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| Volume 56 Number 15, May 16, 2026 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
London May Day March - Photo: Workers'
Weekly
On May 7, local and regional elections were held across Britain. Parliamentary elections were held in Scotland and Wales, while in England, elections were held in 136 local councils, covering over 5,000 council seats and several mayoralties. Taken together, the elections signalled a marked weakening of Britain's two traditional Westminster parties: Labour lost ground across England, Scotland and Wales, while the Conservatives continued to struggle, especially in English local government and in the devolved nations.
In England, both Labour and the Conservatives suffered heavy net losses: Labour lost 1,496 seats, falling to 1,068 councillors, while the Conservatives dropped 563 seats to 801. Meanwhile, Reform UK gained 1,451 seats to reach 1,453 councillors and taking control of 14 councils. The Greens rose by 411 seats to 587 and gained five councils, while the Liberal Democrats added 155 seats to reach 844; twenty-three councils moved to no overall control. National projections placed Reform at roughly 26-27 percent, the Greens between 14 and 18 percent, and both Labour and the Conservatives clustered in the high teens to around 20 percent. In London Labour remained the largest party but lost heavily as the Greens gained control of local authorities for the first time and won mayoralties in Hackney, Lewisham and Waltham Forest; Reform also secured a borough mayoralty.
In Scotland, the SNP remained the largest party in Holyrood but fell short of a majority with 58 seats in the 129-seat parliament. Labour and Reform each took 17 seats, the Scottish Greens reached a record 15 seats, the Conservatives secured 12 and the Liberal Democrats 10. First Minister John Swinney is negotiating support with the Greens for a minority-government programme, yet the arithmetic now reflects a more plural and unstable chamber and a strengthened Reform presence altering opposition dynamics.
In Wales, the new 96-member Senedd was elected by multi-member constituencies returning six members each. The Senedd result marked a historic shift: Labour was not the largest party for the first time since devolution. Plaid Cymru won 43 seats and emerged as the largest party; Reform Wales took 34 seats and became the main opposition. Labour fell to nine seats, the Conservatives to seven, the Greens to two and the Liberal Democrats to one.
The elections and their results expose that elections do not resolve political authority. Where ballots once claimed to confer mandates and restore equilibrium, May 7 essentially redistributed disaffection among a growing plurality of parties and forces. Rather than producing decisive outcomes, the results produced fragmentation, minority administrations and a proliferation of centres of influence. This is indicative of a cartel-party system in deeper crisis. Though the major parties still gatekeep access to power and represent elite interests, and the cartel survives in form, the system is decaying and descending into warring factions. Factional competition has shifted to inner-party and cross-party struggles for state institutions, producing a system that is more unstable, far from one that is more accountable.
The growth of protest or identity-based voting must not be mistaken itself as renewal. It is, rather, a popular disengagement and volatility, part of the growing disequilibrium. The reality is fragmentation without new mechanisms for popular empowerment. Voters have expressed rejection, but what is missing are modern democratic institutions that directly empower people. Ballots have dispersed power into a chaos of hung councils and minority governments reliant on expediency and shifting alliances. In short. the election outcomes are symptomatic of the need for an alternative but where the required alternative does not yet exist.
May 7 makes clear that elections alone, especially a first-past-the-post type of count, but overall a mind-set that the issue in voting is simply a matter of "choice", cannot heal a system whose core institutions concentrate power and deflect accountability. It reduces people to things to be governed, whose role is simply to vote and hand over their voice. The alternative requires new decision-making forms rooted in workplaces and communities, with mechanisms for direct empowerment and accountability, where sovereignty is vested in the people themselves.
The system is descending into disarray - and the political order it sustains cannot be repaired by more of the same. The May 7 elections did not resolve Britain's political crisis, but deepened it. Far from producing decisive mandates or restoring confidence in the party system, the results exposed a fractured polity and a cartel-party structure in terminal decline, but with people desperate for change and to be in control of their lives. In short, the crisis is beyond redemption within the existing party-dominated arrangements. What is required is not another election cycle but a determined project of democratic renewal that builds institutions where the people truly decide.