3SEP

Labour retakes a St Helens ward

1 min read

12:41UTC

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's £4m arrived as cash, not crypto 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 May ².

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 →

First Reported In

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

PollCheck· 3 Sept 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Labour takes Penistone East from Reform

Billinge continues Labour retaking May-won Reform wards.

Occurred 20 Aug 2026

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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

Scottish Labour members

Scottish Labour's published leadership nominations show 33 MPs and MSPs backing Michael Marra against 12 for Joe Fagan, with members voting until 17 September and a result on 19 September. Elected members do not cast the ballot, so the nomination gap measures the parliamentary party rather than the membership that will decide it.

Electoral Commission

The Electoral Commission published its Q2 2026 donations register on 3 September, recording Reform UK's £5.44m as the highest of any party and Ben Delo's £4m as two cash gifts. The register records a donation's form and amount, not the origin of a donor's wealth, so a cash gift shows the same as any other.

Reform UK

Danny Kruger, Reform UK's MP for East Wiltshire, called the Bill "a flagrantly partisan attempt to kneecap Reform UK" during the 2 September debate, objecting to its trade-union exemption. Reform enters its Birmingham conference having topped Q2's donor register at £5.44m, £4m of it in cash from Ben Delo, a form the new ban does not reach.

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.

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.