Make no mistake, 1442 new Reform Councillors is 1442 too many, but this is below the 1625 they were projected to win and to have maintained the same momentum that they had in last year’s elections, they’d have gained 2050.

So, any story that they are building momentum should bear that in mind. They have about 25% of the vote, and slowly declining, and generate enormous antipathy among much of the remaining 75%.

As almost all of the new Reform councillors are new and inexperienced, the scope for screw ups is immense, and that will slow their further momentum, as the experience of their control in places like Stafforsdhire and Kent already has to some extent; but not derail it in areas where they are strong.

I was looking at the results in the three boroughs I either live in or have some connection with and its like three different planets.

In Islington its a more or less straight Labour – Green conflict. The Lib Dems, who ran the council up to 2010 are a faded force. Tories are nowhere. Nor is Reform. In some wards Labour candidates were getting around 1600 votes. Greens came in over 2000. Overall, Labour held on with 32 councillors to 19 for the Greens.

In Brent everything is fragmented and gone to NOC. 26 Labour, 11 Tory, 11 Lib Dem, 9 Green. Reform are nowhere, even though they’ve managed to bolt on a white racist, angry motorist vote with some of the Hindutva Modi supporting Indians who are still mostly solidly with the Conservatives. A film of a Reform canvassing squad in Willesden (I think) looked like a group of Gujarati football hooligans. Outside Kingsbury tube station last night there was a poster from LBC with Farage on it saying that “Reform is here to stay”. My immediate thought was “not round here you’re not”.

In Thurrock, on the other hand, we are drowning in a Turquoise sea. Reform 45, Labour 2. Conservative 2. On a big turnout. In the East of the borough, despite having the experience of voting in a Reform MP, a former Leeman Brother banker, so obviously not part of “the elite” –  who subsequently lost the whip for dodgy dealings during COVID; claiming grants for companies that had no employees and no turnover – and is, by all accounts totally useless if anyone tries to contact him for help – Reform candidates got voted in with over 2000 votes in several wards. The Conservatives are a busted force, largely because they bankrupted the council when they were running it by investing in speculative solar farms without doing due diligence on the con man who pocketed the money. Greens are weak locally. Labour quite a close second in a few places, but nowhere near close enough. I had a chat with one of the Labour candidates when I was clipping the hedge last weekend. Friendly young black woman, with a competent sort of air about her. She got a couple of hundred fewer votes than her colleagues, who were both white, which tells you something about this area can still be like sadly, even though its much more diverse than it was. She was also leafletting on her own in one of the wards where there was a projection that Labour could hold out. The leaflet she was giving out had NO political content at all, jsut a reminder to vote. Without taking the fight to Reform, that could have been counter productive.

There are now a large number of councils where the result is so fragmented that the colour coding looks like a knitting design by Kaffe Fasset; which poses the question of who does deals with whom to do what; and what the national political consequences of that could be.

• Conservative/Reform blocs are likely to facilitate the reconsolidation of the Right with Reform absorbing the Tories – as both are agents of the Trump administration and will ultimately do what they are told.
• The dynamic between Labour and the Greens is less straightforward; as all the pressure from the powers that be will be to a) blunt the Greens radicalism b) lock Labour into its current dead end of prioritising military spending and Cold War posturing over the measures needed to improve living standards while doubling down on trying to ape Reform’s xenophobia in the weird delusion that this will attract support. The current Labour leadership seems quite prepared to destroy the Party in so doing.
• A concrete example of that is the latest teachers pay offer. This is not only below inflation, but unfunded. That means that it would have to come from school budgets; a form of self cannibalisation that will impoverish our schools. The prospect of a teachers strike is now back on the agenda as a result. Not something a government interested in resetting and rebuilding support would want to do.
• If Labour members want it to survive as a Party with any kind of positive role to play, looking to the example of Pedro Sanchez in Spain – not agreeing to 5% of GDP on war – welcoming migration – stepping up green transition, and building a more positive relationship with China to help do that – would be a step forward.