Labour has been suffering heavy defeats at council elections since the General Election as voters punish Keir Starmer’s party for a series of unpopular decisions.
Despite winning a thumping majority just five months ago, Labour has suffered a net loss of 24 council seats since July with their aggregate vote share crashing 8.3 per cent.
In what is an extraordinary turnaround for a party who just suffered their worst electoral result in history, the Conservatives have recorded a net gain of 23 seats.
For most of this period the Conservatives did not even have a leader, something commentators have said shows the level of discontent with Starmer’s leadership.
Aggregate council results since the GE 2024 show Labour’s heavy losses
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Reform has also drained support away from Labour, gaining five seats and recording the largest aggregate vote share bump of 6.6 per cent.
These results broadly align with several national polls showing Starmer’s popularity to have crashed faster than any leader in modern political times.
A JLP Partners’ poll found Nigel Farage to be more popular than Starmer as his approval rating dropped to –22. It was +7 at the time of the election.
Favourability of key figures before the General Election and presentJ.L PartnersThis comes after a series of unpopular decisions implemented by Starmer and his government.
They include raising taxes by £40billion, removing the winter fuel payment for millions of pensioners, slapping farmers with death duties and the scale of donations Starmer and his colleagues received.
This goes without mentioning the Sue Gray fiasco, accusations of politicising the civil service, a Chancellor rewriting her CV, the surrendering of the Chagos Islands and the embarrassing resurfacing of childish, vitriolic remarks many cabinet ministers said of Donald Trump before he won a second term.
Last week a poll from Find Out Now showed Reform UK receiving 24 per cent of the vote, one-point ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
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Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives emerged as the largest party, winning support from 26 per cent of voters in a meagre boost compared to July 4’s results.
The Liberal Democrats and Greens’ support remained effectively unchanged, with the two parties receiving 11 per cent and nine per cent respectively.
Extrapolating the poll’s results, Reform UK would win 95 seats, with Labour haemorrhaging 205 MPs to collapse to just 207.
It is worth remembering this poll is an outlier and was based on 2,000 respondents. Polls often reflect the mood of the nation on a particular day and do not predict the future.
The next major batch of elections are due in May 2025 with 21 county councils, nine unitary councils, one metropolitan borough council and Isle of Scilly and City of London councils up for grabs.
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