Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party has suffered the heaviest set of local election defeats since it returned to power in 2024, with results pointing to a wholesale collapse of its support in the so-called Red Wall constituencies of northern England and the Midlands. Counts on Friday afternoon showed Labour down more than 330 seats with three-quarters of councils declared and most of the steepest losses still concentrated in places the party had treated as core territory.
Nigel Farage's anti-immigration Reform UK was the principal beneficiary, picking up more than 500 council seats and securing outright control of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire and the London borough of Havering. The party also flipped Labour majorities in Wigan, where Reform candidates took every one of the twenty seats Labour had been defending, and reduced Salford, where Labour had held thirty of forty-one seats, to a rump of three.
Tameside, the Greater Manchester borough that Labour has run continuously for almost half a century, fell from the party's grasp altogether. Labour also lost outright control of Hartlepool, Redditch and Tamworth, and faced a near-wipeout in Birmingham where the Northfield MP Laurence Turner conceded that the party was heading for "a period in opposition" on the city council.
Sir John Curtice, the elections academic who has called every recent British vote with notable accuracy, said: "The picture has been pretty much as bad as anyone expected for Labour, or worse." He added that the swing to Reform had been broader and deeper than polling had suggested, particularly among voters who had backed Brexit in 2016 and Labour in 2024.
Mr Farage, addressing supporters in Birmingham as Reform's deputy leader Richard Tice arrived at the count to celebrate, said the results were "way exceeding" his party's expectations and amounted to "a historic change in British politics". The Conservatives, who had braced for losses of their own, in fact ended the day down 223 seats but ahead of Labour on the overall total.
The Liberal Democrats added 28 seats to reach 313 nationally and the Greens, performing strongly in university towns and parts of the South West, gained 50 to bring their total to 90. Sir Ed Davey said the Lib Dem performance showed there was "a clear, pro-European, pro-public-services alternative" to the two main parties.
Labour MPs spent the day publicly absorbing the scale of the result. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the MP for Salford, called the outcome "soul-destroying" and said the leadership would have to "look itself in the eye" about the direction of travel since the general election. Several backbenchers have called for a rethink of the chancellor Rachel Reeves's spring spending plans.
The Prime Minister, who voted in central London on Thursday morning, did not appear in public on Friday. His spokesman said Sir Keir would address the results in a planned speech on Monday. Cabinet ministers privately conceded that the party would have to revise both its messaging on immigration and its stance on welfare reform, two areas where Reform has built much of its appeal.