Jonathan Werran, chief executive of Localis, reflects on the results of the local elections.

Now the dust from the 2025 local government and mayoral elections has settled, one General stands supremely triumphant over the political battleground. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has raised its turquoise banner in 10 of the 24 contested unitary and county councils, seizing eight from the Conservatives and two from Labour – as well as two strategic mayoralties. In contrast, Farage’s previous political vehicle, UKIP, barely had control of a single Kent district, ‘Planet Thanet’.

This is a significant breakthrough in national politics, perhaps more so than winning by a whisker of six votes the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, previously the 49th safest Labour seat. For pollsters it proves Reform does now pose the existential threat it promised to be to a now heavily beleaguered and demoralised Conservative party.

From a standing start, by winning 677 councillors, two-in-five of the seats available on a 31% share of the vote, Reform has blitzed its way into breakthrough territory. Polling at these levels makes the first past the post system work for Farage, unlike last year’s general election when 14.3% of the national vote returned only five parliamentary seats, at a cost of 800,000 votes each.

So, we can adduce that next year’s elections – which involve all London boroughs, Birmingham City Council and a whole slate of mainly Labour led metropolitan councils, and crucially the new mayoralties and reformed local authorities from the devolution priority programme (DPP) would, on present trends, offer yet more local election joy for Reform in 2026.

What we don’t know is how Reform’s new councillor cadre will cope with the heavy responsibility of running lynchpin councils like Kent County Council, especially for the fact it is on the prominent frontline of the migrant boat crossings. All eyes will now be on the ability of these new model Reform county administrations to competently govern here as well as in Derbyshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire, in the unitaries of Doncaster and Durham as well as North and West Northamptonshire.

In the aftermath of the election, Farage and senior Reform spokespeople such as fellow MP Richard Tice and chairman Zia Yusuf, talked up their desire to imitate Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in English local government. They spoke of their wish to root our ‘woke’ diversity, equity and inclusion policies, kibosh local net zero initiatives and force council workers to get back into the office or quit. In all likelihood, while there will be some budget lines to cut, the overwhelming challenge will be to prove, almost as a test run for national government, that Reform’s local leaders can manage to balance large budgets, lead sizeable workforces and deliver high-demand, intensive statutory adult and children’s services in the full glare of public scrutiny.

Last week also showed Reform is competitive in the mayoral contests. In Greater Lincolnshire, former Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns seized the newly created combined authority while political newcomer and former boxer Luke Hall won a knockout blow in the inaugural Hull and East Yorkshire mayoral race. Their success bodes well for their chances in the six new DPP derived combined authorities scheduled to be established next year in Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Essex, Hampshire and Solent, Norfolk and Suffolk and Sussex and Brighton.

What follows would be a less harmonious set of regional/central relationships than is enjoyed at present, where the assembled combined authority mayors pose for a selfie on the steps of Downing Street, and seem to be of one mind and intent with central government in following the yellow brick devolution road.

Instead, we could likely face a self-defeating war of all against all, with Reform mayors at odds with both their constituent authorities below them and in conflict with a national government – whose goals they politically oppose – above them. In like vein, where or how the Reform Party’s councillors will find a perch within the Local Government Association (LGA) could very likely prove problematic. More than a decade ago, UKIP’s incoming councillors would typically swell the numbers of the independent group. Whether this would work as an arrangement in the fourth grouping of the LGA, joining forces with the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and other independents, will prove challenging to say the least.

As to the rest, Labour’s poor polling and dismal loss of 187 seats of the 285 it held, as well as the evidence it has a soft underbelly in the North and Midlands is an obvious concern ahead of 2026’s local polls.

For the Conservative Party, the results, that saw them lose a staggering 674 councillors of the 1,182 seats held on the eve of the elections, alongside true blue bastions were as existentially catastrophic as they were incredible to behold on a night of doomscrolling. Their only ray of hope, on an otherwise disastrous night, was former parliamentarian Paul Bristow running through the middle to win the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoralty.

However, where Reform did not make inroads, the Liberal Democrats, buoyed no doubt by Sir Ed Davey’s increasingly cunning stunts on the campaign trail, are tearing up the Middle England vote. Gaining 163 seats overall, the election saw them gaining Shropshire from the Conservatives and additionally they took control of both Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire from no overall control. They are now the biggest party in Devon and Gloucestershire as well as Hertfordshire and Wiltshire.