Our message to politicians is ignore these results at your peril!
Will someone wake up? I’m going to start with a big statement: the local election results this year were different to anything anyone has ever seen before, certainly in this century.
Political parties, especially governing parties, have had bad elections before. Labour in 2009 lost 62% of its seats in a single election, the worst result of the Blair/Brown years. The Liberal Democrats in 2014 lost 42% of their seats, their worst result of the coalition years. In 2024, the Conservatives lost 48% of their seats, their worst result of their years in Government.
But in 2025, the Conservative lost 68% and Labour 65% of their seats respectively on the same day. This hasn’t happened before.
Of course, it’s easy to dismiss – Governments always lose seats in local elections and what really matters is the next General Election. But two things undermine that argument.
First, this is the worst-ever Government performance in a local election. Second, very often local elections DO point the direction of political travel – they did before every change of Government we’ve seen in recent times.
Our message to politicians is ignore these results at your peril!
The biggest alarm bell that should be ringing is that our electoral system is clearly not fit for purpose with the politics we have in the UK today.
On 1st May, we saw councillors being elected with fewer than 20% of the vote. One Mayor was elected with just 25% of the vote and with just a 30% turnout, that meant just 7.5% of the electorate backed that Mayor – that’s not much of a mandate.
We saw Reform UK win Mayors and several councils – usually with the support of well below 40% of voters. This year, Reform UK has been the clear beneficiary of our First Past The Post electoral system. As election guru, Professor Rob Ford said, “this is now a Farage-friendly electoral system.”
Electoral systems are not supposed to favour any party – they should translate what people vote for into seats in Parliament and on councils. Our system isn’t doing that – worse, it’s turning elections into a lottery where the voters lose out most of all.
If people can’t trust the system we use to vote, how can they possibly trust the government or councils it gives us?
The Government needs to recognise this – we think it’s time for a national commission to look at how the current electoral system is failing and to recommend change.
A second alarm bell clanging to Westminster’s rafters is about trust in politics. This was at historic lows when this Government came into office, but there is no sign of recovery.
Labour’s pledges to clean up politics by getting rid of MPs’ second jobs, introducing an independent Ethics and Integrity Commission to improve ethical standards and modernising the House of Commons remain on the drawing board.
Instead we’ve had the continued drumbeat of freebies scandals involving the Prime Minister, Cabinet members and even the Speaker of the House. We’ve had more cronyism and more resignations for poor behaviour. In the public’s eyes, little has changed.
People voted for Labour because they wanted change, but when it comes to fixing broken politics, Labour simply haven’t delivered. It’s time for them to get on with it and really show voters that it’s not just business as usual at Westminster.
The final bell to toll is that of ambition. When you ask voters what needs to change in UK politics, they’ll generally say a lot or almost everything!
People can see there’s a huge problem and they understand that’s not going to be fixed by a puny solution. That brings us to Labour’s plan on the House of Lords.
More than 25 years ago, it was finally agreed that hereditary peers shouldn’t be voting on the laws of our country. But a deal was done to allow 92 hereditary peers to temporarily remain. They’re still there today – still voting on our laws.
Labour is of course right to get rid of the remaining hereditary peers and to finally complete the 1990s Lords Reform! But is that it? Are we really ok with a House of Lords that has been stuffed by successive governments with cronies and party donors? The public clearly are not – every poll shows that.
We think it’s time that the Government showed a lot more ambition and rebuilt trust in our political system – whether that’s our voting system, cleaning up politics or replacing the House of Lords.
The ominous election results on May 1st show the honeymoon is well and truly over. The Government needs to deliver change. Until then, it is living on borrowed time.
Left Foot Forward doesn’t have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
