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Sir John Curtice: Reform challenging Conservative and Labour dominance Sir John Curtice: Reform's sweeping election wins shake Tory and Labour dominance
(about 11 hours later)
The overnight results from Thursday's elections have confirmed the message of the polls that Reform are posing a major challenge to the traditional dominance of British politics enjoyed by the Conservatives and Labour. Though some of the results are still to be reported, Reform are clearly the winners of Thursday's local elections.
The party won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, just managing to overturn a 35-point Labour majority. Across the 23 councils where a ballot was held, the party won more votes and more seats than any of its opponents by a clear margin. The party is probably heading for around 700 seat gains and won two mayoral contests.
Meanwhile, Andrea Jenkyns, a former Tory minister, has convincingly won the new position of Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire. However, the party will be disappointed at narrowly losing out to Labour in the contests in Doncaster, North Tyneside, and the West of England. Meanwhile, it has won overall control of no less than seven councils, including the once Labour fiefdom of Durham and the two largest counties, Kent and Lancashire.
Most of the local council elections are being counted later today. But early results also suggest Reform are heading for significant gains. The party performed best in wards which voted heavily for Leave in the 2016 referendum. Yet even in places which voted to remain in the EU, the party was still routinely able to win as much as a fifth of the vote.
The party seemed able across the country to tap into voters' widespread dissatisfaction with the Conservatives and Labour.
Reform wins Runcorn by-election by just six votes and gains first mayorReform wins Runcorn by-election by just six votes and gains first mayor
The party won 39% of the vote in the results declared so far, enough to put it well ahead of all if its rivals. And Reform also seems to have a good chance of winning overall control of both Lincolnshire and Staffordshire, both of which voted heavily for Brexit in 2016. In the BBC's projection of what would have happened if a nationwide election had been held on Thursday, Reform were credited with 30% of the vote. That easily beats the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of their popularity in 2013. It is the first time that a party other than Conservative or Labour has been placed first.
It is the first time an anti-EU party has won a by-election afresh. Until now the only by-elections won by an anti-EU party were two contests in 2014 when the local Tory MP stood down and fought the subsequent by-election under UKIP's colours. Meanwhile, Reform also won the Runcorn by-election, albeit by the narrowest of margins. Never before has a pro-Brexit party candidate won a by-election, other than two local Tory MPs who defected to Ukip in 2014.
Reform's seat gains have primarily been at the expense of the Conservatives. That was inevitable, given the party previously held nearly a thousand of the 1,641 seats up for grabs. For both the Conservatives and Labour the result was worse than their spokespersons feared. The Conservatives lost two in three of the seats they were defending and at best are likely to be left with control of just one council, Buckinghamshire.
Nevertheless, the party will be deeply troubled at suffering a drubbing every bit as severe as the one it suffered in last year's general election. In a clear indication of the Conservatives' vulnerability to the challenge from Nigel Farage's party, its vote fell most heavily in places where the Reform advance was strongest. Their score in the BBC projection is by far a record low.
On average its vote was down by 25 points since the last time these seats were fought in May 2021, falling most heavily where Reform did best. The party has so far lost more than half the seats it is trying to defend. Labour also lost two in three of the seats they were defending, though it had the consolation of winning three mayoral elections, albeit only by a narrow margin. Their projected share is the lowest since 2008, when the party suffered from the financial crash and the MPs' expenses scandal.
But if the results will likely intensify the debate about how the Conservatives should respond to the challenge from Reform, they also underline the message from the polls that support for Labour has fallen heavily since the general election. In contrast, the Liberal Democrats were able to withstand the Reform tide, recording over 100 net gains. The party was particularly successful in councils that it had targeted, most notably Devon and Shropshire. Overall, however, the party's performance in votes was largely in line with that of other recent local elections. Much the same was true of the Greens, who made a modest gain of 38 seats.
Its three mayoral successes were all won on a significantly diminished share of the vote. Before Thursday, commentators were asking whether the local elections would herald the end of Conservative and Labour's joint dominance of British politics. We certainly cannot rule out the possibility that this proves to be the case.
It is Labour's good fortune that it is defending fewer than 300 seats in the local council elections. Even so, and in contrast to the mayoral outcomes, the party has so far lost over half the seats it was trying to defend, mostly to Reform. Their vote is on average down on a poor performance in 2021 by as much as nine points.
Most of the hopes the Liberal Democrats and the Greens have for these elections are concentrated in the local council declarations later today. The overnight results suggest both parties are heading for a similar level of support as four years ago.
However, the Greens will be disappointed that their hopes of edging ahead of Labour in the race for West of England mayor were dashed, with the party finding itself instead trailing Reform in third place.
Indeed, narrow wins and losses were the order of the night. Nobody, it seems, dominates British politics any more.
John Curtice is Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde, and Senior Fellow, National Centre for Social Research and 'The UK in a Changing Europe'.John Curtice is Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde, and Senior Fellow, National Centre for Social Research and 'The UK in a Changing Europe'.
Analysis by Patrick English, Steve Fisher, Robert Ford, and Lotte Hargrave.Analysis by Patrick English, Steve Fisher, Robert Ford, and Lotte Hargrave.
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