Polling day is six days away, and the projections are now so consistent across so many different pollsters that they cannot reasonably be dismissed. Labour is heading for the worst local election result in living memory. Pollster Sir John Curtice and the Britain Elects forecast both put Labour on track to lose around 1,850 of the 2,557 seats it is defending across England. That is a wipeout. Not a setback. A wipeout.
And the party that is set to replace Labour as the dominant force in local government across great swathes of the country is Reform UK. From a base of just three seats won at the last set of these contests, Reform is projected to gain more than 1,300 — enough to challenge the Conservatives for the title of largest party in town and county halls across England.
The Map Is About to Change
Look at the councils tipped to flip. Sunderland — a city Labour has held without serious challenge for as long as most voters can remember — is forecast to swing comfortably to Reform. Wakefield, Barnsley and Thurrock are projected to do the same. In the West Midlands, Reform is showing double-digit leads in Cannock Chase, Dudley, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Nuneaton, Redditch, Tamworth and Walsall. From the Conservatives, councils like Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk are projected to fall to Reform too.
This is not a regional protest vote. It is a national rejection of a Labour government that has lost the trust of the country in less than two years. Voters who lent Labour their support in 2024 have watched the tax raids, the small boats crisis, the U-turns, the Mandelson vetting scandal, and Andy Burnham's open threat to his own leader. They have seen enough.
The 19 Per Cent Government
National polling has Labour somewhere around 19 per cent. To put that in context, that is well below the share Labour received in 2019 when many wrote the party off. It is the kind of number you associate with a party in opposition fighting to be heard, not a party that won a thumping majority less than two years ago. The British public have rendered their verdict on Sir Keir Starmer's government and they are not interested in waiting until 2029 to make it official.
Labour's response has been to lash out — first at Reform's funding model, then at its candidates, and now at the very voters who are turning away. None of this works because none of it speaks to the actual problems people are living with: the tax bills, the energy prices, the small boats, the GP appointments they cannot get, the houses they cannot afford. People want answers. Labour is offering excuses.
Why Reform UK Is Winning
Reform UK is not winning because of clever marketing or because of any one personality. Reform is winning because we are saying what voters already know to be true. Taxes are too high. Borders are not under control. Net zero is making energy more expensive. Local councils have lost sight of what matters to residents. The civil service is too big. Free speech is being eroded. And the political class refuses to take any of it seriously.
That is the simple truth behind these polling numbers. Reform candidates are standing in places no insurgent party has stood in a generation. Volunteers are signing up in record numbers. The campaign visits this past month — Sunderland, Leeds, Bradford, Milton Keynes — have drawn the kind of crowds that the legacy parties simply cannot match. There is real momentum here, and the polling is finally catching up with what canvassers have been hearing on the doorstep for months.
What Happens Next
If the polling is anywhere close to accurate, the political fallout from 7 May will be enormous. A leadership challenge to Sir Keir Starmer is no longer a fringe possibility — it is being openly briefed by Labour MPs to anyone who will listen. The Conservatives, for their part, are facing the prospect of becoming a regional rump confined to the Home Counties. And the political conversation in this country will shift, finally and decisively, towards the issues that ordinary voters have been talking about for years.
For Reform UK councillors taking office in newly-won councils, the work begins on Friday morning. Lower council tax. Audit the books. End the diversity nonsense. Defend the green belt. Back the police. Govern in the interests of the residents — not the activists, not the lobbyists, not the consultancy-class managers who have run too many town halls into the ground.
This election is not the end of anything. It is the beginning. And on the evidence of the polling, it is going to be one of the most significant local election nights in modern British history.