The 2026 UK local elections are set to be unlike any before. On 7 May, all 54 council seats in Coventry will be contested at once, following a redrawing of electoral boundaries. This shake-up comes at a moment when Britain’s political landscape is shifting rapidly, with Keir Starmer’s Labour government facing growing, increasingly vocal criticism.
At the same time, the continued rise of two insurgent forces — Reform UK and the Green Party — is reshaping how voters, particularly in London, are making their choices. Across England, both Labour and the Conservatives face the real prospect of losing large numbers of councillors, as the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, and the Greens make steady gains in vote share.
The UK Local Elections in 2026: A Different Chance for Parties
The UK local elections in 2026 will be different. Every single one of Coventry’s 54 seats will be up for grabs on 7 May because there are no electoral boundaries. Senior Labour and Conservatives in Coventry quietly believe Labour’s biggest threat to control of the council now comes from Reform.
Labour also faces a threat from the left. The Green Party already has two councillors on the city council. There are “new kids on the block” in the form of Your Party. Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana co-founded the party.
This May, a total of 1,817 councillors in 32 London boroughs will be elected, and there will be an election for the five directly-elected mayors. The rise of two insurgent political forces in recent years, Reform UK and the Green Party, will likely continue to shape how London votes.
The simple – and simplistic – analysis is that the Greens, led by Zack Polanski, take votes from Labour, and Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, take votes from the Tories. May’s council elections will be an opportunity for both parties to prove they are more than protest votes. They can also have their own offer on how best to run council services.
The UK Local Elections in 2026: Labour and Starmer Future
As 2026 begins, Britain’s political landscape is on the verge of a major transformation. The UK Local Elections in 2026 will have a new face. The Government led by Keir Starmer came to power with grand promises of change.
It is, however, now facing fierce criticism, even from its former cronies. It has become a common refrain in Westminster that Starmer and his cabinet need to “show results” with the public to reverse Labour’s plunging opinion polls.
Sir Michael Barber, who led the delivery unit under Tony Blair’s leadership and is an unpaid adviser to the Starmer government, has said that the second year of any administration must be a phase of “relentless implementation” to ensure results start to flow before the following election.
People working at the heart of Starmer’s administration sense a lack of urgency in some departments amid the threat of a Reform UK government, which the prime minister said would leave him unable to sleep at night.
Low Chances for Labour and Conservative Leaders
2026 will be pivotal in British politics, and 7 May will be the point around which things pivot. Elections to local councils, the Scottish parliament, and the Welsh Senedd will give millions of voters across the UK a chance to express party preferences. Their verdicts could imperil Labour and Conservative leaders.
In Wales, Labour might be sent into opposition for the first time since devolution. Plaid Cymru and Reform UK are set to make substantial gains. At Holyrood, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is on course for a majority. That would be an extraordinary defiance of political gravity for a party weighed down by nearly two decades of incumbency.
The UK local elections in 2026 will make it different for the current Government. In England, both Labour and the Tories risk losing scores of councillors. The Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, and the Greens gobbled up their vote shares.
Those results will be taken as evidence that Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch are failing as leaders. But it would be a mistake to filter the results through that lens alone. The fragmentation of national allegiances began much longer ago.
Economy: A Negative Situation for the Parties to Lose Votes
Going into 2026, the economy has little forward momentum. And there’s the issue that things may get worse before they get better. All governments go through bad patches, when nothing seems to go right, and voters turn against them. Often, they bounce back from the midterm blues and go on to be comfortably re-elected. That said, Labour’s current unpopularity is in a class of its own.
It is not just the scale of its problem; opinion polls suggest support for the party has almost halved, from 34% to 18%, since the 2024 general election. Nor is it simply the speed at which disillusionment with the Government has set in, though that too is unprecedented.
What’s really remarkable is that the public is not normally this negative about a government unless the economy is in the deepest of slumps. If the UK had double-digit unemployment and house prices were crashing, Labour’s political predicament would be a lot easier to explain.
Clearly, 2025 has been far from a vintage year for the economy, but it hasn’t been that bad either. Britain has trundled on much as it has since the global financial crisis of 2008. Economic performance has been mediocre but not disastrous.
Labour Government Losing Public Support: A Hard 2026
It is far from clear why the present Labour government has lost public support more extensively and more rapidly than those of the 1940s, 1970s, and 2000s, even though economic conditions have been more benign.
Almost certainly it is a combination of factors: life is genuinely tough for many people, especially for the young. The public’s patience has worn thin after a decade-and-a-half of flatlining living standards. Labour’s lack of a real plan has been exposed. issues other than the economy – such as immigration and asylum – may now influence voters more than they once did.
One thing seems obvious. There is no guarantee that voters will reassess their view of Labour even if the economy really starts to motor in 2026. On the contrary, things are likely to get worse before they get better, partly due to policy errors by the Bank of England and the Treasury.
The Bank has been too slow in cutting interest rates. Last week’s downward move from 4% to 3.75% was a classic case of too little, too late. Rachel Reeves, for her part, made it more expensive to hire workers by raising employers’ national insurance contributions in her 2024 budget.
All governments make mistakes, and they need not be fatal. But Labour is living in a fool’s paradise if it thinks it has plenty of time on its hands to turn things around. Yet, the economy ends 2025 with precious little forward momentum.
