23AUG

Labour retakes a St Helens ward

1 min read

19:09UTC

Labour won Billinge and Seneley Green back from Reform UK on 41.4% to 31.9%, four months after Reform took the same ward on 43%.

← Back to Reform loses three wards, wins Clacton Jump to analysis ↓

PoliticsAssessed

Key takeaway

Reform lost a ward it had won on 43% in May, only four months later.

Labour gained Billinge and Seneley Green on St Helens Borough Council from Reform UK on 27 August, polling 41.4% against Reform's 31.9%⁠¹. Reform had won the same Merseyside ward on 43% in the all-out elections of May⁠².

A nine-point Labour lead in a ward Reform carried four months ago is a swing of some size, but the more useful detail is who did the retaking. Labour won Penistone East back on Barnsley council a week earlier, and the Liberal Democrats prised Almondbury and St Neots Eynesbury off Reform inside the same fortnight.

No single opponent is picking these seats up. Each ward goes to whichever established party already had an organisation there before Reform arrived, which is the exact reverse of how Reform gained Southey. The party wins where nobody holds an incumbency and loses where somebody does. Holding council seats requires the ward-level machinery that took its rivals decades to build, and a party assembled in a single spring has not had time to build it.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Labour won back Billinge and Seneley Green, a ward on St Helens Borough Council, that Reform UK had held. Labour took 41.4% of the vote against Reform's 31.9%, which was down from the 43% Reform won in May's main local elections. This is one of several council wards Reform UK has lost this summer, part of a pattern of seats it won in May slipping back to their previous party.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Reform's vote share here fell to 31.9%, down from 43% in May, a decline that sits alongside Mark Pack's tracker of departing Reform councillors covered elsewhere in this briefing: both are symptoms of the same underlying problem, wards won in May 2026 without an established local activist base able to defend them mid-term.

Labour's 41.4% share suggests it recovered ground lost in May rather than gained new support, consistent with a swing back to the incumbent-before-Reform party rather than a realignment toward any other challenger.

Sources:PollCheck

Mentions:Labour Party →Reform UK →St Helens Borough Council →Liberal Democrats →Almondbury →St Neots Eynesbury →Penistone East →Harraby South →Barnsley →Mark Pack →Merseyside →

First Reported In

Update #17 · Reform's £4m arrived as cash, not crypto

PollCheck· 3 Sept 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Labour takes Penistone East from Reform

Billinge continues Labour retaking May-won Reform wards.

Occurred 20 Aug 2026

Read story →

This Event

Labour retakes a St Helens ward

Reform's May wards are returning one at a time to whichever opponent is strongest locally, not to a single national challenger.

Different Perspectives

Rhun ap Iorwerth / Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru)

Ap Iorwerth presented six priorities to the Senedd on 22 September without numeric targets or a named partner party, promising to work across the chamber where there is common ground. He says his government will be judged on results.

Michael Marra / Scottish Labour

Marra won the leadership on 19 September, and three days later his 17 MSPs backed Swinney's right-to-decide motion once their child-poverty amendment was written in. He says Scottish Labour's task is to tell voters what it stands for.

Andy Burnham / Labour Party

Burnham told conference in Liverpool on 29 September that Labour's next manifesto will commit to changing the electoral system, and invited every party into a National Commission on Electoral Reform. He has not named a replacement system, and no chair or remit has been published.

Conservative Party (frontbench peers and Kemi Badenoch)

Conservative frontbench peers argued against retrospective rules at the Lords Second Reading on 14 September, a position that protects gifts made before any cap. Kemi Badenoch rejected Burnham's electoral reform commission on 2 October, accusing him of using it to entrench the left.

Reform UK

Reform denied wrongdoing after the Channel 4 News programme, called the sting a hoax by climate activists and said it would cooperate with the Metropolitan Police. In the same month it announced £36m gifts from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne.

Steff Aquarone / Liberal Democrats (North Norfolk)

Aquarone told Rayner in the Commons on 7 September that North Norfolk District Council had spent money preparing for a reorganisation the Government has now withdrawn. He puts the cost of the cancelled merger on districts in the four areas.