Wajahat Ali Khan
Fourteen years later, in 2024, the Labour Party won the election by a landslide, but in just the first 14 months of its first year in power, the party has not only lost its popularity, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer has also become unpopular with his own voters. The latest example of this is the local elections held early last month, in which Labour was badly beaten on all four sides. The key question is why did this happen? We will examine why this happened in the following analysis.
The 2025 United Kingdom local elections were held on 1 May 2025 for 1,641 council seats across 24 local authorities. All seats on 14 county councils and eight unitary authorities in England were up for election. They were the first local elections to follow the 2024 general election. Most of these seats were last contested at the 2021 local elections. There were also six mayoral elections, including the inaugural election for the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, and the inaugural election for the mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire. The 2025 Runcorn and Helsby by-election was also held on 1 May. In addition, elections for the Council of the Isles of Scilly were held. The City of London Corporation held elections on 19 and 20 March.
The elections were described as a sweeping victory for Reform UK. The party placed first, winning the most seats and took control of a number of local authorities. The governing Labour Party and opposition Conservative Party suffered historic losses. This was the first time that Labour finished fourth in a local election; it was the first set of elections under the premiership of Keir Starmer. There were major gains for the Liberal Democrats who won three new councils and won more seats than the Conservatives for the second local election in a row. Some elections originally scheduled for 2025 have been delayed by up to a year while reorganisation takes place. The government announced that elections to nine councils would not take place in 2025 to allow restructuring, with elections to reformed or newly created replacement authorities taking place in 2026.
Last July, Labour ended 14-years of Conservative government, sweeping to power in a General Election which saw the party return 411 MPs and win a commanding majority of 174 in the House of Commons. While Labour’s majority was won with just 35% of the vote, the lowest national vote share ever won by a single-party government, the party and the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, have nevertheless won five years in office, with a parliamentary majority more than sizable enough to enact whatever legislative agenda they wish to embark upon. Eight months of missteps, bungles, and gathering economic storm clouds later, however, and the optimism the Labour Party entered government with has been firmly extinguished. Labour’s policy proposals to date have drawn backlash from farmers, pensioners, and environmentalists, while a worrying and unexpected increase in inflation has left Rachel Reeves in a difficult position as she prepares to present her spring statement. These decisions have had a dire impact on the Government’s poll ratings with the public. In polling conducted this week by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, we find the Prime Minister’s approval rating is now tied with his lowest net approval rating as Opposition Leader, recorded in the autumn of 2021. The public further gives the Government negative net approval ratings on every major policy issue prompted, and a majority view the Government as incompetent. Moreover, we find that Nigel Farage and Reform UK loom as a serious threat.
In our final pre-election poll, we found Keir Starmer with a net approval rating of +9%, with 41% of Britons approving of his job performance since he became Labour Leader and 32% disapproving. Now, eight months into his new job, Starmer has a net approval rating of -18%, with only 30% of voters approving of his job performance as Prime Minister and 48% disapproving. Among those who voted Labour last July, just under two-thirds (63%) approve of Starmer’s job performance while almost 1-in-5 (19%) disapprove. 23% of Britons have a favourable view of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, down from 29% last month. Just over half (52%, +6ppts) are unfavourable, giving him a net approval rating of -29. In March, after the Oval Office meeting, his net rating was -17, up from -34 in February, but this month’s rating loses much of that improvement. 29% hold a favourable opinion of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. 47% are unfavourable, giving him a net favourability rating of -18, like last month. Leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch holds a rating of -25, with 20% favourable and 45% unfavourable, also similar to last month. Around a quarter (24%) hold a favourable view of Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, while 30% are unfavourable (though 35% are neutral and 11% don’t know), giving him an unchanged net favourable score at -6.
Just 15% of Britons hold a favourable view of Chancellor Rachel Reeves. 55% are unfavourable, giving her a net favourability rating of -40, down from -33 last month. This matches the lowest figure that Ipsos has recorded for her since November 2023 and is worse than her predecessor Jeremy Hunt recorded between October 2022 and April 2024 (his lowest score was -31). The Labour Party has also seen a dip in approval ratings over the past month. 23% are favourable towards the party of government, down from 29% in March. Just over half (53%, up from 46% last month) are unfavourable, giving a net favourability rating of -30. This unfavourable rating is back to levels seen in February (-28) and is also similar to ratings recorded in November 2019 at the start of that general election campaign (-29). Around two in ten (21%) express a favourable view of the Conservative party, with 50% unfavourable (net -29, like last month). The Green Party’s net ratings are also unchanged at -6, with a quarter (25%) favourable towards the party, while 31% are unfavourable.
The Liberal Democrats sit at -9. A quarter (25%) express a favourable view and 34% unfavourable. Reform UK has a net rating of -17 (a marginal improvement from -20 last month). 28% hold a favourable view of the party, with 45% unfavourable. 59% say the country is heading in the wrong direction, and just 19% say right. This is a net negative rating of -40, down from -32 last month (though compared with -47 in February). When asked to score the government’s performance on a scale of 0-10, the mean score overall is 3.8 (down slightly from 4.0 in February). The government scores highest among younger Britons aged 18-34 (5.4) and 2024 Labour voters (5.6), while those aged 55+ (3.1) and 2024 Reform UK (1.8) and Conservative (2.8) voters score it lowest.
It is true that local elections are completely different from the general elections, but still, there is a need to know the reason for the recent major defeat of the ruling party.
In local elections, people choose who they want to run their villages, towns or cities.
There are different types of local authorities – often known as councils – but they oversee lots of things in our local areas, including things like schools, traffic and bin collections.
Usually, all the main UK political parties have representatives standing in the local elections, along with many smaller parties and independent candidates.
Local elections are different to a general election, where people around the UK vote for a government to run the whole country.
