The Green Party gained Hooley, Merstham and Netherne on Reigate and Banstead in Surrey with 41.8%, ahead of Reform UK on 24.4%1. The seat came off the Conservatives, whose worst result of the night ran to three defences lost: two to Reform and this one to The Greens. That continues the mid-July pattern of other parties consolidating where the anti-Conservative or anti-Reform vote has somewhere to go.
Reform finished second in four of the seats it failed to take, which is not the shape of a party in retreat. At Great Dunmow North on Uttlesford in Essex the Conservatives gained on 50.5% against Reform's 27.9%. At Bro'r Llynnoedd on the Isle of Anglesey, Plaid Cymru held with 48.5% against 39.3%, and at Hengoed on Caerphilly Plaid held again with 49.9% against 36.4%2. Plaid, which leads the Welsh government, held both wards comfortably enough, with Reform the challenger in each.
Elsewhere in the same set of ten contests, the Liberal Democrats held Hedge End South on Eastleigh in Hampshire with 46.1% on a 2.7 point swing towards them, and an Independent took Rumworth in Bolton from Labour with 42.3%3. Independents win these vacancies more often than national polling suggests, because a ward-scale contest rewards a known local name over a party label.
A runner-up finish leaves no councillor and no committee seat, so it registers nowhere in any tally of party strength. It does tell the parties where to spend money next May.
