23AUG

Reform loses Old Catton to the Tories

1 min read

19:09UTC

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%.

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

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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

Ian Davidson, Acting Returning Officer for Clacton

Davidson's office printed a 90cm ballot paper for the record 34-candidate field, with nothing in electoral law capping candidate numbers or the £500 deposit each pays. He expects the paper's size to raise printing costs and slow the count into the early hours, a strain that follows from the major parties' boycott, not from turnout.

Scottish Labour members

Members now choose between Michael Marra and Joe Fagan after Monica Lennon fell one MP nomination short of the three-MP, three-MSP threshold, a bar set by MPs and union officials rather than the wider membership. Whoever wins takes office having faced only one rival on the members' ballot.

Labour Party

Labour gained Penistone East from Reform on 20 August but lost Harraby South to Reform the same night, a wash that undercuts any claim of momentum. The party can point to beating Reform in a genuinely fought contest, but not to a pattern running only in its favour.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats took two of Reform's May wards, Almondbury on 13 August and St Neots Eynesbury on 20 August, the latter on a 29.8-point rise in their own vote share. Both results let the party claim it is the beneficiary when voters turn against Reform, not Labour or the Conservatives.

Reform UK

Reform UK can point to winning Clacton unopposed by the other major parties and to taking Harraby South from Labour, a ward it had never previously contested. That gives the party two results to cite even as three previously held wards changed hands elsewhere in August.

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.