2025 Elections review – returnoftheliberal

The most ardent foot solders are just about recovered from last week’s local elections and coalition deals are taking shape so it’s a good time to look at the results. The broadcast media seems to be obsessed with Reform at the moment, I have my own take on why they’re so successful at the moment but of course I’m more focussed on the Lib Dems performance. Hopefully I can give you a broad view about how all the parties are faring and what it all means.

Sought after locations Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire, Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, Ely in Cambridgeshire – all now have majority Lib Dems Councils for the first time

Lib Dems – beating expectations again
The consensus going into these elections was that a net gain of 100 seats would be a good result, so to come out +163 was a great result. Ed Davey said, ‘This feels even better than last year’ – more positivity in our target councils, and he wasn’t wrong. To give a longer term context, the Lib Dems lost 2,200 council seats during the coalition years, since 2015 we’ve regained 1,750 seats. It’s no longer fanciful to believe we could regain everything we lost by the end of this parliament. Often results are a mixed bag up and down the country but there were only two councils where we suffered a net loss (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire), and even in County Durham where we had to cede control our seat numbers held up while Labour, Tories and Independents got wiped out. Quite apart from winning Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire outright, the Lib Dems are set to lead Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Devon councils, with the possibility of a deal in Hertfordshire, and a long shot at power in Cornwall.
The Lib Dems also played a big part in ending the Tory majority in Buckinghamshire, a new unitary with such a dominant Conservative presence I thought it wasn’t worth including in my preview last week. I’m happy to be proved wrong!

While taking control of councils has made the headlines, the smaller advances should be important to Lib Dems supporters too. We increased our seats in Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, West and North Northamptonshire. This belies the criticism that we’re ‘The party of the South’, and it also shows we can go forward in areas despite a lack of transferable resource.

What to make of the mayoral contests? The Hull & East Yorkshire shaped up as the most winnable for Lib Dems. We ended up in uncharted waters – this was the first major Reform vs Lib Dems contest. Why did Reform win? I’m sure we’ll hear well-informed commentary from those on the ground, from afar it’s likely that Luke Campbell was successful in picking up low engagement voters – those who simply don’t care that he didn’t turn up to any of the hustings, for example. Furthermore, the North East has a history of picking ‘everyman’ candidates as Mayor – remember Stuart Drummond, aka H’Angus the Monkey who won the Hartlepool mayoralty in 2002. As Campbell is an Olympic champion he could not be described as an everyman, but probably tapped into C1, C2, D and E social group voters who would find him very relatable. Often when the Mayor contest is about personalities, not policies people choose someone who comes from outside of politics that they think are like them.
As this was a brand new post, I rather suspect that many people who voted Labour simply refused to believe that the Lib Dems were the tactical vote and found it difficult to transfer allegiance in what has been a fierce Labour – Lib Dems battleground at a council level for a long time now. Perhaps we’ll find it easier with a squeeze message now everyone knows where they stand.

Tories – as bad as it gets
Oh dear, are there any crumbs of comfort for Britain’s traditional centre-right party? I suppose it was always unlikely that the Tories were going to defend all their seats as they were coming off a freakishly good result in 2021. This year’s result was, however, a disaster for the Tory party – they lost over half their seats, they lost control of 16 councils, many of which they’d been in control of for half a century or more. If you dig down into the results in detail the Tories dropped from first to third in over 100 divisions, and down to fourth in some places.
The Tories have taken such a beating that in several councils they lost, Kent, Lancashire and Devon especially, they cannot put forward a credible argument they’d be able to regain power in four years time. This makes for especially ugly reading if you compare the performance with what happened the last time the Tories lost power in 1997. While they were out of the reckoning at Westminster level for a long time the green shoots in local elections started appearing immediately with gains from 1998 onwards, 1999 being an especially good year, despite having William Hague as leader.
The broadcast media loves to make international comparisons and I’m no different. I’m going to posit the question: Is Britain becoming more like France politically? In the last 10 – 15 years we’ve seen the complete implosion of traditional centre-right Gaullist parties in France, which have been totally eclipsed by the far right Front National/National Rally. It would be quite the eye opener if such a trend plays out here as Britain and France have rarely followed the same pathways politically, unlike Britain and America.

Two years ago it was really noticeable how little campaigning the Tories did in my locale – Sevenoaks District – and they won despite the effort they put in, rather than because of it. So far there is no sign that they have the appetite for the intensive campaigning the Lib Dems put into their targets. While it’s a party with a remarkable facility for regeneration, the Conservatives have lot of work to do.

Labour – warning lights on the dashboard
County council elections are normally a sideshow for Labour, when they’re at their absolute best perhaps they’d win Durham, Lancashire, Notts and Derbys. Coming from a relatively low base in 2021 it will be disappointing to have a significant net loss. The results in Durham and Doncaster especially will have Labour members worried. 2024 was described as a loveless landslide, those that voted Labour are really hoping that they’ll be different and better than the Tories. So far refusing to lift the two-child benefit cap, cutting winter fuel and PIP payments, having imaginary fiscal rules and raising bus fares doesn’t instil a great amount of confidence in Labour.
If you’re a glass half full merchant there are green shoots in the economy – wages are rising faster than prices, inflation is subdued, the £ is up, GDP is up, interest rates have come down – these are modest gains so far and take a while for people to notice. Such improvements won’t count for much if Labour doesn’t go to work in the areas everybody expects them to – core public services such as healthcare, education, housing and children’s services.
The next few years will be a test for Labour as more of their policies produce real world outcomes – can they communicate positive change? Also do they have an activist base that can point out their improvements in workplace rights, for example?

Reform UK – public schoolboys destroying the establishment
Pollsters modelling the 2025 election result widely had Reform in a range of 350 – 400 net gains. I thought that was bold, mainly because UKIP/Brexit/Reform have shown little interest in local government and the kind of voter that gets really fired up about immigration pays little attention to bin collections and regular roadside drain maintenance. That wouldn’t appear to matter, as Stephen Bush pointed out in his Financial Times preview the local elections are an opportunity for voters to give their verdict on national politics and there are plenty who are unhappy with both the Tories and Labour at the minute.
Usually right wing populist parties like Reform have a ceiling of around 15 – 20%, so how have Reform managed 30% of the popular vote? Psephologists will crunch the numbers over time, but it’s likely that we’re seeing Reform reap the benefit of attracting voters who toggle between voting and not voting – the highest potential growth area when turn out has dropped to 60%.
For parties who have been micro-targeting and chasing the same voters – the ones that will answer the door and actually talk to you – this offers a major challenge. It seems Reform can win despite having candidates that are completely invisible and do no campaigning.
Activism still counts for a lot – my ward at a district level flipped from Conservative to Green off the back of an 18-month campaign by the Greens. Everyone needs to learn the lesson of Reform’s comms strategy, however, they are booked onto TV and radio shows morning, noon and night as TV producers believe their outrageous flip remarks are great for ratings.
The Lib Dems and SDP/Liberal Alliance always thought they were ‘above the fray’ in terms of opting out of the Punch and Judy show dialogue and rent-a-quote style sound bites. Lib Dems and Greens are sidelined relative to their success because we’re sensible and serious away from Ed Davey’s Chip Cobb (Fast Show) style stunts.

Chip Cobb – clearly an inspiration to Ed Davey

Minor parties are going to have to work on a comms strategy that keeps them in the frame and in voter’s minds while the Reform balloon rises ever higher. One note of warning for Reform – Professor John Curtice points out that attachment to political parties – all parties – is relatively superficial compared to 30 years ago.
Voters that have flocked to Reform this year despite little or no engagement on the doorstep could abandon them as fast as they embraced them. Robert Putnam’s gospel on American civic engagement ‘Bowling Alone’ cites the environmental movement in the 1980s as an example of what happens when you have shallow or deep roots. Greenpeace had a massive spike in members, this was short-lived as after a while Greenpeace asked their members for money to lobby congress and did little else. By contrast the Sierra Club, a chapter based organisation that involves face-to-face meetings saw their numbers stay roughly the same – it takes a lot more effort to be in their gang but the bond is a lot stronger once you’re on board. Reform haven’t sunk deep roots yet, there’s still time to put them in their place, all Liberals who stand for a worldview that’s an antithesis of Reform’s reactionary politics need to stay vigilant and mobilise now, as opposed to the pro-European movement that emerged only after we’d lost the EU Referendum.