Despite the significant fall in Labour’s support in the polls, the party hoped to escape without much visible damage in the local elections on Thursday.
After all, most of the seats at stake were being defended by the Conservatives, partly because this year’s round of elections took place primarily in predominantly Tory territory and partly because the Conservatives were riding so high in the polls when the seats were last fought over in 2021. Labour even hoped to profit from the anticipated decline in Tory fortunes by making gains at the opposition’s expense.
The Conservatives did indeed suffer the anticipated drubbing. They lost 45 per cent of the seats they were defending, most of them to Reform. The party’s vote fell on average by more than 20 points in wards where the boundaries were the same as in 2021.
However, Labour also lost out in the wake of the rise of Reform. It lost nearly two-thirds of the seats it held in 2021. Again, most of them to Reform. Little wonder some Labour MPs now fear that Reform poses as much of a threat to them as it does to the Conservatives.
However, the results show that Reform are winning over more former Conservative voters than Labour ones. Where Reform did best, the Conservative vote fell especially heavily. In wards where Reform won less than 20 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives’ share on average fell by 12 points. In those where Reform won more than 45 per cent, it dropped by 31 points.
In contrast, how well Reform did made little difference to how heavily Labour’s vote dropped. In places where the Reform advance was weaker, Labour’s support dropped by nine points. Where Nigel Farage’s party advanced most, the figure was still no more than 11.5 points.
Trouble is, this pattern did not stop Reform from securing just as high a share of the vote, an average of 32 per cent, in the wards Labour were trying to defend as it did in those where the Conservatives were the incumbents.
In truth, even in Labour-held wards, there were still plenty of people who voted Conservative in 2021 that Reform could win over. The Tories won an average of 29 per cent four years ago. And that vote fell by as much as 16 points on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Labour’s vote was in freefall. Despite having done so poorly in the local elections four years ago, the party’s vote fell on average since then by as much as nine points. Crucially, it collapsed most of all in the party’s heartlands, limited though they were in number on Thursday. In seats Labour were defending, its vote fell on average by as much as 19 points.
In part, this was arithmetically inevitable. Given its poor performance four years ago, Labour often did not have much left to lose where it did not win last time.
However, it is also potentially a sign that disappointment with Labour’s record in office is particularly marked among some of its core supporters. And while some of them will have switched to Reform, others may well have backed the Greens. Their vote increased in Labour-held wards, even though it fell back a little elsewhere.
In any event, the pattern was devastating. Labour’s collapse left the door open to Reform to take many a seat from the party, albeit sometimes by quite a narrow margin. It was the same pattern that did the Conservatives so much damage at the last election – and indeed did so again on Thursday.
Labour’s problem on Thursday was not simply the appeal of Reform. It was also itself. The party has seemingly lost the confidence of many of its heartland voters. Until it manages to restore that, neither those who defected to Reform nor those who have swung to the Greens are likely to return to the party any time soon.
John Curtice is professor of politics, Strathclyde University, and senior fellow, National Centre for Social Research and ’The UK in a Changing Europe’
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