I Very much look at British political history to understand the present and the Labour Party have far and away done more to make Britain a better, more equal country than the tories going back 150 years. They aren’t perfect (no one is) but to say the tories are at fault for macro economic and social issues today is nonsense when they are the party who’s policies have created much of the terrible things about the Britain you live in going back 50 years.

Labour cannot rely on their history anymore. You have to separate timeframes. I don’t really care what a party did 100 years ago. Recent history Labour have been a non stop disappointment continually betraying the things and people they’re supposed to represent. Some people will say I’m going to be loyal or better than right wing alternatives and accept the betrayal but many will not and I certainly will not. Demand better or you won’t get it