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The sheer scale of last week's rout of two-party politics in local government is now clear. But the collapse of the Labour and Conservative vote and the huge advance of Reform should come as no surprise.The writing was already on the wall after last year's local elections in England, when Reform seized the largest number of seats with 677 – 41% of all seats up for election.A year on, Labour's vote has imploded, leaving Labour's huge parliamentary majority under threat, and more immediately, putting the political future of Prime Minister Keir Starmer in jeopardy.The outcome in Wales was disastrous for the Labour Party, with Plaid Cymru winning the Welsh Senedd elections, and Reform coming in second, bringing 100 years of Labour control to an end.In Scotland, the Scottish National Party won a fifth consecutive term in government, with Reform also making a splash, winning seats in Holyrood for the first time and tying with Labour for second place. For Labour in Scotland this was the worst result since devolution in 1999.Across England, Reform swept up seats in the Midlands and Northern towns, gaining councils including Sandwell, Barnsley and Sunderland from Labour.In London, the Greens have hounded Labour mayors and councillors from office, while Reform gained control of its first council in the capital, Havering LBC.The Conservatives lost heavily in their traditional territories of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Surrey, with Reform taking overall control of Essex CC and Suffolk CC, and winning enough seats at Norfolk CC to run the council as a minority administration. The Liberal Democrats took control of Surrey's two new unitary authorities.With Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex in the devolution priority programme (DPP), and elections to shadow authorities next year, how will this political explosion impact the Government's ongoing local government reorganisation (LGR) drive, and the already stalling rollout of devolution more widely?Writing online, senior director, Home Counties at Cratus Group, Duncan Flynn, pointed to more councils being in no overall control, leading to more fragile alliances, deal-making, leadership changes and breakups of administrations during council terms.None of this will provide a comfortable backdrop for the collaboration that detailed preparation for new LGR footprints and local agreement on devolution requires.Also writing in The MJ chief executive of the Localis think-tank Jonathan Werran said following the announcement that secondary legislation for the DPP areas has been put off until the autumn, the election results may ‘cause more doubt and uncertainty over the devolution agenda'.Werran underlined that Reform both locally and nationally will be reluctant to fall in line with devolution or an LGR programme they did not contribute to ‘and have little to gain from'.Speaking at an Institute for Government webinar on the local and devolved elections last Friday before final results had come in, senior researcher for devolution Matthew Fright said the DPP now had ‘a few obstacles potentially moving forward, aside from the fact that there are going to be new leaders with their new visions of what devolution should look like in their local areas'.He continued: ‘In Norfolk and Suffolk and in Essex, there are changes in leadership. Councils had approved statutory orders that would have set up the combined authorities for 2026. Because the Government decided to delay mayoral elections to 2028, they need to reapprove these statutory orders at a local level. But having just changed leadership, we'll have to wait and see what the new Reform leaders in Essex and Thurrock think about devolution, [and] whether they want to have a mayor.'Commenting after the announcement of Reform gaining control of Suffolk CC and ahead of Reform gaining enough seats to run Norfolk CC as a minority administration, he said the party's position on mayors would emerge. ‘Sure, they've run mayoral candidates, and they have some standing by and they wanted to engage with the mayoral elections.‘On the other hand, you could potentially see some areas end up trying to use the mayoral elections and the establishment of mayoralty as some kind of bargaining chip in negotiations with government to try and push for different LGR footprints.'He concluded: ‘So, it gets really quite messy. We'll have to just see how this plays out in the DPP areas, I think.'

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POLICY AND POLITICS

The post-elections play

By Ann McGauran | 13 May 2026

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