Will Reform win in your local council?

The party could win up to 1,000 councillors between now and the general election.

Photo by Justin Tallis / AFP via Getty Images

St Helens is not a Scouse town, as Scousers forcefully tell me. But it has enough Scousers to make the point about Merseyside Catholics disproportionately voting Labour relevant to our analysis. In a by-election last week, this traditionally safe Labour ward saw the Labour vote drop like a stone, and Reform win with more than 40 per cent.

Ukip never won here. The ward has never voted anyone but Labour, in a by-election or a local election. Reform has broken new ground and the party is doing something Ukip never did, which is take council elections seriously. Reform aren’t the only anti-establishment game in town. But they’re the ones winning council seats from a standing start. Locals tell me the party isn’t door-knocking, but instead relying on a campaign via direct mail.

Where else could they win?

I’ve restarted the Britain Predicts model to gauge where public opinion stands. And if in the seriously unlikely event an election were held today, Reform would win more than 20 seats in the House of Commons. Labour would win 310 (meaning a hung parliament) and the Conservatives 190.

Reform is taking people by surprise with their wins. Through my model we can see what these national numbers may mean locally. And the projection (while rough, and certainly not a guarantor of where opinion stands) has Reform on course to top the poll in more than 500 wards across England and Wales. This would mean in council elections between now and the next election, Reform could return almost 1,000 councillors.

The party could also sweep much of rural Durham, dominating in wards (or coming second to Labour) where the Conservatives were winning in 2021. It could also mean all but three wards in Hyndburn voting Reform. Meanwhile in Basildon, Sittingbourne, Dover, Dudley, Sunderland and Stoke the limited company might smash Labour.

Where Reform could win

Council wards Reform would likely top the poll in if an election was held today

This is how Reform wins bigger. They need council seats to win constituency seats. It’s the Liberal Democrat’s strategy, and one used to great effect by the Greens in Suffolk and Herefordshire this year. Reform, thought late to the game, look set to be employing it to their advantage too.

In Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Essex, Staffordshire and Durham (all wards likely up in May), Reform is in contention. Is it enough to win the control of any individual council? At present, that’s unlikely. But my post-GE model doesn’t account for tactical voting yet. When the feature is added it could change the entire picture.

When one compares the Britain Predicts ward-by-ward projection with how Reform has performed in council by-elections, however, the numbers are far from perfect. The St Helens win last week is a stark overperformance in the Reform vote. But wins in and around Blackpool are only a few points off what my model forecast.

Altogether this seems a decent enough indicator when it comes to the direction of travel, and to where Reform will target over the next few years. Labour councillors should be worried. The Brexit Party, and Ukip before them, didn’t take campaigning seriously. Reform aren’t making that same mistake.