UK Local Elections 2026

Ministers withdrew four council reorganisation decisions on 7 September after legal advice and froze the rest, so May 2027 elections run on existing boundaries. Reform UK announced £72m from two donors days before peers began debating donation caps that, as tabled, would not reach it. Labour promised electoral reform, Holyrood's Labour MSPs backed Scotland's right to decide, and Reform lost two Northumberland seats to Labour with Restore Britain, a party to its right, on the ballot.

The Commons passed the Representation of the People Bill by 411 votes to 102 on Wednesday, adding a retrospective ban on cryptoasset donations. The Electoral Commission's register, published the next morning, shows Reform UK accepting more than any other party at £5.44m. Four million of it came from BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo, in cash. Six council by-elections left Reform's seat count exactly where it started.

Nigel Farage won back Clacton on 13 August with 22,239 votes, beating a satirical candidate by 12,784 in a contest no major party would fight. Every share figure quoted from that result rests on a valid-vote total the council never printed. In four council wards where Reform UK was actually opposed, it lost three seats it won in May and gained one. Scottish Labour's nomination threshold cut its field from three to two.

Reform UK has lost 56 councillors since May while gaining three council seats at by-elections in the past fortnight. The losses came by defection, suspension and resignation rather than from voters. Its national polling average slid from about 27% to about 24% over weeks that begin with Nigel Farage giving up Clacton, not with the Harborne disclosure. Clacton votes tomorrow.

Bev Craig took Greater Manchester on 30 July with 66.3% after the first second-round count in the mayoralty's history, run under a voting system Parliament restored in April. A second pollster confirms Labour's lead over Reform UK. Scottish Labour opens nominations today, and the crypto donation ban still runs on a minister's word rather than a statute.

The government fixed the largest redrawing of England's local-government map in half a century on 16 July, merging 134 councils into 38 unitaries, and by 22 July a fifth authority had gone to court to stop it. Reform lost a Norfolk seat it won by 1,006 votes in May. Andy Burnham named his cabinet and drew his first poll as prime minister, and the pollsters cannot agree on his bounce.

The party-finance bill Reform outran to the ballot box is back in the Commons, with a retrospective crypto-donation ban dated to 25 March. Police are investigating £500,000 in Reform donations, with two people interviewed under caution and no charges. Andy Burnham becomes prime minister on 20 July without a members' ballot, and the Local Government Association breaks with the council reorganisation he will inherit.

Nigel Farage says he will resign his Clacton seat to fight a by-election of his own making, and every major party has refused to stand against him. Keir Starmer has gone, and Labour may hand Andy Burnham the premiership on 17 July with no members' vote. Reform's poll lead has not moved through any of it.

Reform took control of England's biggest county council and named a former Morgan Stanley banker to run an efficiency drive over a budget that is almost entirely locked by law. Four counties are now litigating their own abolition. Holyrood voted for an independence referendum it cannot force Westminster to grant. Three weeks after winning, the parties of 7 May are meeting the machinery they now occupy.

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.