The local elections on Thursday will be the first major electoral test for Keir Starmer since sweeping to victory at last year’s General Election with a historic landslide
Millions of voters in England will head to the polls this week at the local elections – the first major vote since last year’s General Election.
A total of 1,641 council seats are up for grabs across 23 local authorities while four regional mayors and two local mayors will also be elected. A key by-election is also taking place to choose a new MP for the constituency of Runcorn & Helsby after the ex-Labour MP Mike Amesbury resigned.
Polls will be open between 7am and 10pm on Thursday with the results expected to be declared from the early hours of Friday morning. But votes have been delayed in some areas – including East Sussex and Norfolk – until 2026 due to an overhaul of local government announced earlier this year by the new Labour government.
The votes on Thursday will also be the first major electoral test for Keir Starmer since sweeping to victory at last year’s General Election with a historic landslide. Ahead of the elections, the PM warned a Tory-Reform coalition would be “disaster for Britain” as he accused the right wing parties of conning voters with stitch-up pacts.
Mr Starmer said suggestions that deals could be cut “behind the scenes” between the Conservatives and Reform would mean voters lose out. Kemi Badenoch has ruled out a national pact with Nigel Farage’s party, but left the door open to forming pacts at a local level on Sunday.
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Mr Starmer said: “The Tories have got a terrible record – 14 years of failure. Reform moan about everything, but have got no answers. And at the end of the day, Reform and the Tories, there’s all this talk about them getting together and merging.
“If you’re a Tory voter who doesn’t want a pro-Russia foreign policy, how does a merger with Reform work for you? If you’re a Reform voter that thinks the Tories have failed for 14 years, how does a merger or coalition with the Tories work for you?”
The PM added: “Both sets of voters are being conned, because behind the scenes and behind the leader of the opposition, other people are looking for a coalition of these two parties. It would be a disaster for Britain.”
It comes as the Tory leader braces for an electoral wipeout with experts warning the Conservatives could lose hundreds of councillors on Thursday. Many of the 1,600 seats up for grabs were last contested in 2021 when ex-PM Boris Johnson was benefiting from a Covid “vaccine bounce” in the polls.
Earlier this week, Ms Badenoch said: “I know it’s going to be a challenge.We’re still in the aftermath of our worst defeat ever. Last year we suffered a historic defeat and we need to rebuild trust with the public.” Ms Badenoch has struggled to turn around her party’s dire position in the polls since winning the Tory crown last autumn.
Recent polls have shown the Conservatives being leapfrogged by Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK. Given the Conservatives’ dire record in office, Ms Badenoch also insisted the vote on Thursday “is not a referendum on national issues, but local ones”.
And she said her party needs to “fight for every single vote” and “remind people about our record and how well we have done at local government level”. The Tory leader added: “I’ve been travelling all around the country, and one of the councillors I was with, we were on a doorstep, and he showed a leaflet of Reform, saying ‘we’re going to stop the boats’. That’s not what people are voting on on Thursday.”
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