Labour on course for worst London election result in almost 50 years as poll predicts huge surge for Greens and Reform
The party looks set to lose control of six councils with the Greens and Reform on course to snatch them up, YouGov's poll predicts
Sir Keir Starmer is facing further misery after a new poll revealed Labour could suffer its worst result in London for nearly 50 years at the May local elections - with Reform and the Greens set to make significant gains.
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The Prime Minister’s party is projected to win the highest vote share in just 15 councils, six fewer than in 2022, according to a YouGov model.
It would be a damning result for Labour, the worst in four decades, with the party traditionally dominating council elections in the capital.
This would deal another blow to an already embattled Prime Minister as Sir Keir faces growing calls to resign over the Mandelson vetting scandal while his popularity ratings plummet.
YouGov’s MRP (Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification) model, based on polling of more than 4,500 adults, also indicates positive results for Zack Polanski’s Greens and Nigel Farage’s Reform.
The Greens are projected to win the highest vote share on four London councils, all of which are held by Labour.
Read more: Restore Britain surges but Reform UK still top of polls despite new challenger
These are Hackney, Lambeth, Lewisham and Waltham Forest.
Newham, where it’s the Greens and the Newham Independents Party who threaten Labour, has also been run by Sir Keir’s party since being set up, though not always with a majority.
Reform will win the highest vote share in three boroughs, the polling suggests.
The party is projected to snatch up Barking and Dagenham from Labour and Bromley from the Conservatives.
Winning in Barking and Dagenham would be a particular bag for Farage’s party given it's the only London borough to have remained under Labour majority control since its creation in the 1960s.
Reform is also projected to win Havering, which is currently not controlled by any party, and comes within five points of beating the Tories in Bexley.
The results would be unprecedented for Reform and the Greens as neither party has previously topped the poll on any London council.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives remain ahead on five councils, compared to six at the last election.
The Lib Dems are on course to win the most votes on four councils, according to the poll.
YouGov said: “Across the whole of London, our model paints a highly fragmented picture, with all five of England’s largest parties registering double digit vote shares in our central projections.
“While Labour are expected to top the London ballot once more, this will be off only around a quarter of the city-wide vote (26%), down a full sixteen points since the 2022 London elections, with the Conservatives dropping nine points to 17%. “Mirroring the national picture, the biggest beneficiaries of this decline will be the Greens and Reform UK, though in the capital it is the Greens of the two who are ahead, on 22% of the vote, up ten points since 2022.
“Reform UK, who won close to 0% of the vote last time, are now forecast to win a 14% share in our model’s central estimates.”
Labour’s predicted results are not bleak just in the capital, but across the country as some polling puts the party on course to lose close to a staggering 2,000 council seats.
According to More in Common, Labour will at best lose 1,597 seats and at worst lose 1,738 seats.
The pollster predicts losses for the Tories between 692 and 368 seats.
It comes after a little more than a week after another damning seat-by-seat poll by More in Common revealed sixteen Labour frontbenchers face losing their seats at the next general election.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Defence Secretary John Healey are all at risk of losing their seats to Reform, the MRP poll showed.
Darren Jones, the Prime Minister’s top aide, Business Secretary Peter Kyle, and Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn, face losing their seats to the Greens.
it comes after Green Party leader Polanski predicted a "tidal wave of new MPs" after following the historic Gorton and Denton by-election triumph - which saw the Greens' Hannah Spencer clinch the Greater Manchester seat with 14,980 votes to secure the party's first-ever parliamentary by-election win.