If Reform builds on this year’s results by continuing to take votes from the Labour and Tory parties, the pressure to adopt policies to win back these voters may become irresistible, writes Nigel Dudley
“A week is a long time in politics” is a wise saying usually attributed to Harold Wilson, prime minister in the 1960s and 70s. It is never more appropriate than today with so much global uncertainty, let alone the volatility in the British electorate.
So, this is a wise warning to anyone trying to predict, on the basis of the recent local government elections, what will happen to public opinion in a year.
Even so, the leaders and spin doctors of all the parties will be planning their local election campaigns for May 2026, which come almost halfway through this Parliament, which are not only important in their own right but will set the mood until the next election.
The most important of these will be in the 32 London boroughs. There are local factors in some boroughs – such as the role of the Aspire party in Tower Hamlets – but the parties will be judged on the headline figures of voters, councillors and voters won.
There are also elections in Scotland and Wales and a raft of metropolitan and unitary councils. These are more urban areas, where Labour usually does well, in contrast to this year’s polls in traditional Tory heartlands. Taken together the 2025 and 2026 results will provide a clearer idea of where all the parties stand – though not necessarily who will form the next government.
Drawing too many conclusions from one set of local elections is a dangerous game. They don’t take place across the whole country, the four-year cycles rarely align with the general election dates, the turnout is invariably low and there are sometimes local issues that affect results.
So, while the winners – in the latest election Reform and the Liberal Democrats – will claim this is a part of a major change, the losers – the Tories and Labour – will provide a barrage of comparisons and statistics to demonstrate that all will be different at a general election.
There have always been lies, damned lies and statistics. To which one can now add the spin put on local election results.
And Reform’s leader Nigel Farage has been spinning for all his worth. The results were a sweeping victory – the party won a byelection with a massive swing, and in the local polls had most votes, most seats and most councils. In contrast Labour and Conservatives suffered historic losses. The headlines in the days following the election suggested Labour was in freefall and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch was panicking.
The key question is whether, as Farage suggests, the recent elections are a defining moment in our politics and mark the beginning of the end of two party system or yet another turning point at which history will fair to turn.
The latter is normally the case. Predictions of a new era are are usually wrong. Labour appeared doomed in the early 1980s, when the SDP/Liberal alliance was polling more than 50 per cent, and more recently when the hard left was in control under Jeremy Corbyn. Yet it now has a massive majority. The Tories were in deep trouble after they plunged to 165 seats in 1997, only to return to government 13 years later and stay in power until last year.
So, what will happen this time. The BBC’s election guru Sir John Curtice, as shrewd an analyst as any, argues that “Reform’s triumph was much more than a protest vote.”
He says the results voters still have little faith in the Conservatives and are disappointed by Labour’s performance in office. The main parties are unlikely to recover unless they can appeal to ‘left-behind’ Britain – places that have profited less from globalisation and university expansion and where a more conservative outlook on immigration is more common.
The major parties’ initial response has been to try and regain the votes they lost to Farage by sounding even tougher on immigration, even though the record of the current and last government suggest this is impossible to deliver. This may only benefit Farage who has the power to criticise policy but no responsibility for delivering it.
So, the question now is how the major parties respond to the challenge. They will be tempted to sound ever tougher on immigration, even though this is an almost impossible policy to deliver, as their track records demonstrate. This will only help Farage, who is unlikely to have any real responsibility for it.
In one way it is easier for Labour. As the party of government, the Prime Minister should be able to control the agenda. He chooses the next election date and his chancellor should be able to manage a generous pre-election budget. Incumbency is no guarantee of success for governments that have been in power for a long time or swap leaders annually. Even though it is panicking now, a government in its first term should be able to hold its nerve and not appease anti-immigration voters.
The Tories are in a very different place. When Tory and Labour parties have faced splits in the past 45 years, there has been senior figures prepared to rally round their party’s traditional values – Neil Kinnock and David Cameron as opposition leaders brought their parties back to the centre.
It is very different today. There are few if any senior Tory figures who are campaigning to bring the Tory party back to the centre. Instead all the going is being made by those on the right of the party, who support more Brexit, a tough immigration policy, and more traditional social values.
Since the elections the voice of those calling for a reunification of the right, headed by the former Tory cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, has only got stronger. He argues that there is very little policy difference between the Tories and Reform, so they should work together to create a majority in hung parliaments and do pre-election deals before the general election to ensure that the small c conservative vote is not split.
There is though another possibility if Tories and Labour decide to appease Reform voters. For every anti-immigration votes they shore up, they risk losing the support of younger voters and what the Sunday Times called the elderly remainers – of which I am probably one.
This means there is an opportunity for any party which is socially liberal and positive about immigration. I remain convinced one of the reasons voters are seduced by anti-immigration parties is that so few political leaders are prepared to celebrate immigrants and the massive contribution they make to this country.
This is why the 2026 local government elections matter. If Reform builds on this year’s results by continuing to take votes from the Labour and Tory parties, the pressure to adopt policies to win back these voters may become irresistible. Next year’s results may not indicate the result of the next general election, but they will determine the character of the parties that contest it.
