UK Local Elections 2026

The first non-Labour First Minister of Wales tabled a six-power Wales Bill ask and won youth justice. Three Reform-led county councils filed legal letters to stop their own abolition. John Swinney lodged a Section 30 request seven seats short of his own trigger.

Six ministers resign in four days, the Health Secretary walks, a backbencher empties Makerfield for Andy Burnham. Wales gets its first non-Labour First Minister in 27 years and the Scottish Conservative leader refuses to resign. The Standards Commissioner opens a formal investigation of Nigel Farage; Reform UK's first week in power is already breaking its pledges.

Reform UK won 14 English councils on 7 May but came up 894 seats short of the projection that frightened Westminster. Welsh Labour collapsed to 9 seats exactly as D'Hondt arithmetic predicted. Three electoral systems produced three projection accuracies, and the model that broke is the one Britain uses for everything that matters.

Final MRPs land 24 hours before polls open. Wales projects the first electoral-system event of the night: Greens collapse from 10 seats to 2 under closed-list PR. Scotland's SNP at 62 misses Swinney's 65 trigger. Three systems, one fragmentation, three different outcomes by breakfast on Friday.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies dismissed the SNP manifesto on 21 April, completing a six-of-six rejection of every Holyrood platform. The Representation of the People Bill, which contains the retrospective crypto donation ban, is stranded in committee with Parliament prorogating as early as 29 April. YouGov's second Welsh MRP shows Reform on 37 seats and Plaid on 36, reversing a 13-seat Plaid lead from six weeks ago. Reform also took its first Salford seat on 22 April and lost three candidates over BNP-list links on 25 April.

Greens took a Reform UK seat in Kent on 9 April with a 26.7-point swing, the first by-election after the incumbent was jailed for controlling behaviour. The same week, PollCheck extended Reform's projected council gains into Labour's northern heartlands. Two shifts, opposite directions, three weeks to polling day.

Labour and the Greens poll level at 16% for the first time in British history, matching the symmetry of right-wing fragmentation between Reform and the Conservatives. In Scotland, the IFS dismisses all four major parties' fiscal plans simultaneously. In Wales, projected Green seats create a kingmaker route no one saw coming.

The Representation of the People Bill rewrites party finance law mid-campaign with a retrospective crypto donation ban, a £100,000 overseas elector cap, and shell company restrictions that land hardest on Reform UK.

On 7 May 2026 Wales will run its first election under a brand-new closed-list proportional system, expanding the Senedd from 60 to 96 seats, with incumbent First Minister Eluned Morgan projected to lose her own seat and Welsh Labour on course to fall from 29 seats to around 12.