London 2026: Bleak future for the major parties

The 2026 London local elections was a mixed bag for the major parties. I have five boroughs in London, the results of which give us some ideas on where the major parties stand, that being the Labour party, the Conservative party, and the Liberal Democrats, and what their future may be like in a world increasingly dominated by the Greens and Reform.

Red voting Redbridge

Here, the Labour party maintained control of the council with 43 out of 63 seats. This was down 15 from the last election, but still a comfortable majority. Most of their losses came at the expense of the Redbridge Independents, rather than any establishment parties, which in theory could be better than losing to an up and coming party like the Greens, but it is worrisome for a particular MP in Ilford North: Wes Streeting.

The former Health Secretary from 2024 to 2026 got just 33% of the vote, down a staggering 21 points, with an independent, Leanne Mohamad, getting 32% of the vote. As it stood in 2024, at the seeming height of this government’s popularity, Streeting won by a margin of 528 votes in a constituency with 47,000 voters. This hasn’t damaged the ambitions of a man who once thought he would be the next Labour prime minister.

He has arguably led the charge, bar Andy Burnham, in challenging Keir Starmer’s leadership, concluding with his bombastic resignation on 14 May. In fact, he seems to have been invigorated by the election results, saying on Twitter, “After a particularly nasty and divisive campaign, the Redbridge Independents came away with just four councillors in Ilford North.” Maybe he thinks in a prime ministerial position he would manage not to be the first sitting prime minister to lose their seats in a general election, through leftist vote splitting or independent underperformance, who knows.

However, Wes did not challenge Starmer, instead waiting on Burnham’s expected return to parliament. This could be an indication he very well knows the implications of poor results here and wants a genuinely popular replacement to save his seat. Either way, Streeting is pushing on in his drive for the leadership in a Redbridge that stayed red for Labour.

Wanting Tories back Westminster

The city at the heart of London had been Conservative since its inaugural election in 1964, but at the height of the partygate scandal flipped to Labour. This time around, it has flipped back to the Conservatives. No other party won any seats, even the Greens who had a major 18pt breakthrough (likely due to younger, queerer places like Soho).

Now I am no expert in the local government politics that goes in Westminster, but I think the downfall of Labour here is somewhat emblematic of their troubles in the Palace of Westminster, nationwide. The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, elected to a third term in 2024, had a plan to pedestrianise Oxford Street in a radical shake up to one of the most recognisable streets in the country.

The Labour council of Westminster disagreed and the plan saw inaction for much of the term. Eventually, the Greater London Authority decided to go ahead with the pedestrianisation anyway in February this year, and the Labour council sort of ignored it. The new Westminster cabinet member for growth, Tim Barnes, said the new council would bring a judicial review to stop the pedestrianisation, but later dropped it saying it was too late.

Khan had campaigned on the issue as long ago as 2015 and had plans to bring it into force by 2020. With the approval of the local Labour council, the mayor’s plans could’ve been put into place many years ago but as always, and as the government has done, the council has decided not to make the huge leaps.

Liberal Democrats miss boat with Merton

The primary reason I want to talk about this is because of the lack of any movement for the Liberal Democrats. We’ve barely talked about them so far because they’ve been a non-entity, but they’re the third largest party in the House of Commons by a large margin. Here, the YouGov MRP had Merton, which is home to one of the Liberal Democrats MP, Paul Kohler, in London, on 27% to incumbent Labour’s 26%.

You would think that with the Labour party so low in the party, and the Liberal Democrats being the main party of opposition in this part of London, that they’d do much better here than in any other recent election. Instead, Labour actually overperformed the polls and reached 31% (although losing 12pts from 2022) with the Liberal Democrats gaining a mere 3 points. The Greens gained 8 points for comparison. The Liberal Democrats will need to soul search for why they were not favoured as a competitor to Labour in the mind of the now 12% of voters who went Green here.

Forbidden coalitions in Enfield

The Labour party here, who had controlled the council comfortably with 45% of the vote, sank by 21pts to 24% and lost 11 seats. Despite this defeat however, there was a potential Labour–Green coalition which would’ve had a combined 32 seats to the Tory opposition’s 31. This was not to be.

The Greens would abstain from a vote for the Tory council leader, allowing them to form a minority council short one. There’s a couple of things to think about following this outcome. The first is the Labour ban on working with the Greens on any local level, an order given by Keir Starmer. While that wasn’t exactly how this minority government was formed, it does mean that any Labour-led council here was borderline impossible and also hampers any left-wing administrations across the country.

The open hostility by a Starmer led government will be interesting to witness, especially if Burnham, his potential successor, would be more open to working with the Greens. Secondly, there is a danger that the Greens will maintain their image as an openly NIMBYist party, after both parties were keen to oppose housing developments in Enfield. Labour will point to these as attack lines, which may put off potential Labour to Green left-wing switchers in future if not tackled effectively.

Bipartisan Bloc in Barnet

The purpose of talking about this borough is for the potential of a Labour and Conservative electoral coalition after a future election. This isn’t foreign to European governments, see the most recent CDU–SDP coalition in Germany due to the rise of the far right AfD, or the centre-left Fianna Fáil and centre-right Fine Gael parties in the Republic of Ireland who’ve been in a coalition since 2020 due to the rise of the left-wing nationalist party Sinn Féin.

If the rise of Reform UK and the Greens, seen as extremists in the eyes of both mainstream party leaders, threatens the mainstream parties to the point of a hung parliament, we could see a grand coalition similar to those. Britain itself has had grand coalitions during the world wars and Great Depression, the most recent of which between 1940 and 1945 saw historic and beloved figures Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee work in the same government.

In Barnet, the results after 7 May were the Conservatives on 31 seats, Labour also on 31 seats, and a sole Green councillor. This gave the sole Green an extreme amount of power in deciding the new council composition. However, rather than succumb to this, the Conservatives made a deal with the incumbent Labour administration to keep them in power.

The Tories abstained from the vote to confirm the Labour council leader, stripping the Greens of any power, and in return the Tory leader Peter Zinkin would be allowed to attend cabinet meetings and have input on discussions. This is the kind of arrangement which would solidify the remarks by both anti-establishment parties that the Tories and Labour made up a ‘uniparty’ of the centre, but is a very possible path for the national parties to undertake.

Other London results

If you're curious about how the London electoral results turned out for the other parties, view the other articles such as our general overview, the Green's result, and Reform's result.