12AUG

Reform loses Old Catton to the Tories

1 min read

14:07UTC

Conservative Antony Little gained Old Catton from Reform UK on 16 July, ten weeks after Reform won the Norfolk seat by 1,006 votes; the Greens surged into second and Labour fell to 5.2%.

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Key takeaway

Reform lost a Norfolk seat it won by 1,006 votes in May, with the Greens consolidating the anti-Reform vote.

Conservative Antony Little gained the Old Catton division of Norfolk County Council from Reform UK on 16 July 2026, ten weeks after Reform won it by 1,006 votes. Little took the seat with 973 votes (35.5%), the Green Party surged into second on 32.7%, up 14 points, and Reform's Sue Lawn fell to third on 19.9%; Labour collapsed to 5.2% on a 39.8% turnout ¹.

The vacancy came when Mark Tucker, who had won the seat for Reform in May, resigned within four weeks citing poor health ². That churn is not new: Reform lost 22 councillors in the fortnight after polling day and roughly 40 by early July . Old Catton is where the attrition finally showed as a lost seat rather than a resignation tally.

Norfolk's anti-Reform vote split three ways in May; here it consolidated behind The Greens as the single viable challenger, lifting them from fourth into contention a point behind Little. Where Reform's opponents co-ordinate, its May margins do not survive a mid-term test.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Just ten weeks after Reform UK first won the Old Catton council seat in Norfolk, the Conservatives took it back. Antony Little won for the Conservatives, the Green Party jumped into second place, and Labour's vote collapsed to just 5.2%. The seat became vacant because the Reform councillor who won it in May resigned citing poor health. A single council by-election does not change who runs the country, but it is watched closely as an early test of how durable Reform's gains really are.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Reform's May 2026 majority in Old Catton was built on a first-time protest vote against the two main parties. First-time protest votes tend to be softer than votes for an established party, because voters have no record of the new party actually running anything before deciding whether to stick with it.

Councillor Mark Tucker's resignation within weeks of winning, which triggered this by-election, removed the one local figure whose personal vote might have anchored Reform's support, leaving the seat to be recontested on national polling dynamics rather than incumbency.

Sources:Democracy Club / Norfolk County Council declaration·Democracy Club / Norfolk County Council declaration

Mentions:Reform UK →Green Party →Norfolk County Council →UKIP →Old Catton →Norfolk →Labour Party →Conservative Party →

First Reported In

Update #13 · England's council map redrawn as five sue

Democracy Club / Norfolk County Council declaration· 24 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Reform loses 22 councillors in 14 days

Reform's post-election councillor attrition tracked since May surfaced at the ballot box in Old Catton's loss.

Occurred 21 May 2026

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Reform's councillor losses start to slow

Reform's roughly 40 cumulative departures by early July presaged the Old Catton defeat.

Occurred 2 Jul 2026

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This Event

Reform loses Old Catton to the Tories

Old Catton is the first ballot-box evidence that Reform's May gains are soft where the party must defend.

Led to

Clacton's ballot paper splits the right four ways

Old Catton showed a consolidated anti-Reform vote beats Reform, the opposite of Clacton's four-way split.

Occurred 17 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin's John O'Dowd ruled out a Stormont walkout on 11 August despite calling the DUP increasingly difficult to work with, closing a question Conor Murphy had left open a fortnight earlier. Only Sinn Féin or the DUP can collapse the joint First Minister office, so the denial gives up the party's own leverage in budget talks.

Scottish Labour

Michael Marra, Joe Fagan and Monica Lennon declared for the Scottish Labour leadership, but each needs nine endorsements from MSPs, MPs and unions before members vote, with nominations closing 17 August. Lennon, the only woman standing, says the threshold favours a male-run process and could produce an all-male ballot.

Plaid Cymru

Plaid Cymru held both Welsh wards Reform challenged in the same set of by-elections, Bro'r Llynnoedd on Anglesey by 48.5% to 39.3% and Hengoed on Caerphilly by 49.9% to 36.4%. The party that leads the Welsh government kept Reform in second in both.

Conservative Party

The Conservatives lost three of ten council by-elections fought on 30 July and 6 August, two wards to Reform in Norfolk and one to the Greens in Surrey, continuing a run of losses since the May sweep. Every seat gone had been Conservative-held going into the contest.

Reform UK

Reform's 56 lost councillors since May came from defection, suspension and resignation, not lost votes, while the party gained three of ten council by-elections and finished second in four more over the same fortnight. That record undercuts reading the churn as electoral retreat.

Democratic Unionist Party

Gavin Robinson rejects Sinn Féin's characterisation of the institutions as precarious, says the DUP is "committed to" delivering for the public, and will not be "goaded" into a dispute he attributes to Treasury funding rather than unionist bad faith.